FamilyPhotos Server

An open source self-hosted photo and video server for your family written in Rust.

How to set up

An empty Postgres Database must be set up be it, either as a system library or Docker image.

It's also expected that you run a proxy like Nginx to handle load balancing and TLS.

Docker

Clone the repository and run the following command to build a docker image (for the x86_64 architecture):

docker build -t familyphotos .

Docker Compose

Here is an example of a Docker compose file

version: '3'

services:
   familyphotos:
     container_name: familyphotos
     image: familyphotos
     volumes:
       - /path/to/photos/folder/:/opt/photos/
     restart: always
     network_mode: "host"
     environment:
       SCAN_NEW_FILES: true
       RUST_LOG: info
       SERVER_PORT: 3000
       DATABASE_URL: postgres://username:password@localhost/database?sslmode=disable
       STORAGE_PATH: /opt/photos/

Below you can see all the environment variables that can be configured

Env Variables

Variables in bold must be specified.

• SERVER_PORT: The port the server should listen on
• DATABASE_URL (eg: postgres://username:password@localhost/database?sslmode=disable)
• STORAGE_PATH: The path to the folder where the photos will be stored
• PREVIEWS_PATH: Alternative storage path for photo previews (this is useful for example when you want to store the photos on an HDD but the previes on an SSD so that they load faster) [default: in STORAGE_PATH/.preview]
• SCAN_NEW_FILES: Scan the storage for external changes at startup [default: true]
• GENERATE_PREVIEWS_BACKGROUND: Generate previews for all photos on background thread (on startup), as opposed to only lazily generating when needed [default: false]
• RUST_LOG: Specifies the log level, it's recommended to set it to info [default: none]

Creating user accounts

On your first run, the server will generate a user account with the username "public" and a random password that will be printed in the console.
Knowing this password is not relevant as this user is only used for photos that belong to everyone.

To create new user accounts run the following command using the CLI:

familyphotos user create -u <user_name> -d <display_name> [-p <password>]

This will generate a new user with the given username, display name and password or a random one if not provided.

Example Nginx Config

http {
    upstream familyphotos {
        zone upstreams 1M;
        server 127.0.0.1:3000;
        keepalive 2;
    }

    server {
        # HTTPS Config
        listen 443 ssl http2;
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
        ssl_certificate /path/to/certificate.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /path/to/privkey.pem;
        ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;

        server_name example.com;

        # Recommended for Performance (optional)
        sendfile on;
        tcp_nopush on;
        tcp_nodelay on;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header "Connection" "";
        proxy_buffers 4 2M;
        proxy_buffer_size 1M;
        proxy_busy_buffers_size 2M;

        
        location ~ ^/(.*)$ {
            client_max_body_size 1G;
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_pass http://familyphotos/$1$is_args$args;
            proxy_redirect off;
        }
    }
}

Folder structure

The server will generate the following folder structure in the STORAGE_PATH folder:

├───.preview/ # Folder for previews (if not specified elsewhere)
│
├───public/ # The folder of the "public" user, alas photos who belong to everyone
│   ├───<album_name>/ # Folder for albums aka "folders"
│   │   └───<photo_name> # Photo files
│   └───<photo_name> # Photo files
│
└───<user_name>/ # Folder for each individual user
    ├───<album_name>/ # Folder for albums aka "folders"
    │   └───<photo_name> # Photo files
    └───<photo_name> # Photo files

HTTP API

/ : Ping api to check if the server is online
/login : User login
/logout : Logout current user

/photos?public=bool : return a json list of all the user's photos or all public photos
/photos/download/:photo_id : returns an image if the user has access to it
/photos/preview/:photo_id : returns a scaled down image if the user has access to it
/photos/exif/:photo_id : returns a scaled down image if the user has access to it
/photos/upload : uploads a photo to the user's directory
/photos/delete/:photo_id : delete's a photo if the user has access to it (any user can delete a public photo)
/photos/change_location/:photo_id : returns a scaled down image if the user has access to it