Make openHAB location configurable?

[hypetsch]

Over the last days I had some time to play around a little bit with HABPanel. I tried to implement a new widget (PR #234) - to avoid having to recompile and deploy it for each step I

• ran gulp watch in the web directory
• hosted the web directory using npm http-server
• and hacked the openhab.service.js in order to 'redirect' the REST calls to my openHAB instance by adding http://ip:port/ for all REST calls.
  To make it working, CORS has to be enabled in openHABs conf\services\runtime.cfg by adding org.eclipse.smarthome.cors:enable=true.

Doing so it is possible to run HABPanel outside of openHAB, which - I think - simplifies the development process - or is there another simple way to test changes?

What do you think: Is it worth adding an optional configuration setting for an external openHAB location (e.g. a base URL like http://ip:port) in the future or am I missing something?

As far as I understand the architecture of HABPanel (client-side only) it would then also be possible to host it outside of openHAB. This could also be a benefit?

[ghys]

HABPanel is mostly a web client so what I do - and suggest - is to clone the repository into your conf/html folder then it's accessible at http://youropenhabip:8080/static/org.openhab.ui.habpanel/web/index.html.
Then you won't need to recompile the OSGi bundle every time :)

[hypetsch]

Thanks, of course. Sometimes one doesn't see the wood for the trees... :)