Little Library

A digital give-a-book, take-a-book library for ebooks.

Features

• Free Contribution: allows DRM-free ebooks to be uploaded by anyone
• Built-in Reviews: requires a description/reason/note for uploading
• Small Footprint: only allows ebook files and limited metadata and optional library size limit
• Digital Physicality: know when you're not the only one visiting the little library
• Single-borrower: removes ebook files from server when someone takes it
• Metadata history: keeps a history of all books that have been on shelf

Requirements

• Node 12+
• Yarn 1.12+

Installation

Clone the repo:

> git clone https://github.com/Alamantus/little-library.git

Navigate to the folder:

> cd path/to/little-library

Run yarn to install all the dependencies:

> yarn

Then copy settings.example.json to settings.json and make sure everything is to your liking. Below is the default settings.example.json file:

{
  "port": 3000, // The server's port
  "siteTitle": "Little Library",  // The name that appears in the site header
  "titleSeparator": " | ",  // The separator for the browser bar's title between page and site titles
  "fileLocation": "./public/files/",  // The relative path to where the ebook files will be served from
  "historyLocation": "./public/history/", // The relative path to where the history metadata files will be served from
  "maxLibrarySize": 0,  // The maximum number of books that can be added to the library. 0 means unlimited
  "maxFileSize": 0, // The maximum file size of an ebook allowed to be uploaded. 0 means unlimited
  "maxHistory": 0,  // The maximum number of history metadata files that will be saved on your server. 0 means unlimited
  "allowedFormats": [".epub", ".mobi", ".pdf"], // The file formats allowed to be uploaded
  "backupPassword": "password",  // The plaintext password that allows you to access the /backup features. Be sure to change this before going live!
  "hideVisitors": false,  // If true, the "Current Visitors" counter will not update on the front end
  "sslPort": 443,  // The port to serve HTTPS content from if your private key and certificate are specified
  "sslPrivateKey": null,  // The ssl private key received from your certificate authority for HTTPS support
  "sslCertificate": null, // The ssl certificate received from your certificate authority for HTTPS support
  "sslCertificateAuthority": null,  // The ssl certificate authority (CA) received from Let's Encrypt for HTTPS support
  "forceHTTPS": false // Redirect all traffic for http to https (not sure why you wouldn't want this)
}

You can optionally copy the customHtmlAfterFooter.example.html to customHtmlAfterFooter.html if you want to add additional HTML to the bottom of the content container's body. This is useful for adding <script> snippets like what you get from umami for analytics.

Usage

Run npm start to start the Little Library server:

> npm start

Navigate to localhost:3000 in your favorite browser to see the Little Library.

The Little Library allows anyone with access to it to give or take ebooks. I'll write a more in-depth bit about how exactly to use it when I have some more time.

Management

There is a backup utility located at the /backup path when running the server, i.e. http://localhost:3000/backup. In order to utilize it, you need to include your backupPassword in the url, like this:
http://localhost:3000/backup?pass=password

This utility allows you to download a .zip file of all the ebook and history files on your server and then re-upload those same .zip files back to another server. This is helpful if you use a service like Heroku that does not persist your files when you re-upload the core script files.

Gotchas

If you are using a proxy server like NginX (and you should), be sure your server is set to allow uploads equal to or higher than what you have specified in maxFileSize! In NginX, this amounts to adding client_max_body_size 10M; (or whatever your upload size is) to the server section of your sites-enabled entry!