MyStart

Why build something like this?

I don't know. I have a lot of bookmarks and there is no (proper) tooling for it. I use Google Bookmarks a lot but there is no nice add-on for both Chrome and Firefox. I use Firefox mostly as browser and I also use the bookmarks in the browser a lot. But then you suddenly think: I know I found something that I bookmarked. But where did I bookmark it in?

Features of MyStart

• Quick search

  Searches in title, description, label and url.

• Advanced search

  Specify a single label, part of description, part of title, part of url.

• Bookmarklet

  I copied the one from Google that works with MyStart.

• Statistics

  Added some statistics on source, visits and creation date. There is also a "Last visited" and "Last created" page.

• Import

  MyStart can import from multiple sources.

• Deduplication help

  When adding a new URL or editing an exiting one the page will show you a list of similar bookmarks that you can delete or edit.

• User accounts

  Regular stuff: create account, change password, forgot password, set a nice picture.

Importing bookmarks

This application can import from the following sources:

• FireFox (upload your places.sqlite from your profile directory)
• GitHub (enter a link: https://api.github.com/users/ivolimmen/starred) (can only import 60 pages per hours due to rate-limiting)
• GitLab (enter a link: https://gitlab.com/api/v4/users/ivolimmen/starred_projects?per_page=50) (Only from Gitlab itself)
• Google Bookmarks XML (export the XML: https://www.google.com/bookmarks/?output=xml and upload it)
• Google Bookmarks RSS (export the RSS: https://www.google.com/bookmarks/?output=rss&num=500&start=0 and upload it)
• Google Chrome/Chromium (upload your Bookmarks file from your profile directory)
• Netscape (It is an XML file if your still got one)
• XBEL (It's a XML standard for bookmarks)

Building

Do a checkout of this project. You need to following to build:

• Minimal JDK 11 and up
• Maven 3.* and up

Then execute the following command:

mvn clean install

Database

Create a new database (postgres) by executing:

createdb mystart    

(On start the application will create the tables)

Configuration

In the directory config there are two configuration files, one for the application and one for the logging. create copies of the files:

$ cp config/application-local.properties.example config/application-local.properties
$ cp config/logback-local.xml.example config/logback-local.xml

And customize accordingly. When you deploy it you should also have a production version.

Starting the application

For development tests

$ cd server
$ mvn exec:java

For release

1. Go into the /opt directory.
2. Extract the generated server-[VERSION].tar.gz. This will create a directory called mystart.
3. Copy the mystart.service into /etc/systemd/system
4. Reload the service deamon: systemctl daemon-reload
5. Start the service: systemctl start mystart

Credits

• For emoji handling: https://github.com/kcthota/emoji4j
• For icons: https://fontawesome.com/
• For look and feel: https://github.com/ColorlibHQ/AdminLTE