Show HN: Drapache - serve a dynamic website from your dropbox | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Drapache - serve a dynamic website from your dropbox

github.com

98 pointssobel31 comments

Stop with the misleading titles, people! I thought this meant you'd somehow make Dropbox run the website for you, which, while a pretty silly idea, would be interesting. But no, it's just a server that pulls files off Dropbox.

Why not just call it "mod_depeche"? Sexier, more pronouncable name, and punful as well.

That is sexier. Re-brand! But perhaps he just didn't think of it?

Obvious question gets an obvious answer. (Plus, and you may not have meant too, but your question came off a little asshole-ish)

Until I saw this comment, I'd been pronouncing it "drop-ache" in my head, and scratching my head wondering whether it was a reference to dropbears or not. Now I see the light. Maybe instead of rebranding, make a logo that sets the "apache" part in a different color or font?

I don’t follow your (or your parent post’s) line of thinking. Apparently “dépêche means dispatch (or update, message or news),” and has a connotation of “fast.” I don’t see how this really applies to Drapache, which I thought of as “dr’apache,” a portmanteau of “drop(box)” and “apache.” I’m a Depeche Mode fan, but don’t see how it relates.

Where’s the pun? :)

Depeche Mode is the name of band from the 80s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depeche_Mode

I know, and mentioned the band in my post. But that’s not a pun, that’s just a reference. For it to be a good name, doesn’t depeche have to have something to do with Dropbox?

you are very much right :-)

How you snip the name from another 80's band and let the name... "Mmmmmmmmm... DROP!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnPQdrPnCpE :)

"mod_depeche" is a pun on "mod", not "depeche". Clever, and would make a fun name for something (just not this).

Because "Drapache" makes sense (kind of, it's a portmanteau of Dropbox and Apache); "mod_depeche" doesn't makes any sense. I really don't understand that name at all.

HTTPD... ropbox

How is this different than using Uniform Server, XAMP, sharing on OSX or even SimpleHTTPServer, serving from the Dropbox folder? Setup looks more involved than any of those.

Don't those (at least sharing on OS X) necessitate your machine running?

So does this (or some machine somewhere, anyway)

Having used it to build a bad link shortner, I suggest people give this a shot. It's a ton of fun to just edit a file in your dropbox with no setup and it's reflected online before you can refresh the page. it's definitely just a hack, for now but don't be surprised if this becomes something useful in te future

Link to what I built http://shorty.drapache.com/shorty/

Does this violate Dropbox TOS?

It starts a thread per (dynamic) request, with 25 second timeouts?

I can't imagine Dropbox will be too pleased running that on their servers (Although it is possible I'm misunderstand how it works - the explanation is vague, but I never knew Dropbox had the ability to run Python(!?))

Dropbox can't run anything, this is meant to be run on your own hardware/vps/ec2.

Mm yeah, that makes sense.

It also makes this incredibly bad. Not only do you have to run your own server, you have to pay for bandwidth twice - once from your server, and once from Dropbox (files are served from your Dropbox to the server, then to the client)

Except Dropbox doesn't charge you for bandwidth. Imagine someone offering a service running this - plenty of other Dropbox hosting in the cloud services exist (such as to give you your own domain name tied to the Dropbox public folder)

They don't charge you for bandwidth, except as part of their normal charges.

You can be sure they would cut off downloads if you started serving any significant traffic.

(Mainly because of the crazy-long opened connections. Bandwidth is so cheap now this system would fall over long before Dropbox started caring about that cost)

Dropbox might not charge you for your bandwidth, but your server host will. Using something like this results in twice the bandwidth for every page served. You will be using your servers bandwidth to transfer the file from Dropbox to your server, and then from your server to the client.

I'm trying to share my folder with some classmates so we have some collaboration without having to share our own server passwords. However, when I try to share the drapache folder I'm not allowed to share since it's in the Apps folder. I can't share the Apps folder either. Trying to move the drapache folder elsewhere has broken my drapache site. How can I share with classmates, and fix the broken site?

I have had some encoding issues with Dropbox public files — namely, I’ll create a UTF-8 .html file and use special characters like “educated quotes” without encoding them as HTML entities (as I should be allowed to do, in a properly encoded file). I’ll use the right meta tag. And yet sometimes, at least in Chrome, they’ll show up incorrectly.

Would Drapache be susceptible to this, or could it it perhaps remedy it?

You say "at least in Chrome," but have you tried other browsers? This phrase leads me to believe it may be a browser problem and not a Dropbox problem.

I don't think it's a good idea if you target developers :

1- Trading expensive bandwidth for a cheap storage isn't economically logical.

2- Any web developer should understand how web works and he should be comfortable with ftp, apache/nginx/iis, git(/mercurial), etc...

"It will not be particularly useful to a developer..."

Right there on the project page.

Full sentence : "It will not be particularly useful to a developer who is comfortable with git, heroku, ftp, or another method of hosting a website."

But the thing is, drapache is for the programmers [1], if you read full readme you will notice, to use drapache you need to understand basics of programming ( maybe js for static pages and python for dynamic pages).

Now, i understand "It's c00l" but the coolness != useful

[1]Readme/.dbpy : Although far from finished, the dbpy framework is enough for beginning programmers to get started building dynamic websites.

Question: does dropbox know about this? What about latency and performance issues?

this also exists if you're looking for something that is compatible with wsgi and supports intelligent http caching https://github.com/dropbox/dropboxwsgi

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