alphabet/aintcms

Ain't CMS

This repository is a proof of concept for a Git-based content management system that lets non-developer authors edit static website content just like developers do. Learn more at aint.io.

Instead of running a server and letting users edit content in a database, Ain't CMS runs on the user's local computer as a desktop application.

To publish content, Ain't CMS creates a new Git branch, commits the desired changes, pushes it up to a GitHub repository, and creates a pull request asking to merge the new branch into master. Notice that this is exactly how developers publish changes to a website.

Disclaimer

This project is currently a PROOF OF CONCEPT. It's not designed to be used in production (yet). It's also missing some core features like error handling for invalid credentials, changing the remote Git repo URL, etc.

Dependencies

This project assumes that you have the following installed and available on your PATH:

• node and npm
• git
• ssh

This proof of concept is also designed to work with localcms-sample-site, so you'll need to clone that, too. This is currently a private GitHub repo designed specifically to test Ain't CMS. A formal (and publically accessible) example project will be released shortly.

Installation and Usage

Clone this repository, then run the following:

npm install
npm start

The second command will open Ain't CMS inside of an Electron wrapper.

Cross-Platform Support

This project has only been developed and tested on OS X. Electron is built for cross-platform desktop applications, so, theoretically, it should work on Windows and Linux systems with few changes. The ssh dependency may be a problem for Windows users.

Git Branching Model

There's all sorts of ways that Ain't CMS's branching model could be configured. Right now, it works like this:

• Editing a page:
  • git checkout -- . to get rid of any local changes
  • Make sure master is checked out
  • Pull in upstream changes from origin/master
  • Create a new branch called localcms-<random>
    • TODO: Dedicated branch per page, check this branch out each time, don't make a pull request unless it's a new branch?
    • TODO: localcms-<username>-<file> for branch names
  • Edit file and preview in this branch
• Publishing a page:
  • Create a commit with just the file being edited
    • Use "Ain't CMS edits to <filename>" as the commit message
  • Merge the localcms-<random> branch into master
  • Push the branch to the origin repo
  • Create a pull request for localcms-<random> into master

Using pull requests has pros and cons. On the plus side, it lets developers review changes before they are integrated into the main codebase. On the other hand, changes won't show up in user's local repositories immediately, which can be counterintuitive.

Security

Ain't CMS uses native Git commands to move content contributions from the local machine to remote Git repositories. Currently, Ain't CMS uses HTTP basic authentication for:

• git clone for the initial clone
• git pull to
• git push for the

I didn't want to deal with calling out to interactive shells for password input, so all credentials are passed in the URL. This isn't necessarily insecure if the app is sandboxed, but it does mean there's a chance that passwords will be stored in plaintext somewhere on the user's local machine.

An effort was made to avoid storing passwords on disk (e.g., the origin remote is deleted immediately after the initial git clone).

To Do

• Security considerations and SSH support
• Creating, renaming, and deleting pages
• Editing only content pages (e.g., not package.json)
• Configurable build commands/web frameworks (these are currently hardcoded)
• WYSIWYG editor (if supporting multiple web frameworks, this is tricky)
• In-app previews (handling links may be difficult)
• Credential error handling
• Unit tests
• NodeGit for native Git integration (requires building from source)
• Synchronous calls in editor.js
• Syntax highlighting
• HTML linting on user-save
• Code snippets
  • Snippet for templates
  • Or load from dev config file