Connect to STAC Browser

[j08lue]

STAC Browser is the go-to tool for browsing STAC data and STAC Manager should not duplicate its powerful viewing functionalities.

We rather want to offer an easy bridge for users to open the collection or item they are seeing in STAC Manager in a linked STAC Browser.

There is a publicly available instance of STAC Browser at https://radiantearth.github.io/stac-browser/, which can display data from any external STAC API or path to STAC JSON file by adding /external/<stac-api-url>, where the STAC API URL is the path to the collection or item, e.g. https://radiantearth.github.io/stac-browser/#/external/https://eoapi.develop.eoepca.org/stac/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/items/S2B_MSIL2A_20231231T100329_N0510_R122_T33UYU_20231231T110801

Many platforms also deploy their own STAC Browser instance with minor customizations (styling or auth integration), e.g.

• https://browser.apex.esa.int/
• https://openveda.cloud/
• https://staging.eodatahub.org.uk/static-apps/stac-browser/main/index.html (WIP)

It is probably most portable to use the /external/<stac-api-base-url>/collections/<collection-id>/items/<item-id> directive, but some STAC Browser deployments also support specifying /collections/<collection-id> etc. because they have a default STAC API configured.

For example, these two are interchangeable:

• https://openveda.cloud/stac/collections/sport-lis-vsm0_100cm-percentile 👈 using default STAC API
• https://openveda.cloud/external/https://openveda.cloud/api/stac/collections/sport-lis-vsm0_100cm-percentile 👈 external directive defines STAC API

I'd say we can stick to /external, though.

Acceptance criteria

• STAC Browser URL is configured in the deployment
• Works for the Radiant Earth provided STAC Browser instance (perhaps use this as default, rather than blank by default)
• STAC Manager can link to the corresponding collection or item view in STAC Browser