PiGallery2

Homepage: http://bpatrik.github.io/pigallery2/

This is a directory-first photo gallery website, optimised for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi)

Live Demo

Live Demo @ heroku: https://pigallery2.herokuapp.com/

• the demo page first load might take up 30s: the time while the free webservice boots up

Table of contents

1. Getting started
2. Translate the page to your own language
3. Feature list
4. Known errors
5. Credits

1. Getting started (on Raspberry Pi)

1.1 Direct Install

1.1.0 Install NodeJs

Download and extract

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Full node install on raspberry pi description: https://www.w3schools.com/nodejs/nodejs_raspberrypi.asp

1.1.1 Install PiGallery2

1.1.1-a Install from release

cd ~
wget https://github.com/bpatrik/pigallery2/releases/download/1.5.0/pigallery2.zip
unzip pigallery2.zip
cd pigallery2
npm install

1.1.1-b Install from source

cd ~
wget https://github.com/bpatrik/pigallery2/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd pigallery2-master # enter the unzipped directory
npm install

Note: if you run npm run build-release, it creates a clean, minified, production ready version from the app in the release folder, that is ready to deploy.

1.1.2 Run PiGallery2

npm start

To configure it, run PiGallery2 first to create config.json file, then edit it and restart. The app has a nice UI for settings, you may use that too. Default user: admin pass: admin

1.2 Run with Docker

If you have docker and don't want to install all the dependencies, use this:

docker run \
   -p 80:80 \
   -e NODE_ENV=production \
   -v <path to your config file folder>/config.json:/pigallery2-release/config.json \
   -v <path to your images folder>:/pigallery2-release/demo/images \
   -v <path to your temp folder>:/pigallery2-release/demo/TEMP \
   bpatrik/pigallery2:nightly-stretch

Make sure that a file at <path to your config file folder>/config.json exists before running it.

After the container is up and running, you go to http://localhost and log in with user: admin pass: admin and set up the page in the settings.

Note: You dont need to do the installation steps if you are using docker.

1.3 Advanced configuration

You can set up the app the following ways:

• Using the UI
• Manually editing the config.json
• Through switches
  • Like: node backend/index.js --Server-port=3000 --Client-authenticationRequired=false
  • You can check the generated config.json for the config hierarchy
• Through environmental variable
  • like set env. variable Server-port to 3000

1.4 Useful links/tips:

using nginx

It is recommended to use a reverse proxy like nginx before node https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5009324/node-js-nginx-what-now

making https

With cerbot & nginx it is simple to set up secure connection. You have no excuse not doing so. https://certbot.eff.org/

node install error:

If you get error during module installation, make sure you have everything to build node modules from source

apt-get install build-essential  libkrb5-dev gcc g++

2. Translate the page to your own language

1. download / clone the repo (the source not the packed release!)
2. add your language e.g: fr

   npm run add-translation -- --fr
   

   it creates a new messages.fr.xls file at frontend/translate folder, it will already contain dummy translation with google translate.
3. 'fix' the dummy translation
4. test if it works: build and start the app

   npm install
   npm start
   

5. create a pull request at github to add your translation to the project.

3. Feature list

• Rendering directories as it is
  • Listing subdirectories recursively
  • Listing photos in a nice grid layout
    • supporting most common image formats
    • showing tag/keywords, locations, GPS coordinates for photos
    • rendering photos on demand (on scroll)
• On the fly thumbnail generation in several sizes
  • prioritizes thumbnail generation (generating thumbnail first for the visible photos)
  • saving generated thumbnails to TEMP folder for reuse
  • supporting multi-core CPUs
  • supporting hardware acceleration (sharp and gm as optional and JS-based Jimp as fallback)
• Custom lightbox for full screen photo viewing
  • keyboard support for navigation
  • showing low-res thumbnail while full image loads
  • Information panel for showing Exif info
  • Automatic playing
  • gesture support (swipe left, right, up)
• Client side caching (directories and search results)
• Rendering photos with GPS coordinates on google map
  • .gpx file support
• Two modes: SQL database and no-database mode
  • both modes supports
    • user management
    • password protection can be disabled/enabled
  • database mode supports:
    • faster directory listing
    • searching
      • instant search, auto complete
    • sharing
      • setting link expiration time
• internalization / translation support
• Nice design
  • responsive design (phone, tablet desktop support)
• Setup page
• Random photo url
  • You can generate an url that returns a random photo from your gallery. You can use this feature to develop 3rd party applications, like: changing desktop background
• video support
  • fully supports *.mp4 files and partially (might have errors with safari and IE) supports *.ogg, *.ogv, *.webm files
  • uses ffmpeg and ffprobe to generate video thumbnails
• Dockerized
• Markdown based blogging support - future plan
  • you can write some note in the blog.md for every directory
• bug free :) - In progress

4. Known errors

• EXIF orientation tag:
  • There is no nice way to handle EXIF orientation tag properly. The page handles these photos, but might cause same error in the user experience (e.g.: the pages loads those photos slower. See issue #11)
• Video support on weak servers (like raspberry pi) with low upload rate
  • video playback may use up too much resources and the server might not response for a while. A solution might be to down scale / convert the video files to lower bitrate.

5. Credits

Crossbrowser testing sponsored by Browser Stack