932f3bbcab
This adds a straightforward way of preserving Farside's redirecting behavior in the user's browser history. That way if an instance becomes unavailable between the 5 min scans, the user can opt to navigate back one page and be taken to a new instance. This is accomplished using a single line of JS, and could potentially work as the default behavior of Farside (with the current default behavior requiring a path prefix instead). This should be revisited down the road when more people are using this service.
5 KiB
A redirecting service for FOSS alternative frontends.
Farside provides links that automatically redirect to working instances of privacy-oriented alternative frontends, such as Nitter, Libreddit, etc. This allows for users to have more reliable access to the available public instances for a particular service, while also helping to distribute traffic more evenly across all instances and avoid performance bottlenecks and rate-limiting.
Demo
Farside's links work with the following structure: farside.link/<service>/<path>
For example:
| Service | Page | Farside Link |
|---|---|---|
| Libreddit | /r/popular | https://farside.link/libreddit/r/popular |
| Teddit | /r/popular | https://farside.link/teddit/r/popular |
| Nitter | User Profile | https://farside.link/nitter/josevalim |
| Invidious | Home Page | https://farside.link/invidious |
| Piped | Video Page | https://farside.link/piped/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU |
| Bibliogram | User Profile | https://farside.link/bibliogram/u/kbdfans |
| Whoogle | Search "Elixir" | https://farside.link/whoogle/search?q=elixir&lang_interface=en |
| Searx | Search "Redis" | https://farside.link/searx/search?q=redis |
| SimplyTranslate | Translate "hola" | https://farside.link/simplytranslate/?engine=google&text=hola |
| Lingva | Translate "bonjour" | https://farside.link/lingva/auto/en/bonjour |
| Rimgo | View photo album | https://farside.link/rimgo/a/H8M4rcp |
How It Works
The app runs with an internally scheduled cron task that queries all instances for services defined in services.json every 5 minutes. For each instance, as long as the instance takes <5 seconds to respond and returns a successful response code, the instance is added to a list of available instances for that particular service. If not, it is discarded until the next update period.
Farside's routing is very minimal, with only the following routes:
/- The app home page, displaying all live instances for every service
/ping- A passthrough "ping" to redis to ensure both app and redis are working
/:service/*glob- The main endpoint for redirecting a user to a working instance of a particular service with the specified path
- Ex:
/libreddit/r/popularwould navigate to<libreddit instance URL>/r/popular - Note that a path is not required.
/libredditfor example will still redirect the user to a working libreddit instance
/_/:service/*glob- Achieves the same redirect as the main
/:service/*globendpoint, but preserves a short landing page in the browser's history to allow quickly jumping between instances by navigating back. - Ex:
/_/nitter-> nitter instance A -> (navigate back one page) -> nitter instance B -> ... - Note: Uses Javascript to preserve the page in history
- Achieves the same redirect as the main
When a service is requested with the /:service/... endpoint, Farside requests
the list of working instances from Redis and returns a random one from the list
and adds that instance as a new entry in Redis to remove from subsequent
requests for that service. For example:
A user navigates to /nitter and is redirected to nitter.net. The next user
to request /nitter will be guaranteed to not be directed to nitter.net, and
will instead be redirected to a separate (random) working instance. That
instance will now take the place of nitter.net as the "reserved" instance, and
nitter.net will be returned to the list of available Nitter instances.
This "reserving" of previously chosen instances is performed in an attempt to ensure better distribution of traffic to available instances for each service.
Farside also has built-in IP ratelimiting for all requests, enforcing only one request per second per IP.
Development
- Install redis
- Install elixir
- Start redis:
redis-server /usr/local/etc/redis.conf - Install dependencies:
mix deps.get - Initialize redis contents:
mix run -e Farside.Instances.sync - Run Farside:
mix run --no-halt- Uses localhost:4001
Environment Variables
| Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
| FARSIDE_TEST | If enabled, bypasses the instance availability check and adds all instances to the pool. |