# Droppy

By

Charl Cronje

droppy is a self-hosted file storage server with a web interface and capabilities to edit files and view media directly in the browser. It is particularly well-suited to be run on low-end hardware like the Raspberry Pi.

• Responsive, scalable HTML5 interface
• Realtime updates of file system changes
• Directory and Multi-File upload
• Drag-and-Drop support
• Clipboard support to create image/text files
• Side-by-Side mode
• Simple and fast Search
• Shareable public download links
• Zip download of directories
• Powerful text editor with themes and broad language support
• Image and video gallery with touch support
• Audio player with seeking support
• Fullscreen support for editor and gallery
• Supports installing to the homescreen
• Docker images available for x86-64, ARMv6, ARMv7 and ARMv8

Two directories will be used, one for configuration and one for the actual files:

config: defaults to ~/.droppy/config, override with -c /some/dir
files: default ~/.droppy/files override with -f /some/dir

droppy maintains an in-memory representation of the files directory. If you're on slow storage and/or serving 100k or more files, the initial indexing on startup will likely take some time.

With Node.js >= 12.10.0 installed, run:

npm install -g droppy
droppy start -c /srv/droppy/config -f /srv/droppy/files

To make droppy run in the background, you can use the --daemon option, thought it is adviced that you install it as a persistent service in your system. For Linux, see these guides:

• Systemd-based distributions
• Debian (Pre-Jessie)
• Nginx reverse proxy
• Apache reverse proxy

The silverwind/droppy multi-arch images supports amd64, arm64, arm/v7 and arm/v6 architectures. To pull and run, use:

ocker run --name droppy -p 127.0.0.1:8989:8989 silverwind/droppy

This method uses automatic volumes for /config and /files which can be overridden through -v /srv/droppy/config:/config and -v /srv/droppy/files:/files. If you're using existing files, it's advisable to use -e UID=1000 -e GID=1000 to get new files written with correct ownership.

docker pull silverwind/droppy
docker stop droppy && docker rm droppy
docker run --name droppy -p 127.0.0.1:8989:8989 silverwind/droppy

Alternatively, you can use the example docker-compose.yml:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/silverwind/droppy/master/examples/docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up

This example docker-compose.yml uses the subdirectories config and files of the current working directory for storing data.

See the example Caddyfile.

By default, the server listens on all IPv4 and IPv6 interfaces on port 8989. On first startup, a prompt to create login data for the first account will appear. Once it's created, login credentials are enforced. Additional accounts can be created in the options interface or the command line. Configuration is done in config/config.json, which is created with these defaults:

{
  "listeners" : [
    {
      "host": ["0.0.0.0", "::"],
      "port": 8989,
      "protocol": "http"
    }
  ],
  "public": false,
  "timestamps": true,
  "linkLength": 5,
  "linkExtensions": false,
  "logLevel": 2,
  "maxFileSize": 0,
  "updateInterval": 1000,
  "pollingInterval": 0,
  "keepAlive": 20000,
  "allowFrame": false,
  "readOnly": false,
  "ignorePatterns": [],
  "watch": true,
  "headers": {}
}

• listeners Array - Defines on which network interfaces, port and protocols the server will listen. See listener options below. listeners has no effect when droppy is used as a module. - The default listens on HTTP port 8989 on all interfaces and protocols.
• public boolean - When enabled, no user authentication is performed. Default: false.
• timestamps boolean - When enabled, adds timestamps to log output. Default: true.
• linkLength number - The amount of characters in a shared link. Default: 5.
• linkExtensions boolean - Whether shared links should include the file extension. This can be used to allow other software to make a guess on the content of the file without actually - retrieving it. Default: false.
• logLevel number - Logging amount. 0 is no logging, 1 is errors, 2 is info (HTTP requests), 3 is debug (Websocket communication). Default: 2.
• maxFileSize number - The maximum file size in bytes a user can upload in a single file. 0 means no limit. Default: 0.
• updateInterval number - Interval in milliseconds in which a single client can receive update messages through changes in the file system. Default: 1000.
• pollingInterval number - Interval in milliseconds in which the file system is polled for changes, which may necessary for files on external or network-mapped drives. Corresponds to - chokidar's usePolling option. This is CPU-intensive. 0 disables polling. Default: 0.
• keepAlive number - Interval in milliseconds in which the server sends websocket keepalive messages, which may be necessary when proxies are involved. 0 disables keepalive messages. - Default: 20000.
• uploadTimeout number - Request timeout for upload requests in milliseconds. Default: 604800000 which is 7 days.
• allowFrame boolean - Allow the page to be loaded into a <frame> or <iframe>. Default: false.
• readOnly boolean - Treat all files as being read-only. Default: false.
• dev boolean - Enable developer mode, skipping resource minification and enabling live reload. Default: false.
• ignorePatterns Array - Array of file path glob patterns to ignore when indexing files. See here for supported patterns. Default: [].
• watch boolean - Whether to watch the local file system for changes. Disabling this may improve performance when dealing with a large number of files, but with the downside that - changes not done via droppy won't be detected. Default: true.
• headers Object: A object with key-value pairs of custom HTTP headers to set on all responses, for example {"Access-Control-Allow-Origin": "*"}. Default: .

listeners defines on which network interfaces, ports and protocol(s) the server will listen. For example:

"listeners": [
  {
    "host": "::",
    "port": 80,
    "socket": "/tmp/droppy",
    "protocol": "http"
  },
  {
    "host": "0.0.0.0",
    "port": 443,
    "protocol": "https",
    "key": "~/certs/example.com.key",
    "cert": "~/certs/example.com.crt"
  }
]

The above configuration will result in:

• HTTP listening on all IPv4 and IPv6 interfaces, port 80 and on the unix domain socket /tmp/droppy.
• HTTPS listening on all IPv4 interfaces, port 443 using the provided TLS files.

A listener object accepts these options:

• host string/Array - Network interface(s) addresses to listen on. Required when port is given. Note that "::" will typically bind to both IPv4 and IPv6 on all addresses but a "0.0.0.0" address might be required if IPv6 is disabled.
• port number/string/Array - Network port(s) to listen on. Required when host is given.
• socket string/Array - Unix domain socket(s) to listen on.
• protocol string - Protocol to use, http or https. Required.

For TLS the following additional options are available. Paths can be given relative to the configuration directory and ~ is resolved as expected.

• cert string - Path to PEM-encoded TLS certificate file, which can include additional intermediate certificates concatenated after the main certificate. Required.
• key string - Path to PEM-encoded TLS private key file not encrypted with a passphrase. Required.

To download shared links with curl and wget to the correct filename:

curl -OJ url
wget --content-disposition url

To start a live-reloading dev server:

git clone https://github.com/silverwind/droppy && cd droppy
npm i
node droppy start --dev

The Makefile has a few tasks for updating dependencies, pushing docker images, see the comment above for dependencies of those tasks