1w ago

Self host Blorp, your personal Lemmy/PieFed frontend

I've been working on a Threadiverse frontend for almost a year called Blorp. Originally it was Lemmy only, but now it also includes PieFed. (source code) (try web version)

I just Dockerized the frontend and started publishing the Docker image, and I would love your feedback!

REACT_APP_DEFAULT_INSTANCE (e.g. https: //lemmy.zip no trailing slash)
- Changes the default instance
REACT_APP_LOCK_TO_DEFAULT_INSTANCE set this to "true" or "false"
- When true, this prevents the frontend from logging into other instances. Perfect if you host your own Lemmy instance and want this frontend to exclusively be used with your instance. You can still log into multiple accounts on the locked instance
- When false, you can log into as many accounts across as many instances as you want. You can even mix and mach Lemmy and PieFed

 bash

    
# pull the latest Blorp image
docker pull christianjuth/blorp:latest

# run it on port 8080 (host → container), passing any runtime env‑vars you need
docker run -d \
  --name blorp \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -e REACT_APP_DEFAULT_INSTANCE="https://lemmy.zip/" \ # BUT without the trailing slash!
  -e REACT_APP_NAME="Blorp" \
  -e REACT_APP_LOCK_TO_DEFAULT_INSTANCE="false" \
  christianjuth/blorp:latest

Edit: I cannot get the trailing slash in https://lemmy.zip/ to go away, but make sure you exclude it. Idk what sorcery is going on with Lemmy, but it seems impossible to link a domain without a trailing slash. I'll make the docker image more forgiving in the next update.

25 comments

I was today years old when I learned Lemmy doesn't let you have links without a trailing slash
POST https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/comment
- It get's even weirder. I'm now writing this from PieFed. If you view this comment from PieFed it won't have the trailing slash, but from Lemmy it will. https://piefed.social/
  Thank you for coming on this journey with me.
  
  Very interesting I wonder what happens if I post both trailing and non-trailing options, do they both get canonized into the same format?
  https://piefed.ca/ -- has a trailing slash https://piefed.ca/ -- does not
  Thank you for having me along on this journey. I don't really know where it's leading, but maybe it's about the weird software behaviors we discover on the way.
- Aren't trailing slashes completely useless?
  
  No, not at all.
  They are a shorthand for "give me the index of this directory" rather than "give me the first file you find named this." In some configurations, the presence of absence of a trailing slash dramatically reduces the amount of computation an HTTP server must execute before responding to the request.
  
  Trailing slashes actually serve an important purpose in URLs - they indicate you're requesting a directory rather than a file, which affects how servers route reqeusts and can impact caching, redirects, and SEO.
Have spun this up on blorp.lemmy.zip and blorp.piefed.zip :)
- UK here so unless I change my country I can't use it ;)
  
  There's only one solution - you'll have to move countries 😉
- Thank you! It's so validating to see people actually host my project. I'm so grateful for all the hard work instance admins put in. Please don't hesitate to open GitHub issues if you have feature requests or find bugs. Expect PieFed could break as they push breaking API changes, but I'll try and resolve issues quickly.
blorp
The Fediverse. Poob has it for you.
Would you consider supporting Mbin in the future? I like Lemmy, but I've become used to Mbin (I was originally on /kbin) and I'm somewhat attached to my instance.
- Yes! I think I might need Mbin to implement the resolve_object endpoint first. I don't think they have that currently. Basically I need some way to look up posts by activity pub id. There's also a strong possibility I won't implement all of Mbin's functionality. I might just implement the parts that are most similar to Lemmy. But if you're looking for one app to login to Lemmy, PieFed, and Mbin, I would like to be that app.
  
  I basically use Mbin as though it were Lemmy, so personally that would be fine. Thanks for the quick response.
No shade, but this looks like any other front end. Am i missing something?
- Idk. There’s a lot of Lemmy clients and many of them are really good. When I started, Voyager didn’t have good support for larger screens, but I think that has changed. I do think I have the best account switching. Voyager will reset the current navigation when you change accounts. Any pages you have open will be cleared. Blorp does not do that. Blorp is also cross platform like Voyager.
  But honestly if you prefer another app, you should use it! All the frontend devs are super cool!
Now this I like, just because I have plenty of people who really aren't techy enough and dislike a lot about the fediverse.... I know it's not for everyone but having a simple front end works for loads! Good work here - I like it, I like it a lot
- That you! Idk how to explain the fediverse to my mainstream social media friends, but I think a good step 1 is giving them an intuitive front end.
  I would love to eventually onboard people to Lemmy and PieFed through Blorp, but that’s a whole other challenge. Idk how to explain the fediverse to people. In a perfect world, I think people who stumbled across Blorp would figure it out with no prior Fediverse knowledge. Idk how to get there.

25 comments