Express-edit-text NPM

Express Edit Text

CAUTION: Under active development, not suitable for production use for people outside the development team yet.

Config

You configure the container by setting environment variables:

DIR - The directory containing the editable text files
MUSTACHE_DIRS - A : separated list of paths the system should look for mustache templates before using its default ones.
DISABLE_AUTH - Defaults to false but can be true to make file uploading and downloading work without requiring sign in. Only recommended for development.
DISABLED_AUTH_USER - If DISABLE_AUTH is set to true, set this to be the JSON-encoded representation of the auth user you want the server to assume is signed in. e.g. '{"admin": true, "username": "disableduser"}'. Only recommended for development.
SCRIPT_NAME - The base URL at which the app is hosted. Defaults to "" and must not end with /. Usually this is set to something like /upload
DEBUG - The loggers you want to see log output for. e.g. express-edit-text,express-mustache-jwt-signin.
PORT - The port you would like the app to run on. Defaults to 80.
SECRET - The secret string used to sign cookies. Make sure this is a long secret that no-one else knows, otherwise they could forge the user information in your cookies. Make sure you set the SECRET variable to the same value in the signin container too, otherwise they won't recognose each other's cookies.
VALIDATION_MODULE_PATH - An optional absolute path of a .js file that exports a validator function with this structure: module.exports = { validator: async (filename, content, editableDir) => {} }. filename is the file's filename relative to edtiableDir and content is the content that the user is trying to save. If the content is not valid an error should be thrown with const e = new Error(msg); e.validationErrorMessage='Public message to display to the user'; throw e;

You can also use all the express-mustache-overlays options including WITH_PJAX_PWA=true, and all the core express-mustache-jwt-signin options.

Docker Example

Make sure you have installed Docker and Docker Compose for your platform, and that you can customise your networking so that www.example.localhost can point to 127.0.0.1.

Also, make sure you have the source code:

git clone https://github.com/thejimmyg/express-edit-text.git
cd express-edit-text

Tip: You can also use the published docker image at https://cloud.docker.com/u/thejimmyg/repository/docker/thejimmyg/express-edit-text if you change the docker-compose.yml file to use image: thejimmyg/express-edit-text:0.1.4 instead of building from source

OK, let's begin.

For local testing, let's imagine you want to use the domain www.example.localhost.

You can create certificates as described here:

https://letsencrypt.org/docs/certificates-for-localhost/

You'll need to put them in the directory domain/www.example.localhost/sni in this example. Here's some code that does this:

mkdir -p domain/www.example.localhost/sni
openssl req -x509 -out domain/www.example.localhost/sni/cert.pem -keyout domain/www.example.localhost/sni/key.pem \
  -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -sha256 \
  -subj '/CN=www.example.localhost' -extensions EXT -config <( \
   printf "[dn]\nCN=www.example.localhost\n[req]\ndistinguished_name = dn\n[EXT]\nsubjectAltName=DNS:www.example.localhost\nkeyUsage=digitalSignature\nextendedKeyUsage=serverAuth")

Now edit your /etc/hosts so that your domain really points to 127.0.0.1 for local testing. You should have a line that looks like this:

127.0.0.1	localhost www.example.localhost example.localhost

There is already a user file in users/users.yaml which the signin container can use. Edit it to change the usernames and passwords as you see fit.

Tip: You can use a hased password too for the password field. Just visit /user/hash once the example is running to generarte the hash and then update the file.

Make a directory where you can override the default templates that are in views:

mkdir -p views-edit

Make an edit directory where files will be uploaded to:

mkdir -p edit

Create a file named hello.md inside the edit directory for the server to find.

Make sure you change the SECRET variable everywhere, otherwise someone could forge your cookies and gain access to your system. You must use the same value for SECRET in each of the containers otherwise they won't recognose each other's cookies.

You can now run the containers with:

npm run docker:run:local

Visit https://www.example.localhost/. You'll probably need to get your browser to accept the certficate since it is a self-signed one, then you'll be asked to sign in using the credentials in users/users.yml.

As long as the user you sign in with has the admin: true claim in the users/users.yaml file, you should be able to edit text files.

Make any tweaks to templates in views-edit so that the defaults aren't affected. You can copy the defaults in the views directory as a starting point, but make sure you keep the same names.

You can also check the PUBLIC_FILES_DIRS overlay at https://www.example.localhost/user/public/hello.txt

When you are finished you can stop the containers with the command below, otherwise Docker will automatically restart them each time you reboot (which is what you want in production, but perhaps not when you are developing):

npm run docker:stop:local

Example

npm install
VALIDATION_MODULE_PATH=`pwd`/validation/validator.js DISABLE_AUTH=true DISABLED_AUTH_USER='{"admin": true, "username": "disableduser"}' SIGN_IN_URL=/user/signin SCRIPT_NAME="" DEBUG=express-edit-text,express-mustache-overlays,express-mustache-jwt-signin DIR=edit PORT=8000 SECRET='reallysecret' WITH_PJAX_PWA=true npm start

Visit http://localhost:8000.

You should be able to make requests to routes restricted with signedIn middleware as long as you have the cookie, or use the JWT in an `Authorization header like this:

Authorization: Bearer <JWT goes here>

A good way of organising this is to use gateway-lite as your gateway proxying both to express-mustache-jwt-signin and this module. Then you can use express-mustache-jwt-signin to set the cookie that this project can read as long as the SECRET environmrnt variables are the same.

If you just enable SECRET but don't set up the proxy, you'll just get redirected to the SIGN_IN_URL (set to /user/signin in the example) and see a 404 page.

Development

npm run fix

Changelog

0.1.13 2019-01-19

Upgraded express-mustache-jwt-signin

0.1.12 2019-01-18

Upgraded express-mustache-overlays again, removed the /offline and /start routes as they are provided by express-mustache-overlays now.

0.1.11 2019-01-12

Upgraded express-mustache-overlays (to use the env parsing functions)

0.1.10 2019-01-12

Upgraded express-mustache-overlays (to add PWA support)

0.1.9 2019-01-04

Upgraded express-mustache-overlays (to make use of the debug option) and express-mustache-jwt-signin
Support pluggable validation of the text files via VALIDATION_MODULE_PATH
npm run docker:run:local now does the pull before the stop

0.1.8 2019-01-02

Handle SIGTERM
Support DISABLED_AUTH_USER

0.1.7 2018-12-29

Automatically create directories if they are needed.

0.1.6 2018-12-20

Upgrade express-mustache-jwt-signin
Unify navigation and public files

0.1.5 2018-12-20

Fixed incorrect logger name in docker-compose.yml
Fixed a bug with order of directories applied from MUSTACHE_DIRS and PUBLIC_FILES_DIRS
Changed the docker example so that the app is hosted at /

0.1.4 2018-12-20

Upgraded to express-mustache-jwt-signin 0.3.0
Fixed a bug with SIGN_IN_URL

0.1.3 2018-12-19

Added a 500 page and error handling in the routes
Ability to disable auth with DISABLE_AUTH
Added Docker example
Default port to 80
Ability to add text file (as long as it is in the directory specified by DIR)

0.1.2 2018-12-15

Added a required SIGN_IN_URL for the example.
Added a 403.mustache template
Fixed a </p> in 404.mustache

0.1.1 2018-12-15

Made mustacheDirs an array for correct reloading, and allow preferred overlays to be specified as MUSTACHE_DIRS=viewsDir1:viewsDir2:viewsDir3 etc. The defaults in views will still be used last if a particular template or partial can't be found in the specified directories.
Support for SCRIPT_NAME
Default DIR value in Dockerfile