Static.md

Free image hosting service at https://static.md.

Upload images, get shareable links. Supports on-the-fly resizing, galleries, and a Chrome extension for screenshot capture and annotation.

This project started in 2013 as a personal image hosting tool. This is the code running since 2016, slightly adjusted to run on Firebase. It was originally built with Express, MongoDB, and Pug, and ran on a single DigitalOcean droplet for over a decade. In 2026 it was migrated to Firebase (Hosting + Cloud Functions + Firestore + Cloud Storage) and the source code was made public.

Architecture

• Firebase Hosting — CDN + SSL + SPA rewrites
• Cloud Functions — Express API (api) + image serving (imageHandler)
• Firestore — photos, galleries, upload tokens, link lookups
• Cloud Storage — image file storage (uploads/)

Image serving flow

GET https://static.md/{hash}.jpg
  → Firebase CDN (cache hit? serve immediately)
  → imageHandler Cloud Function
    → Firestore lookup (links → photos)
    → Stream from Cloud Storage (or Sharp resize if ?size=N)
    → Cache-Control: s-maxage=315360000 (CDN caches for 10 years)

API endpoints

Method	Path	Description
POST	/api/v2/get-token	Get time-limited upload token (MD5 challenge)
POST	/api/v2/upload	Upload with token
POST	/api/v4/upload	Upload + auto-create gallery
GET	/api/v4/g/:id	Get gallery photos

Development

# Frontend (Vite dev server)
npm install
npm run dev

# Functions
cd functions && npm install && npm run build

# Deploy everything
npm run deploy

# Deploy only functions or hosting
npm run deploy:functions
npm run deploy:hosting

Project structure

├── src/                  # Frontend source (JS, SASS, HTML partials)
├── hosting/              # Built frontend (Vite output)
├── functions/src/        # Cloud Functions
│   ├── index.ts          # Function exports (api + imageHandler)
│   ├── imageHandler.ts   # Image serving + resize
│   ├── v2.ts             # V2 token-based upload API
│   ├── v4.ts             # V4 upload + gallery API
│   ├── photoTools.ts     # Upload logic, MD5 dedup, validation
│   ├── parseForm.ts      # Multipart form parsing (busboy)
│   └── utils.ts          # Random ID generation, helpers
├── migration/            # One-time MongoDB → Firestore migration
├── firebase.json         # Hosting rewrites, function config
├── firestore.rules       # Deny all client access
└── storage.rules         # Public read, admin write

Chrome Extension

StaticShot — capture screenshots, annotate, and upload directly to Static.md. Source in the chromium-extension sibling repo.