Sharecuts is written in Swift and it uses the Vapor framework.
The app is hosted on a Mac Mini in MacStadium, running macOS High Sierra. It uses PostgreSQL as its database and Backblaze B2 to store the shortcuts files.
In production, the app listens on a local port and is started by a launch daemon, to expose the app to the internet, Nginx is used as a proxy. All access to the website and API goes through CloudFlare which is used as a DNS provider, cache, CDN and to protect the app from abuse.
Building and running Sharecuts locally requires the following environment:
- macOS High Sierra
- Xcode 9 or 10
- Swift 4.1.2 (I recommend using SwiftEnv)
- B2 command line tool
- PostgreSQL (I recommend using Postgres.app)
A .env file should be placed in the app's working directory to configure some aspects of the app, here's a brief explanation of the environment variables:
DB_HOST: The Postgres database host (required)
DB_PORT: The Postgres database port (required)
DB_USER: The Postgres user name (required)
DB_NAME: The Postgres database name (required)
DB_PWD: The Postgres password (optional, default is empty in development)
MASTER_KEY: The master API key that can be used to perform administrative tasks such as creating new users (optional, there's a default key for development that can be found in configure.swift)
B2_BUCKET_NAME: The name of the B2 bucket where the files should be stored (required)
B2_BUCKET_BASE_URL: The base URL for the B2 bucket (required)
B2_EXECUTABLE_PATH: The path to the B2 executable (required)
B2_INFO_PATH: The path where B2 should look for the authentication database (optional)
CF_ZONE_ID: The ID of the CloudFlare zone for the website (optional)
CF_EMAIL: The CloudFlare login e-mail (optional)
CF_KEY: The CloudFlare API key (optional)
CF_APP_URL: The base URL for the app in CloudFlare (optional)
CF_ENABLED: 1 = enable CloudFlare 2 = disable CloudFlare