Setup Sipi for Knora

Setup and Execution

In order to serve files to the client application like the Salsah GUI, Sipi must be set up and running. Sipi can be downloaded from its own github-repository: https://github.com/dhlab-basel/Sipi. Please follow the instructions given in the README to compile it on your system.

Once it is compiled, you can run Sipi with the following option: ./local/bin/sipi --config=config/sipi.knora-config.lua (or ./local/bin/sipi --config=sipi.knora-test-config.lua for using sipi for testing). Please see sipi.knora-config.lua for the settings like URL, port number etc. These settings need to be set accordingly in Knora’s application.conf. If you use the default settings both in Sipi and Knora, there is no need to change these settings.

Whenever a file is requested from Sipi (e.g. a browser trying to dereference an image link served by Knora), a preflight function is called. This function is defined in sipi.init-knora.lua present in the Sipi root directory. It takes three parameters: prefix, identifier (the name of the requested file), and cookie. File links created by Knora use the prefix knora, e.g. http://localhost:1024/knora/incunabula_0000000002.jp2/full/2613,3505/0/default.jpg.

Given these information, Sipi asks Knora about the current’s users permissions on the given file. The cookie contains the current user’s Knora session id, so Knora can match Sipi’s request with a given user profile and determine the permissions this user has on the file. If the Knora response grants sufficient permissions, the file is served in the requested quality. If the suer has preview rights, Sipi serves a reduced quality or integrates a watermark. If the user has no permissions, Sipi refuses to serve the file. However, all of this behaviour is defined in the preflight function in Sipi and not controlled by Knora. Knora only provides the permission code.

See Sharing the Session ID with Sipi for more information about sharing the session id.

Using Sipi in Test Mode

If you just want to test Sipi with Knora without serving the actual files (e.g. when executing browser tests), you can simply start Sipi like this: ./local/bin/sipi --config=config/sipi.knora-test-config.lua. Then always the same test file will be served which is included in Sipi. In test mode, Sipi will not aks Knora about the user’s permission on the requested file.