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⚠️⚠️⚠️ IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: ⚠️⚠️⚠️ Catation & Catation Forever are one-off experiments built over a hackathon at WPEngine, with explicitly no official plans for maintenance or support from WPEngine. The projects are released for free under GPLv3+ as an act of gratitude towards the FLOSS community. You are more than welcome to fork it & develop further on your own, as long as you adhere to the GPLv3+ license terms. The projects are quick & dirty prototypes, thus they may and does use various horrible & amazing shortcuts and are certainly not ready for production-like use. ⚠️⚠️⚠️

For a list and status of any and all currently known forks, see:
https://github.com/wpengine/hackathon-catation/network

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Catation & Catation Forever - experiments in IPFS photo sharing

Catation is an experimental app for easy sharing of photo albums with non-tech people, using IPFS. The pitch tagline is "Dropbox for IPFS", or: "Easily share your cat & vacation photos with your family & friends!" (* dog photos are encouraged as well)

Catation Forever: Herder is an experimental app complementing Catation. It provides a way to easily replicate (copy) or move your photos between various IPFS pinning (i.e. data persistence) services.

Running Catation

1. Go to https://pinata.cloud, create an account and copy your new "API key" and "Secret API key" into environment variables:

   $ export PINATA_API_KEY=...
   $ export PINATA_SECRET_API_KEY=...
   

2. Go to https://bit.ly, create an account and copy your new "API key" into an environment variable:

   $ export BITLY_API_KEY=...
   

3. Start Catation GUI or CLI:

   $ go run ./cmd/gui   # alternative: GUI
   or:
   $ go run ./cmd/uploader image1.jpg image2.png   # alternative: CLI
   

4. Scroll down and select checkboxes for the photos you want to share.

5. Click [Upload] button.

6. Observe the terminal window, and wait till a bit.ly URL shows up:

   2020/11/18 11:02:23 index.html --> /ipfs/QmXp2vE9rzPnUGucfB7zZ7pfa9uPYNjMTstmcuiFPBoYhz
   2020/11/18 11:02:23 Pinning /ipfs/QmXp2vE9rzPnUGucfB7zZ7pfa9uPYNjMTstmcuiFPBoYhz containing "index.html"
   2020/11/18 11:02:32 pinned 1/2: images/cat-2.jpg
   2020/11/18 11:02:36 pinned 2/2: images/cat-1.jpg
   2020/11/18 11:02:40 UPLOAD SUCCESSFUL! ---> /ipfs/QmXp2vE9rzPnUGucfB7zZ7pfa9uPYNjMTstmcuiFPBoYhz
   2020/11/18 11:02:40 Waiting for remaining images...
   
   
   >>>>>
   >>>>>     https://bit.ly/2K8R2Bd
   >>>>>
   

7. Copy this link and share the album with your friends and family!

Running Catation Forever: Herder

1. Run herder. On first try, you will be prompted to create a config file - save below template into config.json and fill in the blanks. For example, fill Pinata account settings, and delete Pipin and Eternum configs:

   $ go run ./cmd/herder
   error: cannot read config.json: open config.json: no such file or directory
   HINT: example config.json (not all entries are required!):
   {
     "Pinata": {
       "Key": "",
       "Secret": ""
     },
     "Pipin": {
       "UseTLS": false,
       "Host": "",
       "Token": ""
     },
     "Eternum": {
       "Key": ""
     }
   }
   

2. Run herder again, after filling config.json:

   $ go run ./cmd/herder
   2020/11/23 09:34:04 Starting GUI server on: http://localhost:8081/guitest/
   

   Your browser should now open and show the Catation Forever GUI.

3. Optionally, if you have access to a Raspberry Pi or a VPS, and wish to use them to store a copy of your photos, see ./cmd/pipin/. The Pipin project is a service you need to run on the server, and pass its secret token into Herder's config.json.