soapbox-fe

⚠️ Not yet ready for production use.

soapbox-fe is an alternative frontend for Pleroma. It's part of the Soapbox project.

It is based on Gab Social's frontend which is in turn based on Mastodon's frontend.

How does it work?

soapbox-fe is a single-page application (SPA) that runs entirely in the browser with JavaScript.

It has a single HTML file, index.html, responsible only for loading the required JavaScript and CSS. It interacts with the backend through XMLHttpRequest (XHR).

It incorporates much of the Mastodon API used by Pleroma and Mastodon, but requires many Pleroma-specific features in order to function.

Deploy on Pleroma

Installing soapbox-fe on an existing Pleroma server is extremely easy. Just ssh into the server and download a .zip of the latest build:

curl -L https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox-fe/-/jobs/artifacts/master/download?job=build-production -o soapbox-fe.zip

Then unpack it into Pleroma's instance directory:

busybox unzip soapbox-fe.zip -o -d /opt/pleroma/instance

That's it! 🎉 soapbox-fe is installed. The change will take effect immediately, just refresh your browser tab. It's not necessary to restart the Pleroma service.

To remove soapbox-fe and revert to the default pleroma-fe, simply rm -r /opt/pleroma/instance.

Running locally

To get it running, just clone the repo:

git clone https://gitlab.com/soapbox-pub/soapbox-fe.git
cd soapbox-fe

Ensure that Node.js and Yarn are installed, then install dependencies:

yarn

Finally, run the dev server:

yarn start

That's it! 🎉

It will serve at http://localhost:3036 by default.

It will proxy requests to the backend for you. For Pleroma running on localhost:4000 (the default) no other changes are required, just start a local Pleroma server and it should begin working.

Troubleshooting: ERROR: NODE_ENV must be set

Create a .env file if you haven't already.

cp .env.example .env

And ensure that it contains NODE_ENV=development. Try again.

Developing against a live backend

You can also run soapbox-fe locally with a live production server as the backend.

Note: Whether or not this works depends on your production server. It does not seem to work with Cloudflare.

To do so, just copy the env file:

cp .env.example .env

And edit .env, setting the configuration like this:

BACKEND_URL="https://pleroma.example.com"
PROXY_HTTPS_INSECURE=true

You will need to restart the local development server for the changes to take effect.

Using with Mastodon

Local Mastodon runs on port 3000 by default, so you will need to edit the .env as described above and set it like this:

BACKEND_URL="http://localhost:3000"

Streaming will not work properly without extra effort.

Due to Mastodon not supporting authentication through the API, you will also need to authenticate manually. First log in through the Mastodon interface, view the source of the page, and extract your access_token from the markup. Then open your browser to soapbox-fe (http://localhost:3036), open the console, and insert the following code:

window.localStorage.setItem('soapbox:auth:user', JSON.stringify({access_token: "XXX"}));

Replace XXX with your access token. Finally, refresh the page, and you should be logged in.

Local Dev Configuration

The following configuration variables are supported supported in local development. Edit .env to set them.

All configuration is optional, except NODE_ENV.

NODE_ENV

The Node environment. soapbox-fe checks for the following options:

• development - What you should use while developing soapbox-fe.
• production - Use when compiling to deploy to a live server.
• test - Use when running automated tests.

BACKEND_URL

URL to the backend server. Can be http or https, and can include a port. For https, be sure to also set PROXY_HTTPS_INSECURE=true.

Default: http://localhost:4000

PATRON_URL

URL to the Soapbox Patron server, if you have one.

This setting is not useful unless "extensions": { "patron": true } is also set in static/instance/soapbox.json.

Default: http://localhost:5000

PROXY_HTTPS_INSECURE

Allows using an HTTPS backend if set to true.

This is needed if BACKEND_URL or PATRON_URL are set to an https:// value. More info.

Default: false

Yarn Commands

The following commands are supported. You must set NODE_ENV to use these commands. To do so, you can add the following line to your .env file:

NODE_ENV=development

Local dev server

• yarn start - Run the local dev server. It will proxy requests to the backend for you.

• yarn dev - Exact same as above, aliased to yarn start for convenience.

Building

• yarn build - Compile without a dev server, into /static directory.

Translations

• yarn manage:translations - Normalizes translation files. Should always be run after editing i18n strings.

Tests

• yarn test - Runs all tests.

• yarn test:lint - Runs all linter tests.

• yarn test:lint:js - Runs only JavaScript linter.

• yarn test:lint:sass - Runs only SASS linter.

• yarn test:jest - Frontend unit tests.

License

soapbox-fe is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

soapbox-fe is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with soapbox-fe. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.