

Show HN: Drapache - serve a dynamic website from your dropbox - sobel
https://github.com/louissobel/Drapache

======
TOGoS
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.

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

~~~
btown
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?

~~~
alanh
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? :)

~~~
saadmalik01
Depeche Mode is the name of band from the 80s.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depeche_Mode>

~~~
alanh
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?

~~~
mahmud
you are very much right :-)

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

~~~
nl
So does this (or some machine somewhere, anyway)

------
kmax12
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/>

------
veyron
Does this violate Dropbox TOS?

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

~~~
nl
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)

~~~
LogicX
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)

~~~
stanmancan
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.

------
alanh
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?

~~~
delinka
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.

------
wrathsu
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?

------
devmach
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...

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

Right there on the project page.

~~~
devmach
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.

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

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

