Customizing the Dashboard

This manual explains multiple approaches to add custom themes to the application. It also describes how to add and enable multiple themes for the ui.

Here are some quick links to the different chapters:

Modifying Available Themes

Currently, the application offers two themes by default, light and dark. There is also an option to choose system theme and let the application choose dark/light theme based on the user’s operating system theme. Each user can specify a theme to use in the Account view which is accessible from the user menu under User Settings:

Custom Theme

Disabling Theming Functionality

In order to disable theming options for all users and enforce using only the default theme, set enforced_theme property in the application config.json file to the name of the theme that should be enforced (i.e. light).

Possible Customizing Approaches

There are two possible approaches of preparing custom themes. They all rely on the same functionality. It all depends on user access to the application code in order to prepare and quickly test the new theme before using it in the official deployment.

Preparing a New Theme With Access to the Sources

This approach gives user the possibility to reuse already defined code, work with scss instead of css and quickly test your new theme before uploading it to the official deployment.

All available themes can be found inside src/assets/themes directory. Follow the below steps to prepare a new custom theme:

  • Create a new scss theme file inside src/assets/themes directory called custom.scss. This is only a temporary name that can be changed later.

  • As a base reuse code from one of the default themes, either light.scss or dark.scss.

  • Register a new style in src/assets/config/config.json similar to how it’s done for light and dark themes. As the name use custom.

    • name - refers to the theme file name stored inside assets/themes directory.
    • displayName - will be used by the theme picker available in the Account view to display a new theme.
    • isDark - defines the icon to be used by the theme picker (sun/moon).
    {
  "openstack": {
    "wizard_use_default_user": false
  },
  "share_kubeconfig": false,
  "themes": [
    {
      "name": "custom",
      "displayName": "Custom",
      "isDark": false
    }
  ]
}

  • Run the application using npm start, open the Account view under User settings, select your new theme and update custom.scss according to your needs. It is possible to override basically everything inside this theme file. In example if you want to change background color of a mat-form-field do this:

    .mat-form-field {
  background-color: red;
}

    TIP: As currently selected theme name is saved inside user settings, change it back to one of the default themes before uploading your theme to the official deployment.

  • Once your new theme is ready run npm run build:themes. It should create a dist-themes directory inside Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform (KKP) Dashboard directory with compiled css files of all themes stored inside src/assets/themes directory. Now you can rename your custom.css theme file to some other name, i.e. solar.css.

Themes dir

  • Now, simply update your config.json file used by Kubermatic Dashboard Deployment and register the new theme same as it was done earlier. Make sure that name entry corresponds to the name of your theme file (without the css suffix).
  • As the last step, mount your custom CSS theme file to the dist/assets/themes directory. Make sure not to override whole directory as default themes are required by the application.
  • After application restart, theme picker should show your new theme.

Theme picker

Preparing a New Theme Without Access to the Sources

In this case the easiest way of preparing a new theme is to download one of the existing themes light/dark. This can be done in a few different ways. We’ll describe here two possible ways of downloading enabled themes.

Download Theme Using the Browser

  1. Open KKP UI
  2. Open Developer tools and navigate to Sources tab.
  3. There should be a CSS file of a currently selected theme available to be downloaded inside assts/themes directory.

Dev tools

Download Themes Directly From the KKP Dashboard container

Assuming that you know how to exec into the container and copy resources from/to it, themes can be simply copied over to your machine from the running KKP Dashboard container. They are stored inside the container in dist/assets/themes directory.

Kubernetes

Assuming that the KKP Dashboard pod name is kubermatic-dashboard-5b96d7f5df-mkmgh you can copy themes to your ${HOME}/themes directory using below command:

kubectl -n kubermatic cp kubermatic-dashboard-5b96d7f5df-mkmgh:/dist/assets/themes ~/themes
Docker

Assuming that the KKP Dashboard container name is kubermatic-dashboard you can copy themes to your ${HOME}/themes directory using below command:

docker cp kubermatic-dashboard:/dist/assets/themes/. ~/themes

Using Compiled Theme to Prepare a New Theme

Once you have a base theme file ready, we can use it to prepare a new theme. To easier understand the process, let’s assume that we have downloaded a light.css file and will be preparing a new theme called solar.css.

  1. Rename light.css to solar.css.

  2. Update solar.css file according to your needs. Anything in the file can be changed or new rules can be added. In case you are changing colors, remember to update it in the whole file.

  3. Mount new solar.css file to dist/assets/themes directory inside the application container. Make sure not to override whole directory.

  4. Update config.json file inside dist/config directory and register the new theme.

    {
  "openstack": {
    "wizard_use_default_user": false
  },
  "share_kubeconfig": false,
  "themes": [
    {
      "name": "solar",
      "displayName": "Solar",
      "isDark": true
    }
  ]
}

That’s it. After restarting the application, theme picker in the Account view should show your new Solar theme.