Redesigning my paste service with Fennel

2021-01-21 00:00

So, in my previous post, I wrote about my paste service setup using Vim, nginx, and rsync. After using the tools involved in that setup, I had realized that I didn’t like all the scripts I had to throw in my ~/bin/ and the functions I had to add inside of my ~/.vimrc.

After a bit of thinking, I decided on a few things:

Replacing my subdomain with a subdirectory

The first thing I did was learn how to create a separate directory on my server that would contain my “pastes” (files). I wanted this to appear as a subdirectory on my homepage, so my “pastes” wouldn’t clutter up my website’s source code directory. I wanted something that looked like “https://m455.casa/paste/”.

After figuring out how to do this, it turned it that it was actually pretty simple!

First, I setup a directory on my server where my pastes would reside:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/paste
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/paste
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/paste

Then, I added the following snippet to my already-made nginx configuration at /etc/nginx/sites-available/m455.casa:

location /paste {
  alias /var/www/paste;
}

I restarted nginx with sudo systemctl restart nginx, and voila!

This method removed the need to setup TSL and SSL certificates for a subdomain at paste.m455.casa and removed the need for more nginx sites-available and sites-enabled entries.

Writing a multi-purpose pasting script

This was the fun part. Since I decided I didn’t need syntax highlighting, I didn’t need the functions in Vim anymore to to generate a syntax-highlighted HTML file, so I deleted those functions. This de-cluttered my ~/.vimrc, which was what I wanted when I outlined my goals for the new setup.

I also wanted to remove the amount of scripts I used, so I moved all of them into a directory containing old, unused scripts that I wrote.

Next, I wanted to write a single script that would handle uploading source code, by appending “.txt” to the end of the filename, as long as it didn’t end in:

This is because I wanted to be able to view, and allow others to view, the plaintext files in the browser after they were pasted. The .txt is there just so I don’t end up with a file called cool.txt.txt. It would still work, it would just be a little silly. I occasionally share screenshots and gifs with friends, so I wanted those to be rendered in the browser, so .txt wouldn’t append to those kinds of files.

I know there are way more file suffixes and formats than that, but I don’t find myself pasting anything but those (though I don’t remember the last time I uploaded a .bmp file haha).

I also wanted the script to be able to synchronize my paste directory, in case I moved files into my ~/dev/paste directory for synchronizing, or for when I removed files.

The script, in the end, would replace the following scripts I had:

The result? This little Fennel script called fpaste.

All you have to do to configure it, is change four variable values:

(local ssh "m455@m455.casa")
(local domain "https://m455.casa/paste")
(local remote-path "/var/www/paste")
(local local-path "~/dev/paste")

Slashes at the end of the domain, remote-path, and local-path values are optional. If slashes are present, they will be removed, if they aren’t, the script can handle that too.

The script is basically a wrapper around rsync. It takes a filename and “cleans” its suffix, copies it to a local paste directory, synchronizes the local paste directory with the remote paste directory, and outputs a URL to share based on the values you entered in the configuration variables!