Peaches 'n' Stink

Peaches 'n' Stink is an experimental Internet forum. Users write posts and nested comments. You can try out the official instance at peachesnstink.com!

Install

Create a PostgreSQL 11 database and execute all the code in doc-commit/structure.sql. This will create all the database tables, triggers, etc. PostgreSQL 11+ is probably fine.

Install Redis. This is only for the session store. Redis versions 2 and 6 worked for us, so version 2+.

Run npm install to download all the Node.js dependencies that are listed in package.json.

Set the following environment variables:

• PGHOST: PostgreSQL host (usually localhost)
• PGUSER: PostgreSQL username
• PGDATABASE: PostgreSQL database name
• PGPASSWORD: PostgreSQL password
• PGPORT: PostgreSQL port
• HTTP_PORT: Port this app will use
• REDIS_PORT: Redis port
• IS_PROD: This is a redundant production flag (there's already the built-in NODE_ENV) that must be set. If NODE_ENV is "production" then set this flag to 1, otherwise use 0.
• SESSION_NAME: express-session name
• SESSION_SECRET: express-session secret
• NODE_ENV: built-in node environment flag

On Windows you can use a .env and npm start to set the environment variables. Here's a sample .env:

PGHOST=localhost
PGUSER=postgres
PGDATABASE=mydb
PGPASSWORD=123abc
PGPORT=5432
HTTP_PORT=80
REDIS_PORT=6379
IS_PROD=1
SESSION_NAME=mysesh
SESSION_SECRET=wOgw3oQpmbYbie7V
NODE_ENV=production

On Linux we used an ecosystem.config.js and pm2 start ecosystem.config.js to set the environment variables. Here is a sample ecosystem.config.js:

module.exports = {
    apps : [{
        name: "myappid",
        script: "./app.js",
        env: {
            PGHOST: "localhost",
            PGUSER: "postgres",
            PGDATABASE: "mydb",
            PGPASSWORD: "123abc",
            PGPORT: 5432,
            HTTP_PORT: 80,
            REDIS_PORT: 6379,
            IS_PROD: 1,
            SESSION_NAME: "mysesh",
            SESSION_SECRET: "wOgw3oQpmbYbie7V",
            NODE_ENV: "production",
        }
    }]
}

There must exist a user with a user_id of 1 and a username of stink. These two values are currently hardcoded into the application and serve as the default user whitelist. So after an instance of this application is launched, you should immediately sign up as the user stink. Also set is_eyes to true for stink in the tuser database table.

On the API page, a post ID and comment ID are used in URLs on the page. If you want these links to work, you must create a post and comment and then set their IDs to match the ones used on the page.