Photostreamer server

Work in progress... Description will go here.

Server setup

Heroku one-click setup

The easiest way to setup the server is to use the button below to deploy to Heroku:

Manual setup

1. Clone this repository to your machine by running git clone https://github.com/achavez/photostreamer-server.git.
2. If you don't have one, create a Heroku account. This app can run in Heroku's free tier, but should run on any other Node.js environment that has access to MongoDB.
3. To deploy to Heroku, you'll need to have the Heroku Toolbelt installed. Run heroku login and enter your Heroku account information.
4. Run heroku create in the photostreamer-server folder created in step 1. That will add a Heroku git remote, which will be used to push the app to Heroku. It will also generate a URL (something like http://still-refuge.herokuapp.com/), which is where your app will live in Heroku's cloud.
5. Next, add a MongoDB to your add-on. For example, to add MongoHQ run heroku addons:add mongohq. The two supported options are MongoHQ and MongoLab. Both have free tiers.
6. Type heroku labs:enable websockets to enable Websockets. Using Websockets will increase the speed and efficiency at which the Heroku app communicates with anyone viewing the app in a Web browser.
7. To deploy, run git push heroku master to push the app to Heroku. Once the push has completed, type heroku open to open your app in a Web browser. For more information about Heroku, visit the Heroku Dev Center.

API

Pushing thumbnails

For an example of how to send photos to the server, check out photostreamer-pi, which sends photos using a Raspberry Pi.

To push a photo the server, upload a thumbnail to the Web, then send a POST with a JSON-encoded body with the following information to http://SERVER/photo/thumb:

{
	'created': '2014-05-25T18:18:17.056Z', // set by sender or auto-created
	'sender': '',
	'filesize': 108731131,
	'fileid': 'some string',
	'thumbnail': 'http://aws.amazon.com/file.jpg',
	'exif': { // optional
		'EXIF ColorSpace': 'sRGB',
		'EXIF FocalLength': 24,
		'Image make': 'Canon'
		// etc.
	}
}

Assuming everything worked OK and the request was formatted properly, you should receive a 200.

Sending high-resolution photos

The point of only sending thumbnails of all files is that only the high-resolution photos you want are transmitted. So the sending device needs to periodically do a GET for http://SERVER/requests/SENDER, which will return an array of fileids:

[
	'file.jpg',
	'file1.jpg',
	'file2.jpg'
]

If no high-resolution photos have been requested, the server will return an empty array.

For each requested photo, repeat the process followed with the thumbnails. Upload the file to the Web then POST a JSON-encoded body to http://SERVER/photo/full with the following information:

{
	'sender': '',
	'fileid': 'some string',
	'full': 'http://aws.amazon.com/file.jpg'
}

You'll receive a 200 back on success.

Local development

Packages are managed with Bower and Grunt. Client-side code is built using Grunt. To develop locally:

1. bower install && node install to get depencies
2. Make sure you have access to a MongoDB instance and place the connection string in a .env file in the project root, along with an optional port number:

   {
   	"MONGODB_URI": "mongodb://localhost/photostreamer"
   }

3. Run grunt, which will run the build process, auto-watch client files and re-build as needed and run the server app through Nodemon at http://localhost:5000. It'll also start a Node Inspector instance at http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 Andrew Chavez

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.