servostar/chare repository overview

⁠Chare

Chare is a file hosting service with a builtin syncing feature for various protocols such as https and git. It is essentially a more fancy web folder explorer written in PHP. The CSS theme is inspired by GitHub. It was designed to be fast and lightweight in use.

⁠Features

• GitHub like ui
• Serving files via HTTP
• Syncing of HTTP(s) via curl
• Syncing with git
• Excluding files via a list
• Show information about folders such as used license, code of conduct or remote URL of git repository
• Render a readme file with CommonMark
• Download folder using HTTP link or ZIP file

⁠Demo

Demo site can be visited at: demo⁠

⁠Deployment

The recommended way is to run chare as docker container: docker run servostar/chare -p 80:80. An example configuration via docker compose can be found in the example folder. Example docker-compose:

version: "3.1"
services:
  chare:
      image: servostar/chare:latest
      restart: unless-stopped
      ports:
        - "8080:80"
      volumes:
        - ./public:/var/share
        - ./repos.tsv:/srv/config/repos.tsv
        - ./.ignore:/srv/config/.ignore
      environment:
        # should be setup if running behind reverse proxy
        - OVERWRITE_URL = https://cdn.example.com
        # these are all optional
        - OVERWRITE_SERVER_NAME = cdn.example.com
        - HOME_PAGE = https://home.example.com
        - LEGAL_PAGE = https://home.example.com
        - IMPRESSUM_PAGE = https://legal.example.com

⁠Dependencies for manual install

If installing manually chare requires php 6.0+ and the package manager compose for downloading plugins. curl and git should also be available.

⁠Configuration

Chare can mostly be configured through environment variables:

⁠Environment Variables

• OVERWRITE_URL: the public url of this instance (required if running behind reverse proxy)
• OVERWRITE_SERVER_NAME: domain name of ip address of this server (only used for the ui)
• HOME_PAGE: optional link to a homepage that will be shown as a button above the file listing
• LEGAL_PAGE: optional link to a legal that will be shown as a button above the file listing
• IMPRESSUM_PAGE: optional link to an impressum that will be shown as a button above the file listing

⁠Syncing files and repositories

Chare has the ability to automatically sync folder, files and repositories in set intervals. These must be configured in a file mounted at /srv/config/repos.tsv. The format is as follows:

protocol url path

This is a single entry. Every entry is contained within a single line. An entry is made out of the protocol/program to use, the target url to fetch from and the destination path to download to. Every entry has to be separated by a single tab. Adding multiple entries can be done by adding a new line. Available protocols are currently:

• git will use git to clone any git compatible repository
• curl will use curl to download anything over http(s)

The specified path is always relative to the public share folder. Meaning if the public share folder is /var/share then the path downloads/images will resolve to the path /var/share/downloads/images. Example configuration:

git https://github.com/Servostar/chare.git  repos/chare
git https://user:[email protected]/user/coolstuff.git repos/coolstuff
curl https://google.com downloads/websites

⁠Ignoring specific files

Chare can be instructed to not show specific files in the web ui. These files are listed in the file at /srv/config/.ignore. This file contains a list of file and folders to ignore. Every file will be matched against this list to see if it is to be ignored. Example file:

.
.gitignore
.git
.config
.extra

NOTE: this file does not allow for comments like a .gitignore file!

⁠Public share path

⁠HTTPS and security

Chare does not provide any SSL capabilities out house, thus you should deploy chare behind a reverse proxy which handles encryption.