govid

GOVID - Go VI Daemon

govid is a CGI application to remotely edit a bunch of text files in a as-close-as-possible vi fashion. It aims mainly at taking/reading quick notes in environment I'm not in control of (i.e. no ssh to my cloud server, or no vi) using a simple browser.

Compared to already existing full-features note-taking app, govid is really basic, build for a personal note taking perspective with no bells nor whistles. It tries to offer an "as quick and simple way" to quickly take notes (open whatever browser you find, connect to your server pointing to the file you'll like to edit, edit it).

govid design is intentionally kept as minimal as possible, leaving most of the heavy work to whatever battle-tested http stack you want to use to deploy it.

govid is developed and used on OpenBSD, it is most probably going to operate smoothly on any unix-like environment. Running govid on other plat-forms like Windows might work through some features might not be properly supported (like path validation logic).

INSTALLATION AND DEPLOYMENT

To install govid CGI application, you can use:

make install

By default it will install:

• govid CGI application to ${CGIDIR} as well as its dependant libraries so that it can be run chrooted in ${PREFIX}.
• CSS and JS assets in ${HTDOCS}

where ${PREFIX} default to /var/www, ${CGIDIR} to ${PREFIX/cgi-bin} and ${HTDOCS} to ${PREFIX}/htdocs/govid. Each of these parameters can be altered when invoking make install, for example:

make install PREFIX=my/prefered/www/location

CONFIGURATION

govid will serve notes from the location contained in GODIR_NOTESDIR environment variable or, if not set, from DOCUMENT_ROOT.

URL prefix can be adjusted by setting GODIR_URL_PREFIX.

API

Supported request are:

• GET /{filename}:: view/edit file or folder located at {filename} path within the directory govid instance is serving.

• POST /{filename}:: save file or folder located at {filename} path within the directory govid instance is serving.

{filename} corresponds to DOCUMENT_URI CGI environement variable without the SCRIPT_NAME prefix (corresponds to PATH_INFO content).

govid only accepts {filename} that lives inside govid's directory, it will reject any path directives (like ../ or absolute path) that will try to save or access files outside of this folder. Addionally, {filename} pointing to hidden files (starting with '.') or files living in an hidden folder are not accepted. Note that the logic implemented is based on unix-like hidden files and is most certainly not going to operate well on Windows.

If {filename} points to a non-existing file, it will be created once saving, including any sub-folders. Files and sub-folders are created using the umask of the user under which govid is running.

Requests for {filename} pointing to files that are believed not to be in plaintext mime-type will be rejected. Likewise, POST request with a content that does not look-like plaintext will be rejected.

Requests for accessing too big files or trying to save too big content will be rejected.

CONTRIBUTION

If you feel like to contribute, just follow github guidelines on forking then send a pull request