Sandstorm support

[sprin]

The Sandstorm platform is attractive for pg-discuss because of it's ease of use for operators, ability to self-host or use the hosted option, and emphasis on security.

After an initial proof-of-concept to determine viability, it appears possible to use pg-discuss on Sandstorm as a cross-domain comment service. Sandstorm will provide authentication for admin users. Both static assets and the public API can be published through Sandstorm. Sandstorm removes the Cookie/Set-Cookie headers when proxying to the app through an exported API, so anonymous users will be identified by an id stored in sessionStorage (versus a session cookie) that will be sent in a custom header.

A rough outline of the work involved:

• Create Sandstorm package for the pg-discuss app and it's dependencies (reverse proxy (nginx), wsgi container (uwsgi), Python virtualenv, database (PostgreSQL)).
• Export the HTTP API via postMessage.
• Generate the Isso JS snippet containing the host and authorization token in the setup page.
• Enable the Isso JS client to send the bearer token in a header for every request,
• Write an auth plugin (IdentityPolicy) to handle the X-Sandstorm-User-Id header, and associate comments with the id.
• Publish static assets vi the getPublicId binary.
• Add an option to the Isso JS client to store ids for anonymous users in sessionStorage and include the id in API requests.