Self-hosting

[Villhelm-E]

Is it possible to run topola on my personal website and password protect it, so I can share with family?

[PeWu]

Yes, you can run topola on your own server.

You can build the app from source by running npm run build in the cloned repository. Then, you can put the contents of the created build/ directory on your server.

You can also find a ready code package in the gh-pages branch on GitHub. A downloadable package is here: https://github.com/PeWu/topola-viewer/archive/refs/heads/gh-pages.zip

[jonezrin]

I also downloaded the package, it works, but only by uploading a file. Loading from URL does not work. Any chance of updating/fixing that? Or steering me toward a solution? Thanks.

[PeWu]

@jonezrin,

Simple answer: Try adding &handleCors=false to the URL when self-hosting.

More details: The problem is that some servers restrict the Web pages that can load a specific file by URL. By default, Topola Viewer uses a CORS anywhere proxy hosted at https://topola-cors.herokuapp.com/ which is restricted to Topola Viewer hosted on Github Pages. This means that you cannot use this proxy when you run self-hosted Topola Viewer. Disabling the CORS proxy by adding the &handleCors=false URL parameter is the easiest way to not use the proxy. If it turns out the Gedcom URL does have CORS restrictions, you may have to either change the server configuration where the Gedcom file is hosted or run a CORS proxy yourself.

[jonezrin]

Simple answer: It worked!!

More details: Thank you for replying and for your excellent coding.

[jonezrin]

Hi. Only problem I'm having now is the page not always loading the latest version of the GED file if updates are made to it. I tried no-cache metas in the index page but no luck. Any suggestion? Thanks.

[PeWu]

Topola Viewer has a built-in cache (sessionStorage). Reopen everything in a new tab to reset the cache.