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Part 3: Make it Dynamic with MySky

The Context

In parts 1 and 2, your web app uploaded files onto Skynet. The files at these skylinks are immutable, that is, they cannot be modified (or else their URL would also change). Think of them like constants – you will have to create a new file and skylink if you want to make updates. In this section, we'll use MySky to store editable data on Skynet that we can come back to and update.
Right now, if you hover over your image in the certificate, you get a nice green halo effect. But, we may want to change this later without changing the skylink of our website. We can do this by having our web page read additional data directly from Skynet when it loads. This data will be simple JSON data that can only be changed by the user that created it.
The first step for doing this is hooking up our app to MySky, but you'll need a little theory here.
MySky lets users log in across the entirety of the Skynet ecosystem. Once logged in, applications can request read and write access for specific "MySky Files" that have a file path. In this workshop, we'll be working with "Discoverable Files" -- these are files that any application can see if they know your MySky UserID and the pathname for the file. This is what lets you do things like make one user profile and use it in any Skynet app built to support that data.
With MySky, we can write a JSON object file to a pathname, and then tell someone our UserID and the pathname, and they can find the latest version of the data. The website we generate will use this data, so even users that aren't logged into MySky can read the latest updates to the certificate.

The Code

Let's setup MySky login and then look at writing data to a MySky File.
1. First we need to set the dataDomain that MySky will use for this app. This is the "root path" that we will request permissions to write to from MySky. Replace the line of code in Step 3.1 with this.
// choose a data domain for saving files in MySky
const dataDomain = 'localhost';
2. Now we need to add the code that will initialize MySky when the app loads. This code will also check to see if a user is already logged in with the appropriate permissions. Add the following code to src/App.js for Step 3.2.
// define async setup function
async function initMySky() {
try {
// load invisible iframe and define app's data domain
// needed for permissions write
const mySky = await client.loadMySky(dataDomain);
// load necessary DACs and permissions
// await mySky.loadDacs(contentRecord);
// check if user is already logged in with permissions
const loggedIn = await mySky.checkLogin();
// set react state for login status and
// to access mySky in rest of app
setMySky(mySky);
setLoggedIn(loggedIn);
if (loggedIn) {
setUserID(await mySky.userID());
}
} catch (e) {
console.error(e);
}
}
// call async setup function
initMySky();
3. Next, we need to handle when a user presses the "Login with MySky" button. This will create a pop-up window that will prompt the user to log in. The window will also ask for additional permissions to be granted if the app doesn't already have them. Since our website is being served from the same address as our dataDomain, permissions should be automatically granted. Add the following code to src/App.js for Step 3.3.
// Try login again, opening pop-up. Returns true if successful
const status = await mySky.requestLoginAccess();
// set react state
setLoggedIn(status);
if (status) {
setUserID(await mySky.userID());
}
4. We also need to handle when a user logs out. This method will tell MySky to log the user out of MySky and then delete any remaining user data from the application state. Add the following code to src/App.js for Step 3.4.
// call logout to globally logout of mysky
await mySky.logout();
//set react state
setLoggedIn(false);
setUserID('');
5. Now that we've handled login and logout, we will return to saving data when a user submits the form. Locate and uncomment console.log('Saving user data to MySky file...');
6. After uploading the image and webpage, we construct a JSON object to save to MySky. Put the following code in the below Step 3.6.
// create JSON data to write to MySky
const jsonData = {
name,
skylinkUrl,
dirSkylink,
dirSkylinkUrl,
color: userColor,
};
// call helper function for MySky Write
await handleMySkyWrite(jsonData);
7. We need to define what happens in the helper method called above. We'll tell MySky to save our JSON file to our filePath. Put the following code in the below Step 3.7.
// Use setJSON to save the user's information to MySky file
try {
console.log('userID', userID);
console.log('filePath', filePath);
await mySky.setJSON(filePath, jsonData);
} catch (error) {
console.log(`error with setJSON: ${error.message}`);
}
8. Next, we want the certificate web page to read this data. The code to fetch a MySky file is already coded into the generated page, but the generator needs to know our userID and the file path in order for the website build to reference the JSON file on Skynet. Find the code from Step 2.1 that says
const webPage = generateWebPage(name, skylinkUrl);
and replace it with
const webPage = generateWebPage(name, skylinkUrl, userID, filePath);
9. Test it out! In part 3, try signing into MySky, selecting a color and re-submitting the form. The new website should have a halo effect matching your color choice. Now, the webpage is reading from our MySky data every time a viewer loads the webpage! We've made our static page into a dynamic page! In the next step, we'll add the ability to load this MySky data into the web app later on, where a user can update it without needing to re-upload an image and webpage.