This change allows a bit quicker and simpler setup on new servers.
Rather than setting up dependencies, virtual environment, etc, a systemd
daemon, for example, can just ExecStart the script from any location
without having to perform any preliminary setup. The only prerequisite
step now is having Python3+ installed.
This introduces a new approach to handling user sessions, which should
allow for users to set more reliable config settings on public instances.
Previously, when a user with cookies disabled would update their config,
this would modify the app's default config file, which would in turn
cause new users to inherit these settings when visiting the app for the
first time and cause users to inherit these settings when their current
session cookie expired (which was after 30 days by default I believe).
There was also some half-baked logic for determining on the backend
whether or not a user had cookies disabled, which lead to some issues
with out of control session file creation by Flask.
Now, when a user visits the site, their initial request is forwarded to
a session/<session id> endpoint, and during that subsequent request
their current session id is matched against the one found in the url. If
the ids match, the user has cookies enabled. If not, their original
request is modified with a 'cookies_disabled' query param that tells
Flask not to bother trying to set up a new session for that user, and
instead just use the app's fallback Fernet key for encryption and the
default config.
Since attempting to create a session for a user with cookies disabled
creates a new session file, there is now also a clean-up routine included
in the new session decorator, which will remove all sessions that don't
include a valid key in the dict. NOTE!!! This means that current user
sessions on public instances will be cleared once this update is merged
in. In the long run that's a good thing though, since this will allow session
mgmt to be a lot more reliable overall for users regardless of their cookie
preference.
Individual user sessions still use a unique Fernet key for encrypting queries,
but users with cookies disabled will use the default app key for encryption
and decryption.
Sessions are also now (semi)permanent and have a lifetime of 1 year.
Addresses an issue where re-running an instance on replit caused an
`[ERNO 98] Address already in use` error. Now it kills whatever process
is running on the default Whoogle port (5000) before running the app.
Fixes#531
Validation of the Tor connection occasionally fails with a
ConnectionError from requests, which was previously uncaught. This is
now handled appropriately (error message shown and connection dropped).
Fixes#532
This checks the latest released version of Whoogle against
the current app version, and shows an "update available"
message if the current version num < latest release num.
Closes#305
The config menu has gotten out of control recently, but rather than
reducing functionality, I'm just going to set a max height for the div
and allow scrolling within the menu.
Ultimately though this indicates that the app is getting a bit too
complicated (imo). Striking a balance between customization and
minimalism is less of a priority for me nowadays though, hence why I'm
willing to let it slide for now. At some point, maybe when there are
more contributors, it could be nice to refactor this in some way so that
it isn't overwhelming to new users who are looking to customize their
instance (that's just me speculating btw, I haven't actually heard from
anyone who thinks there are too many options in that menu).
Using `format` for formatting bang queries caused a KeyError for some
searches, such as !hd (HUDOC). In that example, the URL returned in the
bangs json was `http://...#{%22fulltext%22:[%22{}%22]...`, where
standard formatting would not work due to the misidentification of
"fulltext" as a formatting key.
The logic has been updated to just replace the first occurence of "{}"
in the URL returned by the bangs dict.
Fixes#513
Due to how the response is now reformed into a new bsoup object when
bolding search query terms, creating an ip card for "my ip" searches
threw an error due to how the new bsoup object was initialized for the
"my ip" card. This passes the response in as a string instead.
Fixes#504
DDG style bang searches can now have the bang (!) at the end of
the search (i.e. "bologna w!" will now redirect to wikipedia just like
"bologna !w" would)
Since the request class is loaded prior to values being read from the
user's dotenv, the WHOOGLE_RESULT_PER_PAGE var wasn't being used for
searches.
This moves the definition of the base search url to be intialized in the
request class to address this issue.
Fixes#497
variables.css doesn't need to be loaded by any template, since
WHOOGLE_CONFIG_STYLE loads those values by default when not set
explicitly. Loading the stylesheet caused the logo colors to be
persistent unless set individually.
Sorry @gripped for sneaking all of this unnecessary color in...
Fixes#492
This modifies the search result page by bold-ing all appearances
of any word in the original query. If portions of the query are in
quotes (i.e. "ice cream"), only exact matches of the sequence of
words will be made bold.
Co-authored-by: Ben Busby <noreply+git@benbusby.com>
Activating minimal mode should also remove all collapsed sections, if
any are found.
WHOOGLE_MINIMAL now documented in readme and app.json (for heroku).
The "no JS" and "no cookies" portions of the readme warranted further
explanation. Since Whoogle uses JS and server-side cookies, it might be
confusing to a passerby what is actually meant by this.
Note that both JS and cookies can be blocked and Whoogle will still be
able to perform searches perfectly well.
Also updated the "theme" feature description
I've gotten a bit bored of the current light/dark themes, so I'm
switching the default theme over to the Doppelganger theme, which is a
better template/jumping off point for users to use when creating custom
themes since it also provides examples for coloring each of the Whoogle
logo letters.
The levelup.gitconnected.com site is a Medium site that can also be
replaced with scribe.rip whenever privacy respecting site alternatives
are enabled in the config.
Also modified how link descriptions are updated when that config is
enabled (before it was missing replacements on quite a few
descriptions).
This introduces a new UI element for displaying the client IP
address when a search for "my ip" is used.
Note that this does not show the IP address seen by Google
if Whoogle is deployed remotely. It uses `request.remote_addr`
to display the client IP address in the UI, not the actual address
of the server (which is what Google sees in requests sent from
remote Whoogle instances).
Ben Busby