substance/dar-server

Filesystem backend for document archives

Dar Server

Node.js based filesystem backend for document archives (Dar). You can find examples here.

Install

$ git clone https://github.com/substance/dar-server.git
$ cd dar-server
$ npm install

Integration into a custom Express application

let express = require('express')
let darServer = require('dar-server')
let path = require('path')

const port = 4000
const rootDir = path.resolve(path.join(__dirname, 'archives'))

let app = express()
darServer.serve(app, {
  port,
  serverUrl: 'http://localhost:' + port,
  rootDir
})

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Running dar-server on port ${port}`)
})

To avoid name clashes with your own express end-points you can provide an apiUrl

darServer.serve(app, {
  port,
  serverUrl: 'http://localhost:' + port,
  rootDir,
  apiUrl: '/archives'
})

Command-line tool

This module comes with a command-line tool that starts dar-server in a new express instance.

$ npm install -g dar-server
$ dar-server ./my-archives
DAR server is running on http://localhost:4100

To start you could take the examples from the DAR repository:

git clone https://github.com/substance/dar.git

and then start the dar-server using

dar-server ./dar/examples

After that you should be able to open

http://localhost:4100/!list

in the browser and see a listing of found archives. Notice, that dar-server is just a backend for serving archives. To be able to read and edit the context you need to use Texture.

dar-server's Issues

Instructions lead to 404 not found

$ git clone https://github.com/substance/dar-server.git
$ cd dar-server

-- here I created an archives folder and a sub folder named example1, in which I placed the example from https://github.com/substance/dar/tree/master/examples/classic-manuscript

$ npm install
$ node lib/server.js -d /archives/example1

Instructions say that I can access /archives/example1 via http://localhost:5000/example1
However, this shows the following error in the browser

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found) at the path http://localhost:5000/example1

[Proposal] New version of the dar-server as part of the "dar-backend-suite"

Hello,

I have created a new version of the dar-server.

It is a koa.js application which can read/write Dars from filesystem as well as from a MongoDB database.

The new dar-server should be backward-compatible with the current implementation, however I'm not a 100% sure.

The dar-server is furthermore part of a "dar-backend-suite" (didn't came up with a better name yet).

The dar-backend-suite is a collection of packages which a developer can use to create backends for Dar-based client applications. Every package constitutes an npm packge in it's own right and can be added to a project as a dependency. All in all the developer can pick and choose those packages he needs. Furthermore, the division of the different components into separate packages makes the code easier to understand and fosters code reuse.

Since the dar-server is part of this suite I didn't issue a pull request. If you like the new version of the dar-server as well as the approach taken with the dar-backend-suite maybe a new repository could be created within the "substance-workspace".

Best regards, Matthias