Feature Request: Selfhosting collaboration server

[AinzRimuru]

Feature Request

If possible, I hope to have a platform that supports local collaboration and does not rely on any Internet services.
I'm using draw.io on nextcloud and I want to be able to implement collaborative editing of diagrams.
Using onlyoffice on nextcloud gave me a very good experience of collaboratively editing documents, so I was wondering if there was anything I could learn from that.

[larrycai]

I installed it k8s env and can mount pvc for the storage, technically user can store the working drawing on the server and share with others. (Share with url, this is done in plantuml)

the stored drawio can be auto-deleted as retention time parameter

Hopefully this feature can be implemented or already have un-documented solution

[hslabbert]

+1 on this. Best I can tell, shared cursors and real-time collaborative edits (https://www.drawio.com/blog/real-time-collaboration-diagrams) are only functioning on the main hosted app on draw.io, not self hosted.

There is a note that it works for the nextcloud app:

The draw.io app integration for Nextcloud also supports shared cursors when Autosave is enabled with the official draw.io servers.

But, I don't see any way to enable this with just a standard docker self hosted setup.

I tested this with

1. creating a draw.io diagram saved to Google Drive
2. editing that diagram from multiple different accounts in different browser sessions using the main hosted draw.io site (https://app.diagrams.net/)
3. editing that diagram with a self hosted instance (using docker) on that same file from Google drive, also with different accounts in different browser sessions

In the hosted version (2), shared cursors are available and real time edits show up on both clients.. In the self hosted setup (3), shared cursors are not displayed, and real time edits are not reflected at other clients.

The self hosted version is running 28.0.6.

Is there anything that can be tweaked around "Autosave is enabled with the official draw.io servers" as is mentioned for nextcloud, but when using a regular self hosted setup (standalone docker)?

[hslabbert]

This seems to correspond to

docker-drawio/main/docker-entrypoint.sh

Line 69 in e12d208

echo "urlParams['sync'] = 'manual'; //Disable Real-Time" >> $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/draw/js/PreConfig.js

[hslabbert]

Okay, so it looks like the nextcloud version adds the option to just refer to the embed.diagrams.net instance, rather than having other trickery in order to enable real time collab to work on the nextcloud edition directly in a self hosted setup:

https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-nextcloud?tab=readme-ov-file#real-time-collaboration

That's rather unfortunate. It would be great to hear from jgraph on whether this is something insurmountable. It would be most excellent to have real time collab on self-hosted instances, even if it is something hidden behind a scary "Here Be Dragons ™️ " config knob for the websockets etc.

[hslabbert]

Ah. Appears to be effectively a duplicate of #160. As that was closed as "not planned" about 7 months ago (#160 (comment)) I guess it's unlikely that's changed since?

[AinzRimuru]

Is it feasible to deploy local services for embed.diagrams.net to provide collaborative support?