ssb-viewer

HTTP server for read-only views of SSB content. Serves content as web pages or as scripts for embedding in other web pages.

Install & Run

As a sbot plugin:

mkdir -p ~/.ssb/node_modules
cd ~/.ssb/node_modules
git clone ssb://%MeCTQrz9uszf9EZoTnKCeFeIedhnKWuB3JHW2l1g9NA=.sha256 ssb-viewer && cd ssb-viewer
npm install
sbot plugins.enable ssb-viewer
# restart sbot

Or standalone:

git clone ssb://%MeCTQrz9uszf9EZoTnKCeFeIedhnKWuB3JHW2l1g9NA=.sha256 ssb-viewer && cd ssb-viewer
npm install
./bin.js

Usage

To view a thread as a web page, navigate to a url like http://localhost:8807/%MSGID.

To embed a thread into another web page, load it as follows:

<script src="http://localhost:8807/%MSGID.js"></script>

To add more than the base styles, you can also load http://localhost:8807/static/nicer.css.

Routes

• /%msgid: web page showing a message thread
• /%msgid.js: script to embed a message thread
• /%msgid.json: message thread as JSON
• /&feedid: web page showing a complete feed
• /user-feed/&feedid: web page showing messages from followed users and channels of a feed
• /channel/#channel: web page showing messages in a specific channel

Query options

• noroot: don't include the root message in the thread
• base=...: base url for links that ssb-viewer can handle
• msg_base=...: base url for links to messages
• feed_base=...: base url for links to feeds
• blob_base=...: base url for links to blobs
• img_base=...: base url for embedded blobs (images)
• emoji_base=...: base url for emoji images

The *_base query options overwrite the defaults set in the config. The base option is a fallback instead of specifying the URLs separately. The base options are mostly useful for embedding, where the script is embedded on a different origin than where ssb-viewer is running. However, you may not need them, as the ssb-viewer embed script will detect the base where it is included from.

Config

To change ssb-viewer's default options, edit your ~/.ssb/config, to have properties like the following:

{
  "viewer": {
    "port": 8807,
    "host": "::"
  }
}

You can also pass these as command-line options to ./bin.js or sbot as, e.g. --viewer.port 8807.

• viewer.port: port for the server to listen on. default: 8807
• viewer.host: host address for the server to listen on. default: ::
• viewer.base: default base url for links that ssb-viewer can handle
• viewer.msg_base: base url for links to ssb messages
• viewer.feed_base: base url for links to ssb feeds
• viewer.blob_base: base url for links to ssb blobs
• viewer.img_base: base url for embedded blobs (images)
• viewer.emoji_base: base url for emoji images

References

• Concept: ssb-porthole
• UI ideas: sdash, patchbay
• Server techniques: ssb-web-server, ssb-ws, git-ssb-web

License

Copyright (c) 2016-2017 Secure Scuttlebutt Consortium

Usage of the works is permitted provided that this instrument is retained with the works, so that any entity that uses the works is notified of this instrument.

DISCLAIMER: THE WORKS ARE WITHOUT WARRANTY.