I thought of this after a recent trip with some friends. We shared the photos when we were still in person. But sometimes we need to share a lot of photos over the internet. In the past, we have used a shared google drive directory for this. But I’d prefer a self-hosted option. There should be some sort of password protection as well (ideally per share, and no need for accounts). One should be able to both access the current files and upload new ones, just like google drive or dropbox.
I currently have FileShelter, which works for 1-to-1 sharing but not for groups. I guess something like ProjectSend would work, but it’s too complex for my usecase. I’d prefer something more lightweight since I’ll maybe use it once every few months. Also, it should be noob-friendly, and accessible using a browser.
Mind if I suggest my own software, copyparty?
Regarding authentication, someone who has an account (in this case just yourself) can create password-protected shares which other people can browse, or upload, or browse+upload to (configurable when creating the share).
There is WebDAV support, and it should integrate well enough with shares, but I haven’t tested that specifically.
It has photo and video thumbnails, and a basic image-viewer, and with some elbow-grease it can also show exif-tags (gps-coordinates etc).
There is also optional file dedup, so if two people upload the same file, it’ll detect and skip that during the 2nd upload (doesn’t waste any bandwidth) and swap out the new file with a symlink to the existing one. Default disabled to avoid surprising someone with symlinks.
I think the following command would be enough to get you started:
but since that’s entirely unreadable, you can do it with a config file instead,
and use it like this:
there’s another example here and here for inspiration.
Hey, that looks awesome. I’ll try it out when I get back from work.
To me, it’s always nice meeting the face behind the software. I have never used copyparty, but if I had a use case, it would be high on the list just based of the volume of detailed instructions. I think that is probably the most detailed selfhosted piece of software I’ve seen at GitHub…gotta be something good going on with that. And…and replete with pictures of the UI in a variety of scenarios. That’s just top drawer in my book. If a need ever arises, I have bookmarked it, because that’s where I’ll start. Awesome job my man, and thank you for your dedication to the craft.
Oh hey, this is just what I was looking for recently! I wanted to recommend PirateBox to another thread on here, but realised it was eol’ed six years back. This is pretty much similar usage, right?
Hadn’t heard about PirateBox before – love the concept, but nah aside from a small amount of overlap they’re very different things :-)
I guess if you put copyparty on a raspberry pi (or boot the copyparty live-cd on a nuc) then you get something vaguely similar – a wifi node where you can download and upload files, but none of the other stuff (chat, messageboard, captive portal). Maybe cool ideas for future spinoff projects hehe
Right, it was the local filesharing part (like at a W/LAN party) that I wanted to recommend pirate box for, so I overlooked the other functions 🙂
Either way, bookmarked your GH repo for future reference, excellent project!