Quvyn is a minimal website commenting system. It doesn't have an admin UI, it doesn't support multiple sites, it doesn't support load-balancing, it doesn't even use a database. But it comes as a single binary with no dependencies, it stores comments in the filesystem where they can be processed with lots of Unix tools, and it uses modern technologies.
Step 0: Install Rust toolchain (if needed)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
Step 1: Clone Quvyn repo
git clone git@github.com:erikdoe/quvyn.git && cd quvyn
Step 2: Build and run Quvyn
cargo run -- --repo ./var/demo
Step 3: Demo time
open http://localhost:8080/app/demo.html
Now you should see a page with a working commenting system. Play around. If you like what you see, read on.
The Quvyn backend is written in Rust. So, you need the Rust toolchain to build a binary on your system. Once you have the Rust toolchain you can build Quvyn with the Rust package manager:
cargo build --release
Assuming the build succeeds, the binary can be found in target/release/quvyn. Copy this binary to a suitable place
on your system and set it up as a daemon process, using supervisord or
daemontools or similar.
There is no configuration file and Quvyn does not read environment variables. All configuration is done via command-line options:
--repo PATH
The comments are stored as files in a directory, referred to as the repository. The location of the repository can be specified with this option. Each file in the repository contains a single comment in JSON format. The filenames are random UUIDs.
When Quvyn starts it reads all files from the repository directory and keeps them in memory. When a new comment is posted, the comment is saved to the filesystem immediately. This explains why Quvyn does not scale horizontally, ie. you should not run multiple instances behind a load balancer.
--app PATH
Quvyn ships with a frontend written in Vue.js, found in the vue directory in the source
distribution. You can use the Quvyn backend to serve its own frontend. To do so, make the directory available to the
Quvyn backend process and use this option to set the path.
Note: for normal use you want your website to load quvyn.js. You do not need the demo app or the stylesheet; both can
serve as inspiration for how to integrate Quvyn into your own site, though. If you deploy all files a demo app is
available at http://localhost:8080/app/demo.html
--bind address
By default Quvyn binds to port 80 on localhost. You can change this with this option. Hostname and port are separated by a colon, eg. 0.0.0.0:4567.
--origin (URL|*)
Quvyn can run on a domain different from the domain of the website where the comments are displayed. In such a case you must tell Quvyn to set appropriate CORS headers using this option. Normally, you would specify the URL of the website that displays the comments.
--notify EMAIL-ADDRESS
If this option is set Quvyn sends an email to the specified email address every time a comment is posted. The email contains the comment as JSON.
Note: Quvyn simply uses sendmail to send the emails. So, please make sure that this is installed and works.
Quvyn can import comments from CSV files. The file must have the following format:
- Fields must be separated by commas (
,). - Fields that contain commas or line breaks must be place in double quotes (
"). - Double quotes in the field text must be escaped using a double quote, ie. a double quote in the field text is
written as a double double quote (
""). - The first line of the file must contain a header with the field names.
- Fields are as follows:
| field (in order) | content |
|---|---|
| timestamp | String in ISO 8601 format (actually, in RFC 3339 format) |
| path | String that specifies the path of the page to which the comment belongs |
| author_name | Name of the author (can be empty) |
| author_email | Email address of the author (can be empty) |
| text | Comment text in markdown format |
Such a file can then be imported with the --import option. Note that you should specify the repo path, too.
The UI tests use AVA as a test runner and Playwright for automated browser testing.
For now, you have to start Quvyn manually before you run the UI tests:
cargo run -- --repo var/tests-ui
Then, in a second terminal, run the tests:
npm test
Don't forget to run npm install after checking out the code.