How to integrate Collabora Online in NextCloud

Collabora Online is a full-fledged, web-accessible office suite based on LibreOffice. By integrating Collabora Online with NextCloud, you will be able to create and edit documents directly from NextCloud. Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Preface

This guide will guide you through the installation of NextCloud and Collabora Online on the same host using Docker and Nginx as reverse proxy. I will assume you already have a fair understanding of NextCloud and Nginx.

The tutorial is divided in two sections:

• Installing Collabora Online without domain/SSL: this is a testing purpose tutorial and it is discouraged in production.
• Installing Collabora Online with domain/SSL: this is the official way to do things, but you will require a resolvable domain name and a valid SSL certificate.

If you haven’t yet installed NextCloud you can follow one of these guides:

• How to install NextCloud 11 on Ubuntu 16.04.
• How to install NextCloud 11 on Centos 7.

Requirements

The only requirement is to have Docker and Nginx installed on your machine. If you don’t have them installed, you can easily search for a guide or refer to your distribution’s knowledge base.

Installing Collabora Online without domain/SSL

This setup is intended to be used for testing and proof of concept purposes only. It is insecure to say the least. Port 9980 which is used by Collabora is exposed and should be protected against attackers. Without SSL the communication is unencrypted and could be read by anyone in the middle.

Setting up Docker

The first step is to pull and run the container, you can easily do so by doing:

$ docker run -t -d -p 9980:9980 --name collabora_nextcloud --restart always --cap-add MKNOD collabora/code

Then we need to take care of SSL which is enabled by default in Collabora. I prepared a handy one-liner to achieve it:

$ docker exec -it collabora_nextcloud /bin/bash -c "apt-get -y update && apt-get -y install xmlstarlet && xmlstarlet ed --inplace -u \"/config/ssl/enable\" -v false /etc/loolwsd/loolwsd.xml && xmlstarlet ed --inplace -u \"/config/ssl/termination\" -v false /etc/loolwsd/loolwsd.xml"

Once done it’s time to restart the Docker container:

$ docker restart collabora_nextcloud

Setting up Nginx

This section is superfluous in the SSL-less setup, nevertheless it can be useful if you want to hide the port 9980 and control the traffic. You simply have to create a new server block in your configuration containing the following:

server {
    listen       8080;

    # static files
    location ^~ /loleaflet {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }

    # WOPI discovery URL
    location ^~ /hosting/discovery {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }

    # websockets, download, presentation and image upload
    location ^~ /lool {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }
}

In this example I used port 8080 but you are free to use whatever you feel like. Be sure however not to use ports used by other services (NextCloud itself). So, no 80, no 443.

Whatever your choice is, remember to set up the firewall you’re using (it depends on your configuration and/or distribution).

Setting up NextCloud

This part is quite straightforward:

1. As admin, go to Apps -> Productivity -> Collabora Online; download and enable.
2. Go to Admin -> Collabora Online and insert the IP address of your machine.

For example if you have an IP address set to 192.168.33.100 you will use:

• http://192.168.33.100:8080 (If you set up Nginx.)
• http://192.168.33.100:9980 (If you didn’t set up Nginx.)

Installing Collabora Online with domain/SSL

This setup is more secure compared to the precedent. This one, however, requires that you (and the client thats are going to use the service) are able to resolve the domain name of the host properly. You will also need a subdomain for your host (e.g. office.example.com) . You also need a valid SSL certificate (self-signed is probably possible, but I haven’t tried and would probably be a little troublesome).

Setting up Docker

The first step is to pull and run the container. Replace YOUR\\.DOMAIN\\.TLD with your actual domain:

$ docker run -t -d -p 127.0.0.1:9980:9980 -e 'domain=YOUR\\.DOMAIN\\.TLD' --name collabora_nextcloud --restart always --cap-add MKNOD collabora/code

Be sure to use double backslashes when escaping dots in your domain.

Setting up Nginx

In this step you need to create a server block in your Nginx configuration. Also you will need to set up the SSL certificate and to assign a subdomain to the host:

server {
    listen       443 ssl;
    server_name  host.example.com;

    ssl_certificate /path/to/certficate;
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/key;

    # static files
    location ^~ /loleaflet {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }

    # WOPI discovery URL
    location ^~ /hosting/discovery {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }

    # websockets, download, presentation and image upload
    location ^~ /lool {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:9980;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    }
}

Remember to set up the firewall you’re using (it depends on your configuration and/or distribution).

Setting up NextCloud

This part is quite straightforward:

1. As admin, go to Apps -> Productivity -> Collabora Online; download and enable.
2. Go to Admin -> Collabora Online and insert the sub-domain name you have assigned to the Collabora instance.

So if you used host.example.com you will fill the field with: https://host.example.com .

Conclusion

You now know how to integrate the Collabora Online suite with NextCloud, allowing documents, spreadsheets and presentations to be created and edited directly from Nextcloud.

Thanks to this post for the nginx configuration.

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mark

The IT guy with a slight look of boredom in his eyes. Freelancer. Current interests: Kubernetes, Tensorflow, shiny new things.

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