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Nextcloud App Development Workshop 260825

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Building your first Nextcloud app (beginner workshop) — watch on YouTube (Nextcloud channel, 2026-08-25, 56 min)

Presented by Anna Larch (Nextcloud Developer Relations, ex-Talk developer; security team), with Marcel Müller answering chat. Foundations of Nextcloud app development: where your code sits, what it may call, and how it talks to the rest of the server. Every example comes from a real app — Nextcloud Talk, Dashboard, Theming, and Files reminders.

Summary

  • Public vs private API — build against OCP\ (stable, documented); OC\ is internal/legacy and can be removed between versions. Breaking changes to public APIs are announced ~5 major versions ahead. If it isn't in the developer manual, assume it can change.
  • Request lifecycle — index.php → routes → controller → service → mapper/DB → response. Auth, CSRF, and rate limiting run before the controller; brute-force throttling runs inside it. Controllers translate HTTP; business logic belongs in services.
  • Dependency injection — type-hint interfaces (private IStorage $storage); the container resolves what the instance actually uses. The ?string $userId pattern is a nullable, immutable, cheap-to-filter user identifier resolved from the login.
  • Entities & type casting — cast entity fields explicitly (bool, DateTime) because MariaDB/MySQL/Oracle/PostgreSQL disagree on tinyint/boolean and datetime handling.
  • Migrations — preSchemaChange / changeSchema / postSchemaChange. Heavy data work goes into a one-time background job, never inline in an upgrade (her example: a 6–7 hour system-address-book update).
  • Indices — add at table creation when possible; for existing large tables register a missing-index listener so the admin applies it via occ in a maintenance window. Debug slow queries with EXPLAIN.
  • Event system — apps integrate by listening to core events (file created/modified/deleted, node updated), never by calling another app's code. Files reminders has no dependency on the Files app.
  • Background jobs — extend TimedJob; cron flavors are cron / webcron / ajax (ajax gives no time guarantee). Use the maintenance window with time-insensitive jobs for heavy syncs.
  • Scale traps — use folder search with limit/offset instead of full tree loads; chunk IN queries to 1,000 items (Oracle's limit); avoid N+1 queries; test on current + previous majors; profile with Blackfire.
  • App store — validate info.xml, sign last, tarball = one top-level folder named the app ID, certificate request takes 2–4 days. Common rejections: CN/app-ID mismatch, bad archive structure, files changed after signing, invalid category.

Key takeaways

  1. Use only OCP\; anything not in the developer manual can change.
  2. Controllers translate HTTP; services do the work; entities/mappers own the data — with type casting.
  3. Heavy work (migrations, tree walks, per-user loops) belongs in background jobs.
  4. Integrate via events, never by calling another app's code.
  5. Chunk IN queries to 1,000 for Oracle; test against the previous major too.
  6. Sign last; the tarball must contain exactly one top-level folder named the app ID.

Resources

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