beertracker

Simple script to track the beers I drink

Goals for this project:

• Help me remember what beers I have been drinking, and how I liked them
• Keep track of money and alcohol consumption

What this is not

• Cloud based - I want to host it myself
• Crowdsourced - I am only interested in my own opions about the beers
• Public - There are many beer rating sites already
• Global - I only care about the local watering holes

Outline

• Simple form to enter a beer I am drinking
• Stores all data in a flat text file
• Written in Perl, run as a CGI script under Apache

Although this is a personal project to scratch my own itch, I might as well release it under GPL, in case someone else finds this interesting. The system can handle multiple accounts, so if you ask nicely (and if I know you already) I may give you one to play with. A few of my friends have tried the system. Most never got started at all. None of them have managed to use it for very long. It takes a lot of discipline to note down every beer you drink. I guess I can only do it because I enjoy working with the code as well.

Version 1.0 was released in Feb-2016. It works, and I am using it myself. Of course there is a small list of features I will want to add some day "real soon now".

As of May 2024, we are at version 1.4, and I am still using this to track (almost?) all the beers I drink.

Installation

Here are a few things you need to remember when setting this up. I am using a Debian server. Adjust as needed

There is an Apache config file example under /etc.

You need to set up a .htpasswd to protect the main directory. First time with htpasswd -c .htpasswd username. For later users, do not include the -c.

You also need to make a directory under it called beerdata, and an empty file like heikki.data in it. Both need to be owned and writable by www-data.

  mkdir beerdata
  chown www-data beerdata
  touch beerdata/heikki.data
  chown www-data beerdata/*.data

There is also a script newuser.sh that does most of that. Needs to be run as root.

Point your browser to beerdata. You should see a dark input form. If not, check /var/log/apache2/error.log. If you do, enter a test beer or two, and look at the lists.

Problems

If you are just starting, I may be willing to help with technical issues, especially if I have set up an account for you on my system. If you are self-hosting, I hope you can manage most technical problems yourself, and/or look in the code to see what is going on.

If you run into bugs and real problems, please file them as issues on GitHub, at https://github.com/heikkilevanto/beertracker/issues. Even better, if you can fix it yourself, file a pull request.

See also

• The User Manual
• The Source Code