Chare is a file hosting service with a builtin syncing feature for various protocols such as https and git. It is essentially a more fancy web folder explorer written in PHP. The CSS theme is inspired by GitHub. It was designed to be fast and lightweight in use.

Features

GitHub like ui
Serving files via HTTP
Syncing of HTTP(s) via curl
Syncing with git
Excluding files via a list
Show information about folders such as used license, code of conduct or remote URL of git repository
Render a readme file with CommonMark
Download folder using HTTP link or ZIP file

Demo

Image preview of gui

Demo site can be visited at: demo

Deployment

The recommended way is to run chare as docker container: docker run servostar/chare -p 80:80. An example configuration via docker compose can be found in the example folder. Example docker-compose:

version: "3.1"
services:
  chare:
      image: servostar/chare:latest
      restart: unless-stopped
      ports:
        - "8080:80"
      volumes:
        - ./public:/var/share
        - ./repos.tsv:/srv/config/repos.tsv
        - ./.ignore:/srv/config/.ignore
      environment:
        # should be setup if running behind reverse proxy
        - OVERWRITE_URL = https://cdn.example.com
        # these are all optional
        - OVERWRITE_SERVER_NAME = cdn.example.com
        - HOME_PAGE = https://home.example.com
        - LEGAL_PAGE = https://home.example.com
        - IMPRESSUM_PAGE = https://legal.example.com

Dependencies for manual install

If installing manually chare requires php 6.0+ and the package manager compose for downloading plugins. curl and git should also be available.

Configuration

Chare can mostly be configured through environment variables:

Environment Variables

OVERWRITE_URL: the public url of this instance (required if running behind reverse proxy)
OVERWRITE_SERVER_NAME: domain name of ip address of this server (only used for the ui)
HOME_PAGE: optional link to a homepage that will be shown as a button above the file listing
LEGAL_PAGE: optional link to a legal that will be shown as a button above the file listing
IMPRESSUM_PAGE: optional link to an impressum that will be shown as a button above the file listing

Syncing files and repositories

Chare has the ability to automatically sync folder, files and repositories in set intervals. These must be configured in a file mounted at /srv/config/repos.tsv. The format is as follows:

protocol url path

This is a single entry. Every entry is contained within a single line. An entry is made out of the protocol/program to use, the target url to fetch from and the destination path to download to. Every entry has to be separated by a single tab. Adding multiple entries can be done by adding a new line. Available protocols are currently:

git will use git to clone any git compatible repository
curl will use curl to download anything over http(s)

The specified path is always relative to the public share folder. Meaning if the public share folder is /var/share then the path downloads/images will resolve to the path /var/share/downloads/images. Example configuration:

git https://github.com/Servostar/chare.git  repos/chare
git https://user:token@git.myinstance.com/user/coolstuff.git repos/coolstuff
curl https://google.com downloads/websites

Ignoring specific files

Chare can be instructed to not show specific files in the web ui. These files are listed in the file at /srv/config/.ignore. This file contains a list of file and folders to ignore. Every file will be matched against this list to see if it is to be ignored. Example file:

.
.gitignore
.git
.config
.extra

NOTE: this file does not allow for comments like a .gitignore file!

Public share path

HTTPS and security

Chare does not provide any SSL capabilities out house, thus you should deploy chare behind a reverse proxy which handles encryption.