Edegal - A web picture gallery

Edegal is a web picture gallery written in Node.js and designed with performance and scalability in mind.

High performance is achieved through the usage of a dead simple REST JSON API in which most cache misses only result in a single database query that returns a single document.

Edegal is a work in progress. See a demo at uusi.kuvat.aniki.fi or gallery.insomnia.fi.

Goals

• Successfully replace Coppermine Image Gallery at kuvat.aniki.fi
  • 49,860 files in 619 albums and 110 categories viewed 6,118,935 times over the course of 9 years (as of 22nd June 2013)
• Provide picture galleries for the members of Kapsi Internet-käyttäjät ry requestable via a web self-service portal
• Drop some jaws with stunning visuals and flawless usability
• Become the number one choice for a self-hosted image gallery for serious hobbyist photographers

Getting started

What is assumed:

• An UNIX-like operating system such as Ubuntu, CentOS or Mac OS X
• MongoDB installed and configured.
  • If you need to authenticate to MongoDB, edit server_config.json. The format is mongo://user:password@localhost/edegal).
  • By default, the database names used are edegal and edegal_test (for running tests).
• ImageMagick
• NodeJS (0.10.x) and NPM

Running a local server:

# install dependencies and build
npm install

# run server
npm start

# enjoy
open http://localhost:9001

Development:

# install development tools into PATH
npm -g install gulp

# do an un-minified debug build, run a development server and watch for changes
gulp

# do a minified production build
NODE_ENV=production gulp build

# run tests
npm test

Getting pictures into the gallery

Sorry, this is a bit technical at the moment. There will be a browser-based uploader. Some day. I think.

At this moment you need to import album at a time.

# (If you havent yet created the root album - do this only once)
bin/edegal setup --title "My Photo Gallery"

# Create an album
bin/edegal album create --title "My New Album" --parent /

# Import some photos
bin/edegal import --move --path /my-new-album /path/to/files/*.jpg

You're all set!

Configuration

There are configuration files for client and server, client_config.json and server_config.json.

Client configuration (client_config.json)

Changing any values in client_config.json requires recompilation (NODE_ENV=production gulp build).

• defaultLanguage: en and fi supported.
• analyticsAccount: Put your Analytics token here to enable Google Analytics support.

Server configuration (server_config.json)

• database: as accepted by mongoose.connect
• port: port number to listen on
• hostname: hostname or IP address to listen on
• concurrency: how many pictures to scale concurrently
• sizes: default preview sizes
  • width
  • height
  • quality

Technology choices

• Development tools
  • Node.js
  • Gulp
  • Browserify
  • CoffeeScript
  • Jade templates for static HTML
  • Stylus
  • UglifyJS
  • Mocha
  • Sinon
• Backend
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • Mongoose
  • MongoDB
  • nginx
• Frontend
  • Knockout
  • Knockout.Mapping
  • Page.js
  • Hammer.js
  • JQuery 1.11

Testimonials

• "That's mighty fast!"
• "I don't remember having ever run into another web gallery as nifty as this!"
• "I find the page load speed of Edegal incredible. But I think I've just grown accustomed to bad galleries."
• "Edegal seems exactly what I've been looking for!"
• "Edegal <3"