Twilight

Также доступна RU версия => README-RU.md

Table of Contents

• Idea
• Platform support
• Installation
• Setting up
  • Comments
  • Matrix
  • fail2ban
  • Themes
  • Production
• Current features
• Bugs and some features
• Security question
• Schemas and screenshots
• Contribution
• Contact

P.S. The list of recent changes can be found here

Idea

Analyzing various blog sites and the platforms adjacent to them (where the repost goes), we can single out the main problem: Each platform, in fact, has nothing to do with other platforms or with the blog. It follows from this:

1. Stupidity to post the same thing in different places;
2. The need to exists in other platforms yourself;

Therefore, it was customary to write something like an article aggregator. The idea is simple - you write a post - it scatters across different platforms.

For a visual representation of the implementation, see Schemes and screenshots;

Platform support

• Telegram:

  • Send to platforms: Yes
  • Editing, deleting: Yes
  • Send from platform: No
  • Comment support: Yes
  • Support for attachments: pictures, video, audio, files

• Matrix:

  • Send to platforms: Yes
  • Editing, deleting: Yes
  • Send from platform: No
  • Support for attachments: pictures, video, audio, files

Installation

There are 2 ways of installation:

Manual

• Install ruby (2.7.7):

  • For rvm:

   rvm install ruby-2.7.7
  

  • For rbenv:

   rbenv install 2.7.7
  

• Install yarn: Windows | Linux;

• Install redis: Windows | Linux;

• Install imagemagick Windows | Linux

• (Optional) Install PostgreSQL;

• Install project:

   git clone https://github.com/Whiletruedoend/Twilight
   cd Twilight/
   yarn install --check-files
   bundle install
   rails db:migrate
  

• Setting up: config/credentials.yml

• Run server with command: rails s

Docker

• Download project:

git clone https://github.com/Whiletruedoend/Twilight
cd Twilight/

• (Optional) Configure .env for existing postgres database, or change to sqlite3 in config/database.yml
• Configure config/credentials.yml
• Run:

  docker-compose build web

• After a successful build, run:

  docker-compose up web

• (If you need make migrations, use):

  docker-compose run --rm web bin/rails db:migrate

• To make yourself an admin and configure (credentials.yml and database.yml) server, you need to enter the container with the command:

  docker exec -it twilight-web-1 /bin/bash 

The site will now be available at: http://localhost:3080

Setting up

[Production] Don't forget to set variable secret_key_base in credentials.yml:

Some settings are done through the console (rails c), but most work anyway, provided the data is entered correctly;

To be able to create posts, you need to get administrator rights:

  User.where(login: "YOURLOGIN").update(is_admin: true)

Comments

To support broadcasting comments from Telegram to a blog post, you need to:

1. Check the bot's privacy settings;
2. Add a bot to the chat with comments;
3. When adding a channel, check the 'Include comments' checkbox;

After that, the translation of comments should work.

Matrix

A quick guide to setting up the matrix.

1. Access is through the access_token. Receiving it through the Element client: Settings -> Help & About --> *at the bottom* Acess token
2. To get the room ID, create a room, then RMB on the room and Settings --> Details --> and here 'Internal room ID'

fail2ban

To be able to block the IP addresses of those who are trying to bypass the RSS token, used fail2ban. Instructions:

• Install fail2ban;
• Setting up credentials.yml: switch enabled: on true;
• Create filter: vim /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/twilight.conf
• Paste there:

  [INCLUDES]
  before = common.conf
  
  [Definition]
  failregex = ^.* (\[.*\])* Failed bypass token from <HOST> at .*$
  

• Create jail: vim /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/twilight.conf
• Paste there:

  [twilight]
  enabled = true
  maxretry = 7
  findtime = 180
  action = iptables-allports[name=twilight, protocol=all]
  bantime = 3600
  filter = twilight
  port = http,https
  logpath = /home/user/Twilight/log/production.log
  

  (Important! Don't forget to change the logpath to your own. For more information about the parameters, see the link above);
• Restart service: systemctl restart fail2ban

(Banned IPs can be found with the command: sudo fail2ban-client status twilight)

Themes

To create your own theme, you need to create a file in the format app/assets/stylesheets/mytheme_theme.scss, edit it, then restart the application;

Production

For the production, do not forget to recompile the assets:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake assets:precompile

Current features

• EN/RU languages support;
• Ability to create/change themes;
• Channel management, verification of data when entering (only for administrators);
• Search for notes by title on the home page;
• Captcha for authorization/registration;
• The system of invite codes (optional);
• Support for separate options for each platform;
• Access specifiers notes (for everyone, for users, for yourself);
• Create Delete tags, the ability of the user to select the desired tags (the result is displayed in RSS);
• Ability to add comments to the article;
• View statistics of registered users (only for administrators);
• Twitter-style feed;

Bugs and some features

Features:

• [TG] If there is a title, but there is no post text, then the title is not sent;
• [TG] When you delete a post from any channel, all comments are deleted, incl. and tied to other posts. This is due to the fact that comments are tied to the post, not to the platform, otherwise, when viewing the post, you would have to show different versions of the text (for each channel) with different comments. And it is understood that the post is one (the same), just on several channels;
• [TG] If a post in telegram had text and attachments, and when editing, remove all attachments, then the post will be completely deleted. This is a feature of the cart, I cannot turn the capture into text, I need to create a new post;
• [TG] If you send several attachments of different types and use a caption, the attachments will be grouped into groups, the first group will be of the same type as the first attachment, and the caption will be attached to it;
• [TG] If a post was created with <= 4096 characters and when the post is updated its length will exceed 4096 characters, then a new message will be created, which may be at a far distance from the first one (for example, if there were more posts, it will go after them). I cannot move the message up, so I advise you to use the onlylink option in such cases;
• [ANY] If you delete a channel and then delete a post, then the post will not be deleted from the platforms (no tokens - no deletion, it seems logical);

Bugs:

• [TG] When editing attachments in comments (adding a new one and deleting an old one), the order gets lost and when you edit it again, the wrong picture is deleted;

I'm too lazy to fix them, whoever wants (it would be very cool), then I will gladly accept the Pull Request;

Security question

Now it turns out that if a user has several channels, then even having several authorization tokens, only one (the very first specified) is used to preload pictures (attachments).

But let's say this situation: the user has 2 channels (2 tones, respectively), and there is a second person who knows the first token, but does not know the second. Then, proceeding from the logic that all attachments are loaded into a temporary channel from the first token, he can simply intercept the information that was intended for the second token.

Only the information from the first token is identical to the information from the second token (after all, the content is uploaded to different channels the same!), So even by intercepting this information, a conditional attacker will receive the same result.

Therefore, this does not seem to carry a serious threat. But just in case, he warned that there were no questions.

Schemas and screenshots

ER-diagram: Main page (configurating):

• Version 0 (standalone page):
• Version 1 [default] (posts):
• Version 2: (feed): Profile page: Manage channels: Invite codes: Statistics: Article creation (Default theme): Specific article:

Contribution

1. Fork tis project;
2. Make changes to the forked project;
3. On the page of this repository, poke Pull Requests and make a Pull Request by selecting your fork in the right list;

Contact

If you have any ideas or your own developments, or just questions about the performance of the code, then you can always contact me at the following addresses:

• Matrix