trifecta

A simple image sharing site, built with a combination of modern c++, database and web technologies. Intended to both be useful and make some points.

Goals

• Provide an easy on-ramp for "C++ people" to using modern web technology
  • Using a non-bloated minimal framework (alpine.js)
• Showcase modern C++ and build tools (Meson)
  • A Rust version of the backend is very welcome!
  • A Go version of the backend is very welcome!
• Show how you can build things without 200 dependencies
• Show you can do so self-contained without tons of infrastructure
• Build something that is extremely robust and secure and does not need monthly updates.
• Still get high-end features
• Actually get an image sharing site for your friends/company
• Be a template for other projects

Once done, in ~600 lines of C++, this gets you a safe and secure image sharing site that you could run yourself and forget about.

Status & Thanks

Heavy development ongoing!

Many thanks are also due to early users & contributors:

• Ruben d'Arco
• Roel van der Made

Description

You can paste (but not yet drag!) images to trifecta. If you paste an image, a post will be created for it automatically.

A post can contain multiple images. Each image can have a caption, and each post a title.

Both images and posts can be public or not.

Known problems

• You can only paste files right now, not drag and drop
• UI is clunky
• You can't yet change your password
• Login emails not yet implemented
• Security is probably not yet where it should be
• The code is still a mess and not yet "education clean"

Building

Requires libsqlite3-dev nlohmann-json and crypto++. On Debian derived systems the following works:

apt install libsqlite3-dev nlohmann-json3-dev python3-pip libcrypto++-dev pkg-config

In addition, the project requiers a recent version of meson, which you can get with 'pip3 install meson ninja' or perhaps 'pip install meson ninja' and only if that doesn't work 'apt install meson'.

Then run:

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
./build/trifecta --admin-password=thinkofsomething

And you should be in business. It prints out the URL on which you can contact the service. On first use you'll get some scary looking SQL errors, these go away once you've uploaded your first image.

To take this into production using nginx (for letsencrypt, TLS etc), try:

upstream backendtrifect {
    server 10.0.0.12:3456 fail_timeout=5s max_fails=3;
}

...

location /trifecta/ {
	rewrite    /trifecta/(.*) /$1 break;
	proxy_pass http://backendtrifect;
	add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
        client_max_body_size 50M; 
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $proxy_protocol_addr;

        add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
        add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
        add_header Referrer-Policy "same-origin";
        add_header Permissions-Policy "camera=(), microphone=(), geolocation=()" always;
        add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'; connect-src 'self'; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; font-src 'self' data:;" always;
}

Inspiration

The SUSE past-o-o pastebin: https://github.com/openSUSE/paste-o-o

cottow's 6paster: https://github.com/cottow/6paster

Project with similar aims, a webmail solution built on Go and a functional language called Elm: https://github.com/inbucket/inbucket