simply_files

File sharing done easily.

An image showcasing the web client, showing it's main navigation and a file preview.

Features

• One-time links for others to upload files
• Easy to use interface
• Secure & fast, backend in Rust
• Folders to help you organize
• QR code generation to easily share
• Video/image/audio/code/text file preview
• File resumability & streaming
• Client file queueing
• No ads, no payment, 100% free
• Store your files locally or via SFTP
• API to interact with the files
• No AI bullshit

Installation

This repository contains 2 parts:

1. The backend, this exposes an API to interact with the files.
2. The client, which is a web interace to interact with the backend.

The backend can run just fine on it's own.

Important

Uploading uses websockets, make sure your server supports it.
A frame/body size of at least 17MB is needed for uploads.

Backend

Note

The backend requires Rust (V1.85+, 2024 edition) to be installed.
You can install it via rustup.

Begin with cloning or downloading the repository.
Then navigate to the backend directory and run the following command to build it:

cd backend

cargo build --release
# binary can then be located at `target/release/simply_files`

Before we can run it tho, we will need to configure it so you can access it.

Configuration

There is an example config file at backend/config.example.toml
which you can copy to backend/config.toml and begin to edit to your liking.

But we are gonna go through the important parts here.

File System

Currently you can choose to store your files in 2 ways:

• Local
  This will store them on the same host as the backend is running on.
  The only argument to this is the root directory on where to store the files.

  file_system = "local"
  [local]
  root = "/home/user/simply_files/data

• SFTP This stores the files on a remote server via SFTP.
  You can authenticate via either password or a public key.

  file_system = "ssh"
  [ssh]
  host = "example.com"
  port = 22
  username = "user"
  
  # Choose either
  [ssh.password]
  password = "******"
  # or
  [ssh.public_key]
  private_key = "/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa"
  # These are optional 
  # pass_phrase = "******"
  # public_key = "/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub"

Then you will need to configure the token that you will use to login and manage your files.
The backend only controls a single main account.

token = "**********"

All other configs have default values and documentation in the example config file if you want to configure them.

Running the backend

After you've setup the configuration.

# Just run the binary
./simply_files

# You can optionally specify a log level as the first argument
./simply_files debug
# [trace, debug, info, warn, error, off] are valid log levels
# Defaults to `info` if not specified.

Client

The client is an easy to use interface that allows full interaction with the backend.

Note

The client requires NPM & Node (V20.6+) to be installed.
You can install it here

Start with cloning or downloading the repository.
And add a .env in the client directory with the following content:

PUBLIC_BACKEND = "https://backend.url"
PUBLIC_BACKEND_WS = "wss://backend.url"

This URL should point to the backend you configured earlier.
In this .env you could also specify the port & host.

Then run the following:

cd client
# Install dependencies
npm i
# Build the client
npm run build
# Run the client
node --env-file=.env build