Eclipse USS

The Eclipse User Storage Service (USS) allows Eclipse projects to store user-specific project information on the Eclipse Foundation servers. The goal is to make it easy for our projects to offer a better user experience by storing relevant information in a central location.

IMPORTANT: the USS is intended to be used for data that may be exposed publicly. Application developers must not use this service to store personal data, such as name, email address, host/server information or anything else that is best suited for local storage or the Eclipse Secure Storage.

The USS has two components:

• REST API server. The actual storage service.

• USS SDK: a java API to interface with the REST server from an Eclipse workspace. The USS handles login/authentication and session management.

Getting Started

To store data in the USS, Eclipse projects must first apply for an Application Token by sending a request to the Eclipse Webmaster. The Application Token is a string that allows projects to differentiate their user data from that of other projects. Since the Application Token is used in the context of Open Source projects, it is not private, it is not hidden, and may even be used in source code. It is not meant to be an authorization or authentication mechanism; however, there are plans to increase the security of this mechanism, as any Eclipse project could use any authorized token.

The USS SDK Storage Tests class provides a good sample implementation. Please see: http://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/uss.git/tree/org.eclipse.userstorage.tests/src/org/eclipse/userstorage/tests/StorageTests.java

Projects Using USS

• Oomph: allowing users to save their preferences to the USS for persistence across workspaces on different computers and/or virtual boxes.
• Marketplace Client (MPC): (planned) to store user favorites to the USS.