netblog

Please, see the DISCLAIMER below

Netblog is a browser-enabled network maintenance log book. It is actually a re-write of my command-line utility, netlog. As such, it can be used as a front-end for the existing netlog database - not meant to be published as a web site using Heroku or other services.

Why am I doing this?

• Not everyone uses the command-line
• Learn more Crystal and Kemal
• Add HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap to the learning mix
• Just have fun:-)

Please, see the Disclaimer below.

Installation

Requirements

• Install git which may or may not be installed. Do that first.
• Install Crystal according to your OS distribution if you are going to compile the source with make. You will need additional development tools, such as make, to build the app.
• Install PostgreSQL either locally or on a separate server. Micrate is included in the bin directory for creating the required table on a local host using dbuser for user and password. The database has to be created manually first. See this tutorial for Ubuntu installation.

You can of course use any database application you want. I just happened to use PostgreSQL for this app. It was originally developed using SQLite3.

Preferred Installation

Use the install.sh script provided. Although a Debian-based binary is provided, this insures that the app will work here in your environment. Batteries included.

$ git clone https://github.com/lebogan/netblog.git
$ cd netblog
$ ./install.sh
$ source ~/.bashrc (one time only)

Manual Installation

A Makefile is included for compiling and installing the binary and/or man pages. Crystal is required to be pre installed. The binary is copied to /usr/local/bin. The Makefile also provides for uninstalling and compilation cleanup. The compiled binary is in ./bin.

Pick your operating system here, crystal-lang, and follow the installation instructions.

$ git clone https://github.com/lebogan/netblog.git
$ cd netblog
$ shards install
$ make
$ sudo make install

Add to `/.bashrc` these lines:
export NETBLOG_ENV="production"
export NETBLOG_DATABASE_URL="postgresql://dbuser:dbpass@dbserver:5432/netlog"" >> $HOME/.bashrc
export NETBLOG_SESSION_SECRET=`crystal eval 'require "random/secure"; puts Random::Secure.hex(64)'`" >> $HOME/.bashrc

$ source ~/.bashrc (one time only)

To update, just do a git pull, shards update, and proceed as above.

See also Preferred Installation

Experimental A systemd service file has been included for automatically controlling the app as a service. Edit the file filling in the indicated entries, copy it to /etc/systemd/system , reload the systemd daemon, and start/enable the service. See SERVICE.md for details.

Usage

Here are some screenshots.

Main Page

Search Page

TODO

[ ] - Add pagination to all listings
[X] - Add edit/delet links on search results page
[X] - Update to Bootstrap 4
[X] - Move database to PostgreSQL
[X] - Make installation script menu-driven [ ] - Aggregage search criteria

Development

Please, see the DISCLAIMER below

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[your-github-name]/netblog/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• lebogan - creator, maintainer

License

This utility is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Disclaimer

This utility was originally created for personal use in my work as a network specialist. I am not a professional software developer nor do I pretend to be. I am a retired IT network specialist and this is a hobby to keep me out of trouble. If you use this application and it doesn't work the way you would want, feel free to fork it and modify it to your liking. Or, challange me to fix it;-). Should be fun! Fork on GitHub at https://github.com/lebogan/netblog.git