Hosting tutorials

Make your plugin even more useful by exposing remote tutorials directly from the ManiVault Studio start page.

A preview of what the user will experience when remote tutorials are configured correctly.

Purpose

This guide explains how plugin developers can make their ManiVault Studio tutorials available remotely. These tutorials will show up on the ManiVault Studio start page, making them easily discoverable and instantly accessible by users. They will also be available from the corresponding plugin learning center, the global learning center, and from the main menu: Tutorial Launch

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Host Projects Online (optional)

If you plan to accompany tutorials with example projects, you must place one or more projects on a web server or any web-accessible location. ManiVault Studio will download these projects if tutorials come with projects. These projects could be uploaded to:

an institutional server,
a file hosting service,
or any location ManiVault Studio can reach via HTTP/HTTPS.

2. Create a Tutorials JSON File

The plugin developer must create a JSON file describing the tutorials they want to expose to ManiVault Studio users. This file must conform to the tutorials JSON schema. Each tutorial entry in the JSON can include information about the tutorial and optionally a project download link.

Each entry describes one project and should include:

title, the tutorial title.
project, link to optional project file.
summary, tutorial description (HTML is allowed).
fullPost, the tutorial HTML content.
plugins list (if any plugin is not available on the user end, the tutorial project will not be able to load, see the Caveats and notes section for more info).
tags, additional tags (add the GettingStarted for the tutorial to show on the start page).
date, the date the tutorial was published.
minimum-version-major, the major part of the minimum ManiVault Studio version.
minimum-version-minor, the minor part of the minimum ManiVault Studio version.

For example:

{
  "tutorials":
  [
    {
      "title":"Example tutorial",
      "tags":["ExampleA", "Example B"],
      "date":"2024-11-20 12:00:00 +0000",
      "icon":"plug",
      "summary":"Explains how to work with the examples.",
      "fullpost":"<p>This how remote tutorials work</p>",
      "url":"https://www.manivault.studio/tutorials/data-hierachy-plugin/",
      "project":"https://example.com/tutorial-project.mv",
      "minimum-version-major":1,
      "minimum-version-minor":2,
      "plugins":["Example Plugin"]
    }
  ]
}

You can find other ManiVault Studio JSON schemas here.

3. Upload the JSON File

Once ready, upload the tutorials JSON file to a web server so ManiVault Studio can locate and download it.

4. Register the JSON URL in Your Plugin

In your plugin factory (either in mv::PluginFactory::PluginFactory() or mv::PluginFactory::initialize()), register the JSON’s URL with:

mv::PluginFactory::getTutorialsDsnsAction().addString("https://example.com/my_plugin_tutorials.json");

Summary: Registering Remote Tutorials in ManiVault Studio

Step	Action
1	Upload your tutorial project file(s) somewhere downloadable (optional)
2	Create a tutorials JSON file conforming to the tutorials schema
3	Host the tutorials JSON file online
4	Register the tutorials JSON file in your plugin via `mv::PluginFactory::getTutorialsDsnsAction().addString("https://example.com/tutorials.json")`
5	Users will see the tutorial(s) on the start page and can click to download + open

What Happens in ManiVault Studio

When everything is set up:

The remote tutorials you defined will appear under the Tutorials section of the start page, clearly labeled and searchable.
Users can filter remote tutorials based on name, version, and tags.
A single click on a listed tutorial:
- Opens an empty project and adds a tutorial plugin with the content.
- Or downloads the tutorial project .mv file.

The user doesn’t need to know or care that the tutorial (and its project) was remote—it’s seamless, see the teaser GIF at the top of this page for a preview of the experience.

Caveats & Notes

All downloadable files (tutorials JSON file and the project .mv files) must be a direct download link: The URLs must point directly to the raw file. Avoid links that:

Require user login.
Redirect to a download confirmation page; this is not guaranteed to work (e.g., OSF, Google Drive, and Dropbox UI pages).
Use HTTPS whenever possible: This avoids security warnings or failed downloads in corporate/firewalled environments.
Test everything: Always test your setup in a clean ManiVault Studio environment before sharing with users.
Latency or failure fallback: If a tutorial and/or its associated project fails to download or is offline, it will not be shown. Ensure your hosting is reliable.