Horizon is the official OpenStack Dashboard, a Django-based web application that provides a complete graphical interface for managing OpenStack cloud infrastructure. The project serves as both a production-ready dashboard implementation and an extensible framework for building custom dashboards from reusable components. The core horizon app provides the foundational framework, while the openstack_dashboard module demonstrates a reference implementation of how to integrate this framework into a functional Django site for web-based interactions with OpenStack services.
The dashboard enables users to interact with various OpenStack projects through a web interface, abstracting the complexity of cloud management into an intuitive user portal. As a classified service orchestration and cloud management tool, Horizon handles authentication, resource management, and administrative functions across OpenStack deployments. The web interface allows operators and end users to manage compute instances, storage, networking, and other cloud services without requiring direct API calls or command-line interaction.
The project is architected as a reusable component framework, allowing organizations to extend Horizon with custom panels, dashboards, and functionality tailored to their specific cloud environments. This extensibility is central to Horizon's design philosophy, enabling developers to build domain-specific dashboards while leveraging the core framework's authentication, navigation, and UI component libraries. The framework abstracts common patterns in cloud service management, reducing development time for new dashboard features.
Horizon maintains comprehensive documentation covering both installation and development workflows. Installation guidance is provided in the doc/source/install/index.rst file with pointers to detailed configuration options for various OpenStack setups. For developers, the doc/source/quickstart.rst file describes how to establish a development environment and begin contributing. The project uses reStructuredText for documentation source files, built with Sphinx, and contributors can generate the full documentation locally using the tox docs environment.
The repository is maintained as a mirror of code hosted at opendev.org, with official project management conducted through Launchpad. Release management, blueprints, feature specifications, issue tracking, and release notes are all coordinated through Launchpad's infrastructure rather than GitHub's native tools. This reflects Horizon's position as a core OpenStack project with established governance and release processes aligned with the broader OpenStack community.
The codebase is written primarily in Python, leveraging Django's web framework capabilities for rapid development and maintainability. The project's classification across multiple categories including ui components, api integration, authentication, and web application development reflects its multifaceted role in the OpenStack ecosystem. Horizon serves as the primary graphical entry point for cloud administrators and end users, translating complex cloud operations into accessible web-based workflows while maintaining the flexibility to accommodate diverse organizational requirements and custom extensions.
