Saturnus is unmaintained!

Update (July 1, 2023): Due to new Reddit API usage rules, I've now taken down the hosted website in order to not accidentally go over the limits of the API free tier. Now the only way for you to try this is to clone and build a local copy with your own Client ID.

I'm super busy with my job nowadays so unfortunately I won't have time to work on this project at the moment. It's still deployed and usable! But don't expect any new features or fixes in the near future.

I've improved my front-end skills a lot since starting this project, so rather than continuing to build on this pile of spaghetti code, I will likely do a rewrite in another repo.

Saturnus

A work in progress browser client for Reddit.

Ever since the new Reddit was launched, many users have voiced their dislike of how clunky it feels. The aim of this project is to create a more light-weight Reddit experience, taking inspiration from the great iOS app Apollo for Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.

Develop locally

This section describes how to set up the project to develop on your local computer. You need Node.js and npm installed on your computer.

Reddit API

This project uses Reddit's API. If you want to develop locally or deploy your own version, you need to go here and create a new web app. You should then copy .env.example into a new file .env and add your Reddit Client ID.

For myself, I have actually set up two "reddit apps": one where the redirect uri is http://localhost:3000 for my local development and the other whose redirect uri is the uri of my hosted production version for the deploy environment.

Initial setup

Assuming you have set up your .env file, follow the below steps:

Install dependencies:

$ npm install

Start local development:

$ npm start

Your local app should now be running on http://localhost:3000!

Build and deploy

This repo is connected to Netlify which automatically builds and deploys from the master branch.

To build and deploy in some other way, follow the same steps as the set up for local development, up until the npm start command. Then, run the following command:

$ npm run build

This will compile all code and put it into the /build folder. You can now use any static website hosting to deploy this folder, for example with your own Netlify setup or a remote server with nginx or something!

Helpful editor extensions

Throughout this project, I organize content within files by using comments like this:

// MARK: Helper functions

function thing() {}

This is actually a convention I learned in Swift, but I've found it useful in JS as well. I recommend the VS Code extension TODO Highlight with the following config:

"todohighlight.keywords": [
    {
      "text": "MARK:",
      "isWholeLine": true,
      "backgroundColor": "lightblue",
      "color": "#ffffff"
    }
  ]

This config will highlight the lines that contain the MARK comments. Obviously, you can use any other colors if you prefer.

willwull / saturnus