CTFd Support Ticket Plugin

A support ticket system plugin for CTFd, designed for remote CTF competitions where participants need to communicate with the administrative team. Participants can submit tickets, attach screenshots, and receive guidance from admins — all without leaving the platform.

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Features

• Ticket submission — participants can open tickets with a title, category, optional challenge link, description, and a screenshot attachment
• Team-aware visibility — in Teams mode, all members of a team can see their team's tickets; in User mode, tickets are private to the submitter
• Admin shared inbox — any admin can view, respond to, and close any ticket
• Status workflow — tickets move through Open → Awaiting User Response → Closed automatically as admins reply
• In-platform notifications — a live badge in the admin navbar shows the current open ticket count, with a toast notification firing when new tickets are submitted
• Image-only attachments — participants can attach screenshots (PNG, JPG, GIF, WEBP — max 5 MB); file type is validated by magic bytes, not just extension
• CSV export — admins can download a full export of all tickets for post-competition review
• Time since last update — the admin ticket list shows both the absolute timestamp and a human-readable relative time for each ticket's last update
• No external dependencies — everything runs on CTFd's existing stack with no additional packages required

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Requirements

• CTFd (tested against the current stable release)
• Python 3.11+
• No additional pip packages required

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Installation

1. Clone or download this repository into your CTFd plugins directory:

cd /opt/CTFd/CTFd/plugins
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/ctfd-support-tickets support

2. Restart CTFd:

docker compose restart ctfd
# or however you manage your CTFd instance

3. The plugin will create its database tables automatically on first startup. No manual migration step is required.

4. A Support Tickets link will appear in the admin navbar. Participants will see a Support link in the main site navbar.

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Plugin Structure

support/
├── __init__.py                      # Plugin entrypoint — all routes and load()
├── models.py                        # SQLAlchemy models
├── utils.py                         # Auth helpers, image validation, CSV builder
├── config.json                      # Plugin name registration
├── requirements.txt                 # Empty — no extra dependencies
├── assets/
│   ├── admin_support.js             # Admin badge + toast notification polling
│   └── user_support.js             # Injects Support link into user navbar
└── templates/
    ├── support/
    │   ├── ticket_list.html         # User: list of their tickets
    │   ├── ticket_new.html          # User: new ticket form
    │   └── ticket_view.html         # User: ticket detail + close button
    └── admin/
        ├── support_list.html        # Admin: all tickets with filtering
        └── support_view.html        # Admin: ticket detail + reply form

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Database Schema

The plugin creates three tables, all prefixed with support_:

support_tickets

Column	Type	Notes
id	Integer PK
title	String(255)
category	String(100)	One of the four hardcoded categories
description	Text
status	String(50)	open, awaiting_response, or closed
user_id	FK → users	Submitting user
team_id	FK → teams	Nullable — set in Teams mode only
challenge_id	FK → challenges	Nullable — optional challenge link
created_at	DateTime (UTC)
updated_at	DateTime (UTC)

support_ticket_replies

Column	Type	Notes
id	Integer PK
ticket_id	FK → support_tickets
admin_id	FK → users	Admin who sent the reply
content	Text
created_at	DateTime (UTC)

support_ticket_attachments

Column	Type	Notes
id	Integer PK
ticket_id	FK → support_tickets
filename	String(255)	Original filename
data	LargeBinary	Image stored as a binary blob
mimetype	String(100)	Validated MIME type
uploaded_at	DateTime (UTC)

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Routes

Participant-facing

Method	Path	Description
GET	/support	List the current user's (or team's) tickets
GET	/support/new	New ticket form
POST	/support/new	Submit a new ticket
GET	/support/<id>	View a ticket and its replies
POST	/support/<id>/close	Close a ticket (owner only)
GET	/support/attachments/<id>	Serve an image attachment

Admin-facing

Method	Path	Description
GET	/admin/support	All tickets, filterable by status
GET	/admin/support/<id>	View ticket, post reply, close
POST	/admin/support/<id>/reply	Submit an admin reply
POST	/admin/support/<id>/close	Close a ticket
GET	/admin/support/export	Download CSV export of all tickets
GET	/api/support/open_count	JSON — current open ticket count (admin only)

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Ticket Categories

The following categories are hardcoded:

• Technical Issue
• Challenge Clarification
• General Enquiry
• Other

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Configuration

There is no admin configuration UI at this time. The following constants can be adjusted directly in the source files before deployment:

Constant	File	Default	Description
TICKET_CATEGORIES	utils.py	See above	Hardcoded list of ticket categories
ALLOWED_IMAGE_EXTENSIONS	utils.py	png, jpg, jpeg, gif, webp	Accepted file extensions
MAX_ATTACHMENT_BYTES	utils.py	5 MB	Maximum attachment file size

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Screenshots

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Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue before starting significant work so we can discuss the approach first.

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Licence

MIT Licence.