thumb-me

A minimalistic web server created for one job: making thumbnail.

This server are not meant to serve directly to clients, in which you should put this server behind a web proxy such as nginx.

Thumb-me is config-and-forget sort of program, so after you've configured it, it's ready to go.

This is a work in progress, any contributions are welcome.

Features

1. Basic methods: Thumb.
2. Token for self-protection.
3. Multiple domains support.

Known issues

1. Cache the result: Although we can cache the generated thumbnails, but I decided that's a bad practice, and that feature won't be implemented. Please use a reverse web proxy (such as nginx) to cache the generated thumbnails.
2. Handler data from other system: such as redis or mongodb. This feature will be implemented in the near future. But in the mean time, I don't have enough time to implement this feature, so any contributions in this area are welcomed.
3. Upload method: I want to keep the code base as simple as possible, so there will be no upload method.

How it works?

There are two types of typical url:

http://storage.local/url/to/file.png
http://storage.local/method/param1_param2_param3/token/url/to/file.png

The first one refer to a physic file, while the latter, refer to a non-existen file. The first one will be served directly from filesystem, while the other one will be handler by an appropriate registered method.

1. Request come to thumb-me. If thumb-me found the file, it will directly serve this file.
2. If no file is found, thumb-me will try to extract information from url.
3. If there's a method to handle this url, the extracted information will be passed to this method.
4. If there's no method to handle this url, a 404 header will be sent to the client.

Token generation

The token are generated dynamically based on hostname, key, method name, param, file path; which is the md5 hash of concentrated string then take 8 first characters:

md5(hostname + key + param + method + url).splice(0, 8);

Configuration

Make a copy of config.default.js and rename it to config.js. A typical configuration will look like:

module.exports = {
    "path": "./storage",
    "methods": ["Thumb"],
    "domains": {
        "localhost": {
            key: "EzcOR2ED4y15wqg"
        }
    }
};

The path key is used to define the storage directory for the FileSystemHandler. Default location is the storage directory relative to the thumb-me directory.

The methods key is used to register the methods which are used by thumb-me to generate result. You can create new method, and add to the methods array (minus the suffix Method; so ThumbMethod will be added as Thumb ).

The domains key is used to register the domains will be handled by thumb-me. Any unregistered domain will be ignored. The key of each domains, is used to generate the token of the url.

Nginx as reverse web proxy and cache the result

Nginx will act as a reverse proxy, and cache the response from thumb-me, this will greatly boost the performance. Add the following lines inside the http directive:

proxy_cache_path /tmp/nginx keys_zone=one:30m loader_threshold=300 loader_files=200;

Virtual host configuration:

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name storage.local;
        access_log off;
        error_log /home/storage/logs/err.log;

        location  / {
		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/;
		proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
		proxy_set_header host $host;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_cache one;
		proxy_cache_valid any 12h;
        }
}

And you're ready to go.