80 lines
3.8 KiB
Text
80 lines
3.8 KiB
Text
blash - BlackLight's shell
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An AJAX CMS for browsing your web site through a shell-oriented interface
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by BlackLight, <blacklight@autistici.org>, http://0x00.ath.cx
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Q.: What is blash?
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A.: blash is a tiny CMS developed in AJAX that allows you to browse your website
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through a shell-oriented interface. The way to use it is quite simple and
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inspired from software like bash and zsh, you can see an example running at the
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address http://0x00.ath.cx/blash/index.html.
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Q.: How can a web site be represented like a filesystem browsable from a terminal?
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A.: A directory is fundamentally a `container' of logically correlated items (for
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example, a directory could be blog/, or forum/, or news/, and so on). A page in your
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web site is represented as file inside of its directory (for example, the 4th post
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in a blog may be represented as the file `4' in directory `blog/'). Then you can
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simply browse the web site in the following way:
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- ls for viewing the content of a certain directory
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- cd for changing the current directory
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- cat for opening a certain file
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A `file' can be a container of static stuff (in this case `cat' simply prints
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its content on the pseudo-terminal) or the link to another page (in this case
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`cat' opens that link in a new window or tab, be sure you allow your web site to
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open popup windows). The pages having static content printed to the
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pseudo-terminal are represented in normal font, the files that links to an
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external content is instead represented as an `executable' file (by default, in
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colour green).
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Q.: Which browsers are compatible with blash?
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A.: So far blash has been successfully tested with the following browsers:
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- Mozilla Firefox ( >= 3.5)
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- Opera ( >= 11.0 )
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- Google Chrome (despite the auto-completion feature is a bit buggy)
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- Konqueror >= 4.x
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- Flock
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- uzbl
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- surf
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- vimprobable
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- jumanji
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However, any browser with a decent JavaScript engine should give no problem with
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blash. Internet Explorer is currently NOT working with blash, at least any
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release <= 8. I'm sorry, choose a decent browser.
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Q.: How do I add the contents for my web site in blash?
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A.: Open the file blash.json. This JSON file contains the preferences for your
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shell (banner, prompt style, default user, escape sequences recognized in the
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prompt string...), the commands to be used, and the array "directories". This
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array is the container of your web site data. Each element can have the
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following fields:
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- path (MANDATORY), the full absolute path that identifies that resource
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- type (MANDATORY), the resource type (directory or file)
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- href (for files only), if the file is a link to an external page, the link it
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should point to
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- content (for files only), if the file has static content that should be
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printed in the pseudo-terminal window, this field contains its content
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Q.: Can I add more commands?
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A.: Sure you can. Take a look at directory `commands' for seeing the definition
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of default commands. Each commands is represented as a JSON file containing the
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following fields:
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- "name", name of the command
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- "info", array containing the fields "syntax" and "brief", used for showing the
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syntax of the command when you type `man blash' and the full description when
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you type `man <command>'
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- "action": a function taking as parameter the argument passed to the command
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and executing the command itself. This function returns the string that should
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be printed by the command to the terminal. You can also access and/or modify
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blash's variables and settings accessing them through the object shell.* take a
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look at the file `blash.js' for a brief description of the fields of this object
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or to the sample commands in `commands/' directory for seeing how to access
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them.
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After creating your JSON file with the new command, don't forget to add the name
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of the command to the array `commands' in blash.json so that the CMS sees it.
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