User Interface Customization

Angular Overview

The DSpace User Interface (UI) is built on the Angular.io framework.  All data comes from the REST API (DSpace Backend), and the final HTML pages are generated via TypeScript.

Before getting started in customizing or branding the UI, there are some basic Angular concepts to be aware of.  You do not need to know Angular or TypeScript to theme or brand the UI. But, understanding a few basic concepts will allow you to better understand the folder structure / layout of the codebase.

Angular Components: In Angular, every webpage consists of a number of "components" which define the structure of a page.  They are the main "building block" of any Angular application. Components are reusable across many pages. So, for example, there's only one "header" and "footer" component, even though they appear across all pages.

Each Component has:

• A *.component.ts (TypeScript) file which contains the logic & name ("selector") of the component
• A *.component.html (HTML) file which contains the HTML markup for the component (and possibly references to other embedded components).  This is also called the "template".
  • In HTML files, components are named/referenced as HTML-like tags (e.g. <ds-header>, <ds-footer>). In DSpace's UI, every component starts with "ds-" in order to distinguish it as an out-of-the-box DSpace component. 
• A *.component.scss (Sass / CSS) file which contains the style for the component.

If you want a deeper dive into Angular concepts of Components and Templates, see https://angular.io/guide/architecture-components

Theme Technology & Design

The DSpace UI uses the Bootstrap (v4.x) website framework, which uses Sass, a CSS preprosser. 

Sass is very similar to CSS, but it allows you to nest CSS rules & have variables and functions.  For a brief overview on Sass, see https://sass-lang.com/guide

Creating a Custom Theme

Theme Directories & Configuration

Out of the box, there are three theming layers/directories to be aware of:

• Base Theme (src/app/ directories):  The primary look & feel of DSpace (e.g. HTML layout, header/footer, etc) is defined by the HTML5 templates under this directory. Each HTML5 template is stored in a subdirectory named for the Angular component where that template is used. The base theme includes very limited styling (CSS, etc), based heavily on default Bootstrap (4.x) styling, and only allowing for minor tweaks to improve WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility.
• Custom Theme (src/themes/custom directories): This directory acts as the scaffolding or template for creating a new custom theme.  It provides (empty) Angular components/templates which allow you to change the theme of individual components.  Since all files are empty by default, if you enable this theme (without modifying it), it will look identical to the Base Theme.
• DSpace Theme (src/themes/dspace directories): This is the default theme for DSpace 7.  It's a very simple example theme providing a custom color scheme & homepage on top of the Base Theme. It's important to note that this theme ONLY provides custom CSS/images to override our Base Theme. All HTML5 templates are included at the Base Theme level, as this ensures those HTML5 templates are also available to the Custom Theme.

More information on the UI Design principles/technologies can be found at DSpace UI Design principles and guidelines

The theming configuration can be found in the src/environments/environment.*.ts.  See User Interface Configuration.

Getting Started

The best place to start with a new theme is the "custom" theme folder (src/themes/custom). This folder contains the boilerplate code for all theme-able components. It's a scaffolding for a new theme which doesn't modify any of the "base theme" (src/app/ directories). This means that by default it's a plain Bootstrap look and feel, with a few tweaks for better accessibility.

You can either modify this directory directly, or copy all its contents into a new folder under src/themes/