BTHSHub

A server for Brooklyn Tech's app hub!

This is supposed to be run in addition to the app: https://github.com/ZarmDev/BTHSHub-App

Copyright (c) 2025 ZarmDev. All rights reserved.

Installation

Linux

Install vcpkg

All linux distributions

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh --disableMetrics
nano ~./bashrc

add this to ~./bashrc

export VCPKG_ROOT=[your-vcpkg-root]

then run

source ~/.bashrc

IF THIS DOES NOT WORK THEN EDIT CMakePresets.json and add your root rather than it having $env{VCPKG_ROOT}

Install ninja

Debian based

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ninja-build build-essential

Install redis

Debian based

sudo apt install redis-server

Arch

sudo pacman -S redis

All linux distributions You may have to enable it as system service (personally, I didn't have to)

sudo systemctl enable redis-server
sudo systemctl start redis-server

Install redis-plus-plus seperately

git clone https://github.com/sewenew/redis-plus-plus.git
cd redis-plus-plus
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Install libsodium

Debian based

sudo apt install -y libsodium-dev

Arch

sudo pacman -S libsodium

Follow steps in "First time" and then "Development"

First time

1. Ensure you have Cmake extension in Vscode or run cmake in the CLI
2. Run openssl rand -hex 32 in order to get a private key. Set it to JWT_SECRET in .env
3. Add an admin password
4. Either set PRODUCTION to TRUE or FALSE depending on if you are debugging or trying to run the server in production

JWT_SECRET=xxx
ADMINPASS=xxx
PRODUCTION=FALSE

4. Add the path to your vcpkg root to CMakePresets.json at "CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE". There is already a value there so just replace it.

Development

1. Run the redis server

redis-server &

2. Use the run button at the bottom in vscode or use the Cmake CLI commands below:

cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=[put-your-vcpkg-root]/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

and then

cmake --build ./build

Deploy to Heroku

heroku create bthshub-server
heroku config:set JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
heroku config:set ADMINPASS=your_secure_admin_password

TODO

For more ideas, see ideas.md

Server: (base goals)

✅ The website will be made in C++ to be extremely fast and reliable ✅ User authentication with JWT Tokens ✅ Add team creation ✅ Private or public teams ✅ Add yourself or others to teams (if you own the team or are admin) ✅ Add ability to post annoucements ✅ Add way to get all annoucements ✅ Add admins and moderator permissions/roles ✅ Admin panel ✅ Add error handling, meaning the server will always run unless a severe error occurs ❌ Add rate limiting

Future: (AFTER APP IS MADE!)

❌ Implement club credit system and club directory ❌ Store BTHS daily announcements and send in a nice format to phones ❌ Add rate limiting ❌ Add friend functionality ❌ Storing schedules and being able to get other user's schedule (if they are friends) ❌ Ability to delete your own account ❌ Delete and edit annoucements ❌ More team actions like deletion or removing users from teams

Common errors

Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Likely means you forgot to return a string in your route

Example:

string updateOtherUserAdminLevel(HttpRequest &req) {
    grantAdminLevel(parsed[0], parsed[1]);
    // Should have returned sendString or something like:
    // return sendString("200 OK", "Changed permission successfully!");
}
server.post("/api/test", updateOtherUserAdminLevel);

Issues I am aware of

⚠️In userdatabase, teamdatabase, you can easily screw up some parts of the server by inputting backslashes. I will look into a efficient way to parse data from req.data without compromising for security

Production notes

Optimizations

Shorten routes

For security and performance, you can write a script that replaces all the routes in server.cpp to be replaced with one letter.

Security

Make sure to log everything! Remove the system("clear") line

Rotation

Try to rotate JWT_SECRET every x days using a cronjob.