ppshw

ppshw - a colaborative document management system with node.js

Installation

The following dependencies should be met, for how to install or start see below:

• node.js
• express
• .. other node.jsdependencies (installed via package.json)
• mongodb
• LibreOffice/OpenOffice (required to convert the files to pdf or other formats [not yet implemented])
• ImageMagick (required to create preview images of the documents)
• Ghostscript (ImageMagick depends on GS to read pdfs)

First step: install express globally (requires node.js to be installed).

npm install -g express

Then install the application dependencies, for this you should be in the application directory (containing the package.json)

npm install

Configuration

Copy the config.json.origin to config.json and change the parameters to match your configuration. The upload directory (where all files are stored) is configured via ppshw:application:upload:dir. To set the path to your libre/openoffice installation change the ppshw:application:office:path.

Running

To run the application first start up mongodb:

$pathToMongodbInstallation/mongod --dbpath $dbpath 

To start the application:

node $pathToApp/app.js

Hints

Developers: hotnode can be handy for automatically restart your node.js application when you edit some code. Install it via:

npm install -g hotnode

To run your application with "hot code" replace start it with:

hotnode $pathToApp/app.js

ToDos

• Setup the LibreOffice instance to be running as service in background and send conversion requests there (instead of calling/instantiating by upload)
• improve layout
• -use pdf.js to create preview & page images from pdfs-
  • came to use imagemagick with ghostscript, sadly the pdf.js solution would have required too much work
• Expand / collapse file tree entries
• Show pages / thumbnails
  • Fix thumbnail quality
• Save number of pages