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Look-and-feel

This section covers how to change the look-and-feel of your instance. If you need to match your institution's look-and-feel, this section is for you.

Typically, this involves setting configuration values and placing files in expected locations. Other sections, such as Authentication or Vocabularies deal with customizing content or adding features.

Setting configuration values

via invenio.cfg

When told to set a configuration variable or edit your instance's settings, this typically means editing the invenio.cfg file:

# invenio.cfg file

THEME_FRONTPAGE_TITLE = "RePo: the Repository about Potatoes"

Doing so overrides the config.py variables provided by Invenio modules and their dependencies. The configuration values are interpreted as Python values. In fact, invenio.cfg is just a Python file.

via environment variables

Sometimes, you will want to provide the configuration value via an environment variable (e.g. different values based on different deployment contexts). In that case, you will prefix the configuration key by INVENIO_ and use the resulting variable name as the environment variable to set:

INVENIO_THEME_FRONTPAGE_TITLE="Stage RePo: the Repository about Potatoes"

Environment variables are interpreted as Python literals

The InvenioRDM environment variables loader will try to interpret values as Python literals. Quoting is thus recommended to get the right result.

❌ DON'T 

INVENIO_APP_ALLOWED_HOSTS=["127.0.0.1"] invenio-cli run
APP_ALLOWED_HOSTS is interpreted as the string "[127.0.0.1]" because of shell substitution followed by Python literal conversion.

✅ DO 

INVENIO_APP_ALLOWED_HOSTS='["127.0.0.1"]' invenio-cli run
APP_ALLOWED_HOSTS is interpreted as the list ["127.0.0.1"] which is right.

Another pitfall to avoid is when a value can be interpreted as the wrong type.

❌ DON'T 

INVENIO_DATACITE_PREFIX="10.5072" invenio-cli run
INVENIO_DATACITE_PREFIX is interpreted as the float 10.5072 which is wrong.

✅ DO 

INVENIO_DATACITE_PREFIX='"10.5072"' invenio-cli run
INVENIO_DATACITE_PREFIX is interpreted as the string "10.5072" which is right.

Investigate how your system handles environment variable to avoid these issues.

Placing files in expected locations

Your instance comes with a folder structure prepared to welcome new files:

  • assets/ -- where custom JavaScript and LESS files go
  • static/ -- where custom images and other static files go
  • templates/ -- where custom Jinja templates go

For Jinja templates, because the content of your templates/ folder is consulted before the InvenioRDM modules' templates/ folder, mimicking a template's expected path in your templates/ folder won't require you to change any configuration values.

In the next sections, we go through common customizations and show you the workflow commands to use: