ShowHN: GetURL - A CLI tool to get a public link for any file (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

119 pointsuams13y ago49 comments

49 comments

uamsOP13y ago

Something I threw together over the weekend. I've been using filepicker on a website of mine. Realized that I could hack it to upload and share files in a simple tool.

Inspired by cloudApp, when I found myself wanting a command line version.

chefsurfing13y ago

Well done! Also you deserve a big thanks from Filepicker.io - this is great inbound marketing for them.

adlwalrus13y ago

Seems like this could be done with more respect for user/data sovereignty if done with Node.js. Essentially, you'd cat the file into the script, it would spin up an HTTP server, do some port knocking or whatever NAT-traversal-fu is necessary, then spit out a link with either your raw IP, or a preconfigured dynDNS domain name.

This way we aren't carelessly littering our data all over the "cloud".

HerraBRE13y ago

Tooting my own horn again, but you just asked for https://pagekite.net/:

$ pagekite.py /path/to/file.blah yourname.pagekite.me

... send people a link to https://yourname.pagekite.me/file.blah and it streams from your disk. CTRL+C and it's offline with no copies stored anywhere in the cloud. Works with entire folders too (append +indexes to generate indexes), which is good for static HTML demos. If you want a harder-to-guess URL, append the +hide flag to the command above.

And yes, it's open source and you can run your own relay/reverse-proxy if you don't want to rely on me. Give it a try! :-)

voltagex_13y ago

Be proud, your domain has made BlueCoat's list of "proxy avoidance" sites and is blocked at my workplace.

1 more reply

lukeholder13y ago

awesome. thanks for sharing!

wizard_213y ago

Know any port knocking as a service companies? If there was a reliable way to get a udp connection between hosts that I didn't have to write myself, I'd be tempted to take this on.

tcas13y ago

I think the term you're looking for is UDP hole punching, port knocking is performing a special sequence of connections (i.e. try TCP on 8100 then UDP on 4000 then TCP on 2000) to open up an additional port (like SSH) to a certain IP.

I'd be curious if there exists such a company or even any good open source libraries that can tie into other servers.

charliesome13y ago

> Know any port knocking as a service companies?

Are you serious?

nyan_sandwich13y ago

Another:

    cat file | curl -F 'sprunge=<-' sprunge.us

teach13y ago

Does sprunge work for non-textual data?

crohr13y ago

In the same vein, you can try http://flag.io/:

  curl -T /path/to/any/file flag.io
  # or
  cat some-file | curl -T - flag.io

Basically, pipe anything you want into it. It can also syntax-highlight your text files.

cleverjake13y ago

no it doesnt.

corford13y ago

Nice work and very handy.

I hadn't come across filepicker.io before and reading through the geturl code something jumped out at me:

APIKEY = check_output(['curl', '--silent', "%(fpurl)s/getKey?email=%(email)s" % {'fpurl': FPAPIURL, 'email': email}])

From that, it looks like any random person can fill up your filepicker.io space providing they have your API key or know the email address you used to register the account with. Made sense when I read a bit more about what filepicker.io actually does (i.e. a client-side embeddable javascript file uploader) but it's something to be aware of (especially if you link your account up to an S3 backend!).

liyanchang13y ago

One of the founders, just wanted to reply and say, yes, you are entirely right. We put up that endpoint for a separate purpose, didn't expect people to find it (underestimating people is clearly a bad strategy) and will be locking it down to require a password to create/find a apikey.

In general, the apikey doesn't actually provide very much security as is; by it's public by it's very nature as you have to put it client side and expose it to all your users. We've got HMAC and secret keys in the pipeline for next week :D

xxbondsxx13y ago

Will those security changes break GetURL?

Also, isn't it normal to check the referrer when using API keys? That's what Facebook does -- API keys only work from certain domains, which effectively restricts their access. The downside is that you need to maintain separate API keys for every domain (staging, sandbox, etc), but the advantage is that they don't rely on the honor system :P

nvk13y ago

Neat, +1 on the 'brew' addition intent :)

asdfprou13y ago

Please submit to brew!

uamsOP13y ago

Submitted to brew. Not sure if I did everything right (first time)

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/pull/15229

Zash13y ago

I have no idea why I haven't installed xsel already. The help mentions a secondary clipboard. X has a secondary clipboard? Is there a way to paste that (like middle click for the primary)?

icebraining13y ago

Following the old zero-one-infinity rule[1], X has an arbitrary number of clipboards; the most commonly used are PRIMARY (select+middle click), CLIPBOARD (usually C-c/C-v or edit→copy menus) and SECONDARY which, as far as I know, can only be pasted using applications that support it (e.g. xclip -o).

[1]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.htm...

ralph13y ago

You can ignore the bit about Emacs if you wish. http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html

TazeTSchnitzel13y ago

Since I have web hosting and use GitHub, here's my method:

    cp file_name ~/Projects/2012/ajf.me/ajf.me/imagedump/ && cd ~/Projects/2012/ajf.me/ajf.me/ && git add imagedump && git commit -m 'new file' && cd .. && ./update.sh

Elaborate, sure, but it does the job. update.sh runs git push and then does an SSH into my server and a git pull. (Because I'm too lazy to actually set up git on my own server)

SoftwareMaven13y ago

You don't need to set up a git server on your own sever. Just create a git repo, add it as a remote revenue to your local repo, and use ssh+git to push changes directly.

But if you have your own server, why don't you just scp it directly there? That's the piece most people are missing.

xxbondsxx13y ago

SCP is really the solution here. But to be fair, I only discovered scp after a year or two of CLI work. I might have been tempted to hack something together like Taze's solution in my earlier days

lttlrck13y ago

This is awesome, it actually makes filepicker.io useful for me. My main use-case for Dropbox has turned out to be for this kind of sharing... geturl is waaaaaay easier.

netvarun13y ago

This a nice nifty script. Thanks!

Something I noticed (https://www.filepicker.io/pricing/): Since filepicker.io charges by number of files and NOT by total size of files, a free account could potentially host a huge amount of data.

Eg: 5000 files, each of 1 GB = 5 TB!!!

Synthpixel13y ago

It couldn't handle files with spaces, plus the link it gives initiates a download for the file instead allowing you to view it in the browser. Considering most of the time I want to quickly upload a file in this manner the file is a screenshot, this is basically useless for me.

egonschiele13y ago

Very nice! But no Python 2.6 support?

voltagex_13y ago

As of an hour ago it works on 2.6 :D

robertskmiles13y ago

The key problem seems to be `check_output` in the `subprocess` module.

voltagex_13y ago

https://github.com/uams/geturl/issues/7

Edit: pull request submitted.

grakic13y ago

What about storage usage?

  > To make it easier to get started, if you haven't
  > put in your S3 credentials we will store them on
  > our servers, but as your usage increases we will
  > ask you to move to your own storage.

tldnr13y ago

Nice tool, I made something similar for dropbox a while back that symlinks/copies files into your DB folder.

https://github.com/BRMatt/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/dropup

slig13y ago

Nice! There's an opportunity for some company sponsor this (a la localtunnel.com and twilio).

brettcvz13y ago

Given that it uses Filepicker.io, probably makes sense for us to take a look. The idea of turning files into URLs is one that we really like

MateusCaruccio13y ago

Inspired by geturl, I built this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4626779

pro: no storage backend needed con: works only behind a UPnP router (most are ok)

soraggi13y ago

I really liked it, so I ported it to perl implementing a basic caching system (SHA1), I hope you don't mind: https://github.com/psychotropic/Get--Url/

3rd313y ago

I still prefer Dropbox because you have better control about what you upload.

Simply copy your files into ~/Dropbox/Public, right-click and choose Dropbox > Copy Public URL. Voilà!

cowsaysoink13y ago

Except that Dropbox has now discontinued their public folders in exchange for there get link everywhere (which requires you to click add to dropbox or a download button rather than direct access).

3rd313y ago

I’m not sure what you mean. The method I wrote about still seem to work.

1 more reply

syassami13y ago

Very awesome tool, it's a great way of sharing nice and quickly!

Macphisto13y ago

Nice utility!

Just a note:

28: exit("`curl` is requrired. Please install it")

uamsOP13y ago

Haha. I'll fix that when I get a chance; pull requests are encouraged :D

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

49 comments

uamsOP13y ago

Something I threw together over the weekend. I've been using filepicker on a website of mine. Realized that I could hack it to upload and share files in a simple tool.

Inspired by cloudApp, when I found myself wanting a command line version.

chefsurfing13y ago

Well done! Also you deserve a big thanks from Filepicker.io - this is great inbound marketing for them.

adlwalrus13y ago

This way we aren't carelessly littering our data all over the "cloud".

HerraBRE13y ago

Tooting my own horn again, but you just asked for https://pagekite.net/:

$ pagekite.py /path/to/file.blah yourname.pagekite.me

And yes, it's open source and you can run your own relay/reverse-proxy if you don't want to rely on me. Give it a try! :-)

voltagex_13y ago

Be proud, your domain has made BlueCoat's list of "proxy avoidance" sites and is blocked at my workplace.

1 more reply

lukeholder13y ago

awesome. thanks for sharing!

wizard_213y ago

Know any port knocking as a service companies? If there was a reliable way to get a udp connection between hosts that I didn't have to write myself, I'd be tempted to take this on.

tcas13y ago

I'd be curious if there exists such a company or even any good open source libraries that can tie into other servers.

charliesome13y ago

> Know any port knocking as a service companies?

Are you serious?

nyan_sandwich13y ago

Another:

    cat file | curl -F 'sprunge=<-' sprunge.us

teach13y ago

Does sprunge work for non-textual data?

crohr13y ago

In the same vein, you can try http://flag.io/:

  curl -T /path/to/any/file flag.io
  # or
  cat some-file | curl -T - flag.io

Basically, pipe anything you want into it. It can also syntax-highlight your text files.

cleverjake13y ago

no it doesnt.

corford13y ago

Nice work and very handy.

I hadn't come across filepicker.io before and reading through the geturl code something jumped out at me:

APIKEY = check_output(['curl', '--silent', "%(fpurl)s/getKey?email=%(email)s" % {'fpurl': FPAPIURL, 'email': email}])

liyanchang13y ago

xxbondsxx13y ago

Will those security changes break GetURL?

nvk13y ago

Neat, +1 on the 'brew' addition intent :)

asdfprou13y ago

Please submit to brew!

uamsOP13y ago

Submitted to brew. Not sure if I did everything right (first time)

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/pull/15229

Zash13y ago

I have no idea why I haven't installed xsel already. The help mentions a secondary clipboard. X has a secondary clipboard? Is there a way to paste that (like middle click for the primary)?

icebraining13y ago

[1]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.htm...

ralph13y ago

You can ignore the bit about Emacs if you wish. http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html

TazeTSchnitzel13y ago

Since I have web hosting and use GitHub, here's my method:

    cp file_name ~/Projects/2012/ajf.me/ajf.me/imagedump/ && cd ~/Projects/2012/ajf.me/ajf.me/ && git add imagedump && git commit -m 'new file' && cd .. && ./update.sh

Elaborate, sure, but it does the job. update.sh runs git push and then does an SSH into my server and a git pull. (Because I'm too lazy to actually set up git on my own server)

SoftwareMaven13y ago

You don't need to set up a git server on your own sever. Just create a git repo, add it as a remote revenue to your local repo, and use ssh+git to push changes directly.

But if you have your own server, why don't you just scp it directly there? That's the piece most people are missing.

xxbondsxx13y ago

SCP is really the solution here. But to be fair, I only discovered scp after a year or two of CLI work. I might have been tempted to hack something together like Taze's solution in my earlier days

lttlrck13y ago

This is awesome, it actually makes filepicker.io useful for me. My main use-case for Dropbox has turned out to be for this kind of sharing... geturl is waaaaaay easier.

netvarun13y ago

This a nice nifty script. Thanks!

Something I noticed (https://www.filepicker.io/pricing/): Since filepicker.io charges by number of files and NOT by total size of files, a free account could potentially host a huge amount of data.

Eg: 5000 files, each of 1 GB = 5 TB!!!

Synthpixel13y ago

egonschiele13y ago

Very nice! But no Python 2.6 support?

voltagex_13y ago

As of an hour ago it works on 2.6 :D

robertskmiles13y ago

The key problem seems to be `check_output` in the `subprocess` module.

voltagex_13y ago

https://github.com/uams/geturl/issues/7

Edit: pull request submitted.

grakic13y ago

What about storage usage?

  > To make it easier to get started, if you haven't
  > put in your S3 credentials we will store them on
  > our servers, but as your usage increases we will
  > ask you to move to your own storage.

tldnr13y ago

Nice tool, I made something similar for dropbox a while back that symlinks/copies files into your DB folder.

https://github.com/BRMatt/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/dropup

slig13y ago

Nice! There's an opportunity for some company sponsor this (a la localtunnel.com and twilio).

brettcvz13y ago

Given that it uses Filepicker.io, probably makes sense for us to take a look. The idea of turning files into URLs is one that we really like

MateusCaruccio13y ago

Inspired by geturl, I built this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4626779

pro: no storage backend needed con: works only behind a UPnP router (most are ok)

soraggi13y ago

I really liked it, so I ported it to perl implementing a basic caching system (SHA1), I hope you don't mind: https://github.com/psychotropic/Get--Url/

3rd313y ago

I still prefer Dropbox because you have better control about what you upload.

Simply copy your files into ~/Dropbox/Public, right-click and choose Dropbox > Copy Public URL. Voilà!

cowsaysoink13y ago

Except that Dropbox has now discontinued their public folders in exchange for there get link everywhere (which requires you to click add to dropbox or a download button rather than direct access).

3rd313y ago

I’m not sure what you mean. The method I wrote about still seem to work.

1 more reply

syassami13y ago

Very awesome tool, it's a great way of sharing nice and quickly!

Macphisto13y ago

Nice utility!

Just a note:

28: exit("`curl` is requrired. Please install it")

uamsOP13y ago

Haha. I'll fix that when I get a chance; pull requests are encouraged :D

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse