guestbook

leave me a message!

ssh guestbook.phthallo.com -p 2222

Guestbook¹ is exactly what the name suggests - a guestbook for anyone who happens to stumble upon it. There are two parts to this: the SSH app where you can write a small message for me, and an API with a GET endpoint (/entries?limit=10) that returns the messages sent.

You can also customise the name attributed to your message by specifying a username when you SSH.

Development

1. Make sure you have Go installed and configured.

2. Clone the repository

   https://github.com/phthallo/guestbook && cd guestbook
   

3. Generate a SSH key in the guestbook directory. Skip the passphrase.

   ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f id_ed25519
   

4. Install dependencies

   go get
   

5. Start development:

   go main.go 
   

6. Build it into a handy little guestbook executable and run it with ./guestbook! The API will be accessible at localhost:{API_PORT} and the SSH server will listen on the specified SSH_PORT.

   go build 
   

Docker

Generate the ed25519 key outside of the container to avoid it being recreated every time you rebuild it, which will cause scary looking REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION CHANGED errors for people who might be revisiting.

Then, use the provided docker-compose.yml.

docker compose up -d

Environment Variables

Variable	Explanation
API_PORT	Port to run the API on.
SSH_PORT	Port to listen on for SSH.
GIN_MODE	Set it to release in production. Set it to anything else for debug mode in development.
DATABASE_URL	URL of a Postgres database used for storing messages.
TERM	Set it to xterm-256color. For colours.

Footnotes

1. i somehow made all of this without knowing that charmbracelet/wish was a thing. lol, lmao even. ↩