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

https://github.com/louissobel/Drapache

by sobel • 14 years ago

98 31 14 years ago

github.com

mahmud2• 14 years ago

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

RollAHardSix• 14 years ago

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)

btown• 14 years ago

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?

alanh3• 14 years ago

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? :)

nextstep• 14 years ago

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.

gpmcadam• 14 years ago

HTTPD... ropbox

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

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.

autotravis• 14 years ago

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

nl4• 14 years ago

So does this (or some machine somewhere, anyway)

alanh3• 14 years ago

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?

delinka2• 14 years ago

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.

TOGoS• 14 years ago

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.

devmach2• 14 years ago

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...

delinka2• 14 years ago

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

Right there on the project page.

devmach2• 14 years ago

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.

nl4• 14 years ago

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(!?))

callumjones• 14 years ago

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

nl4• 14 years ago

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)

ifewalter• 14 years ago

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

veyron• 14 years ago

Does this violate Dropbox TOS?

_o99w• 14 years ago

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?

kmax12• 14 years ago

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/

rian• 14 years ago

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

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

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