Firefox OS/Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage

	THIS PAGE IS A WORKING DRAFT
	The page may be difficult to navigate, and some information on its subject might be incomplete and/or evolving rapidly. If you have any questions or ideas, please add them as a new topic on the discussion page.

Overview

This project aims at to support FirefoxOS to be a bridge between web apps and cloud storages to provide user much better cloud storage user experience on FirefoxOS device.

• Universal Storage API

FireFoxOS supports web apps a universal API to access all kinds of storage, such as internal storage, SDCard, USB mass storage, cloud storage, etc.

• Virtual Storage Interface

Virtual Storage Interface is an abstract interface which defining the storage operations for FirefoxOS. Through Virtual Storage Interface, user can easy mount a file system on FirefoxOS.

Use cases

Play media files saved on cloud

John saves his media files on dropbox or any other cloud storage and wants to play these media online on his mobile device.
In traditional, John needs to do with following steps

1. Open the cloud storage app, such as dropbox and google drive, and download the media files to the mobile device.
   
2. Open the player app, such as Gallery and Music, and play the media files locally.
   

On FirefoxOS device, the steps can be reduced to

1. Open the player app and play the media files on cloud storage directly.

Create and share files on cloud

Bob wants to take a picture and share it with friend on flickr.
In traditional, Bob needs to do with following steps

1. Open the camera app to take a picture and save the file on the device.
   
2. (Optional) Open a third party app to edit the picture on the device.
   
3. Open the flickr app to upload the file and set it as shared.
   

On FirefoxOS device, the steps can be reduced to

1. Open the camera app to take a picture and save and share the file on cloud storage directly.
   
2. (Optional) Open a third party app to edit the picture on cloud storage directly.
   

File management between clouds

Amy wants to copy a finished work document form her personal dropbox space to the company google drive space
In traditional, Amy needs to do with following steps

1. Open the dropbox app and download the document file to device.
2. Open the google drive app and upload the document file.
   

On FirefoxOS device, the steps can be reduced to

1. Open a file browser app and copy the document from dropbox to google drive directly.

Proposed framework

Universal Storage API

Universal Storage API is a webAPI for all web app to access the device filesystem. This API support web apps to create, remove, read, write, traverse, open and close files and directories on internal storage, SDcard, Cloud Storage, USB mass storage and NAS with the same interface.
Currently, DeviceStorageAPI is targeted as the first version of Universal Storage API. DeviceStorageAPI has already been used for the internal storage and SDcard accessing.

Virtual Storage Interface

Virtual Storage Interface is an interface for FirefoxOS to accessing different kinds of storage with defined storage operations. By implementing the operations of Virtual Storage Interface with the public APIs of cloud storage, cloud storage can easy camouflage as a device storage in FirefoxOS.
This interface is helpful for cloud storage providers to support their cloud storage service on FirefoxOS.

Bugzilla requests

• Bug 1035053 - [Device Storage] To Support Variant Cloud Storage