GeFeSLE - Generic, Federated, Subscribable List Engine

Yet another list making tool? Yes. Here's why

Screenshots

(hover over for details)
Main list index showing lists (and how many items are in each). Closeup of a list showing some imported Mastodon Bookmarks - if you don't like the style for how these look, customize your CSS! Each list is a static HTML page with text and tag filter widgets. List items are designed to collapse to fit several on the page at a time, but clicking on the item body expands them. Curating my imported Mastodon bookmarks by moving them to different lists. When you import Mastodon bookmarks you can optionally UN-bookmark them!

Lets add a new list of hot foot trucks in our area.. Our newly created list.. .. and how it appears in the list index Adding a new list item..

.. and how it appears on our list. (If you dont like the appearance or layout, customize with your own CSS stylesheet!)

BUT THIS ONE is:

designed around sharing and collaboration: with friends, communities or the internet at large
self-hosted: lightweight and self-contained single binary (except for the .NET runtime environment)
simple html+css presentation: view lists on any device (if it can run a browser)
- human readable static addressing (1) e.g. myserver.mydomain.org/Big Fat List Of The Year.html
- customize your site with page headers/footers and your own CSS stylesheet (without a plugin; eat that WordPress)
- filter lists by text or keywords (hashtags)
- one-click add/remove tags; one-click move items between lists (permissions allowing of course)
single-user mode: lists just for you, or
- multi-user: create local accounts if you want, or allow friends to login from other platforms with OAuth (Google, Microsoft and Mastodon)
get ur data IN: import lists from anywhere
- json, xml
- Mastodon Bookmarks
- Google Tasks
- Microsoft Sticky Notes
- .. with more planned in the future: Trello (boards, swimlanes), Pocket, Google Keep/Saved, Microsoft OneNote, browser bookmarks,
get ur data OUT:
- html+css (and a little bit of javascript for filtering); and it prints to PDF just fine without any funny stuff
- json, xml, text, Excel
- .. write your own!
self-hosted web interface for administration and list curation
- browser plugins (Firefox for now) to quickly add new list items - no matter what page you're on; take a snip of the current browser tab to add to your new item
- (SOON) Windows systray widget to add new list items - wouldn't it be nice if you could add an item to Trello without opening Trello?
- (soon to be fully documented) REST API - don't like our apps? write your own.

(1) so long as you don't change the list name

Working on the assumption that fetching and browsing the list should be fast, and modifications to lists or the items in in them are infrequent, modifications to list/items triggers regeneration of a static html page and an RSS feed xml for each list.

Media can be attached to list items via file uploads for sharing. Media referenced in imported items can stay referenced, or be downloaded for local use.

Both static pages or attached media files respect list visibility that list owners select:

Private - only the owner/creator of a list can see
List Owner friends - other users you designate have full control over lists including granting access to new friends
Contributor friends - who can add/modify items and lists but cannot delete things or grant access to new friends
Public - lists are visible to all, even if they don't have a login

Federated? (roadmap: v0.2.0)

Each List gets an Activity Pub handle that you can follow from any Federated platform. e.g. Steve's List of Where To Eat In Cleveland -> @cleveland_eats@gefesle.blahaj.zone

Every new list item (or update or deletion) puts an appropriate toot into your feed. Replies to those toots, get threaded as comments on the lists (subject to various controls and settings to make sure noone's toots are recorded forever someplace they didn't intend).

Future Work (v0.3.0+)

accessibility and localization support (those are table stakes)
list flavours & behaviours:
- a list of websites is a webring is it not?
- a list of songs or videos could be a playlist
list items get "garnishes" to qualify, reinforce, refute or challenge an item (or a whole list) e.g:
- "we ate here the food was excellent"
- "I just checked this link it 404'd" or "last verified: <date>"
- "this author said <insert objectionable behaviour here>, may want to think about their inclusion on this list"
- "I can provide a second source for this quotation: <link>"
"in a box" configuration. Taking inspiration from the Mail-in-a-box and similar one-click-self-host-setup projects, GeFeSLE will be able to self-configure (or hand hold the user) to:
- install from a package on the host of your choice
- configure firewalls (and help with reverse proxy if necessary)
- custom domain registration
- dynamic dns setup + test
- external ping-back "am I reachable?" checks
- certificates registration and management
- master instance lists of lists (opt-in of course) for list discovery and Federation
- search engine friendly: robots.txt, sitemaps, crawl-me requests
- GeFeSLE already hosts static pages with file level access control restrictions and file uploading capabilities. Its a hop, skip and a jump from here to having a single binary webserver for static HTML and Javascript hosting. Bring back Web 1.0 (just with better CSS support)!

State of the Project

(as of 2024-06-23) Working towards v0.1.0 MVP

GeFeSLE engine is an ASP.NET 8.0 C# executable (yes, we totally started with the ASP.NET 8.0 Core "Minimal API" tutorial)
GeFeSLE FireFox plugin - only allows login, list selection and addition of items (body in Markdown); does have "receipt mode" where it takes a snip of the open browser tab, uploads it to server and adds the image link to the item Markdown. (all other functionality below is for the self-hosted web UI):
lists can be created, modified and removed; list description is Markdown
list items can be created, modified and removed; item body is Markdown
when viewing a list with appropriate permissions, tags can be one-click added/removed; items can be one-click moved to another list (that you likewise have permission on)
list level export/import to/from json (I wouldn't call this a full export/import yet; for one it doesn't include any local attachments/images; no users etc.)
list items can be imported to lists from: Mastodon Bookmarks, Microsoft/Windows Sticky-Notes, Google Tasks (gave up on browser bookmarks: Netscape-bookmarks-file-1 is a tough nut)
users can be created, modified and removed; password reset; assign roles: SU, List Owner, List Contributor
users can log in from OAuth: Mastodon, Microsoft and Google (although they have to ALSO be lised in the database to have a role assigned and do anything)

TODO Before v0.1.0 MVP:

https://github.com/tezoatlipoca/GeFeSLE-server/issues/81 [81]
FINISH Refactoring API according to CRUD and HATEOAS; ensure meaningful HTTP error codes and consistent data returns; consistent access restriction on endpoints by user role; probably should verson control too e.g. /endpoint -> /api/v1/endpoint. eh, finish this later. Need soak time 'out there'.

Yeah yeah how do I install it?

installation
Configuring GeFeSLE / config file
Microsoft, Google, Mastodon - OAuth providers and import sources
putting GeFeSLE behind NGINX
MacOS?

tezoatlipoca / GeFeSLE-server

readme