Show HN: boxify.me - I made a file-sharing app while AWS was down | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: boxify.me - I made a file-sharing app while AWS was down

boxify.me

Hey HN, yesterday was fun. I was in the middle of making changes and pushing updates to one of my web apps running on Heroku when Amazon fell apart. I quickly grew bored not being able to push updates to Heroku, so I decided to brush up on my skills a bit and try my hand at a file-sharing app.

The idea came to me around 7am. I quickly snagged the domain name and got to work. After a few hours of designing, coding, building, I ended up with boxify.me. Not bad, considering I barely knew how to code a few months ago :D The app was finished yesterday, and it went live this morning now that issues with Amazon are clearing up.

Here's how it works: you click "start sharing" and a box is made with a randomly generated url. You can upload files to it (as many as you want, 25mb limit per file) and they appear in the box. You can send the link to others and they can upload/download files as well. You can also change the name of the box (and consequently, the URL).

I haven't seen any file-sharing websites that follow this concept. Most allow you to upload huge files and send a link to somebody - very short term, which is fine for most situations. But there are so many situations where it would be nice to just have a bunch of files than can be shared between people and accessed from any computer (one-off group projects come to mind). I guess the most similar thing I can think of is Dropbox, but boxify.me doesn't require signup, permissions, etc. So I guess you could say it falls somewhere between a standard file uploading site and Dropbox.

Oh, I also submitted it to Chrome Web Store. My first submission yet, and it wasn't even an conceptualized 24 hours ago!

What do you think?

Incredibly impressed given you started coding only a few months ago. Well done!

You might also think about putting a statement about copyright infringement. Doing a file sharing site hosted in the US you'll need to handle DMCA take down requests from content providers. I think the method theTVDB.com has for DMCA requests is perfect. If you click on an image there is a link for 'Request DMCA takedown': http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78957

I like this. It's very accessible.

Could you consider adding a delete button? Also, you are currently able to rename the example box. Perhaps you should disable that.

Thanks! I am aware that you can rename the example box, and that's okay. The button on the home screen should still be able to find it :)

I thought about deleting, but it could get messy if somebody decides to delete all the files as there are no permissions/accounts etc. Maybe in the future, if I decide to build on this?

Also, you should patch up the XSS vulnerabilities in the box name. ;)

Even more, one could rename the default 'example' page like this: http://boxify.me/box/input-script-alert-string-fromcharcode-... :)

Edit: removed the XSS, but here's the vector (if HN allows: input"><script>alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))</script>)

Thanks for pointing those out, fellas. Should be all fixed now. :)

Hmm, would http://min.us be similar? Or dropmocks what it was based on.

Wow, that's a slick app! Very nice interface, easy to use. I like it.

Hey this is a great app, congrats, a great idea and great execution!

Thanks!

So how did you build it? Where's it hosted?

Built in Ruby on Rails 2.3.8, designed in Illustrator.

Other resources utilized: - Heroku for deployment (Amazon EC2 hosting) - Amazon S3 for upload storage/hosting - Paperclip + Uploadify for uploading

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