Deadsimple desktop application skeleton using only bash,nc and a webbrowser
Just use bash and html instead of fiddling with gui toolkits, textmode interfaces, c/c++. Great for rapid prototyping or interfacing with commandline-stuff.
- quickndirty-easy-peasy lightweight httpserver
- direct html-interface to the shell
- bash (html) templates
- portable / no compilation
Well just run ./app and you'll see something like this:
$ git clone https://github.com/coderofsalvation/bashwapp.git
$ cd bashwapp
$ ./app
Connection from 127.0.0.1 port 8000 [tcp/*] accepted
Created new window in existing browser session.
[Sun Nov 10 17:32:01 CET 2013] out> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[Sun Nov 10 17:32:01 CET 2013] out>
[Sun Nov 10 17:40:46 CET 2013] in> GET /
[Sun Nov 10 17:40:46 CET 2013] out> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[Sun Nov 10 17:40:46 CET 2013] out>
See? It started a miniwebserver, and if you'll see the image below if you surf to http://localhost:8000:
The app-bashscript looks for a folder html. To get simple web<->bashscript interfacing going on (getargs/forms) run rm html; cp -R html.skeleton html.
There are little dependancies, best is to have a linux system, because then the following is already installed in most cases:
- a linux system bash
- nc
- browser
In theory this could also work on windows using cygwin or a standalone bash-binary.
Well ofcoarse security..only use this for quick prototyping or personal use. Singlepage application are adviced since inclusion of external files is unpredictable with netcat. Netcat (nc) runs in a bash while-loop which causes small breaks in listening to the socket. Therefore, when a browser rapidly fires parallel requests, it'll probably not serve all files well.
- bootstrap template from startbootstrap.com