Words

Words is a platform to just write. It doesn’t come in the way of you and your thoughts, with complete data privacy.

How it works

This repo contains a REST CRUD API for the backend of Words, a platform I made to write and share words with my significant other. You can make a nice frontend to make it all work, or use my repo vue-words for a headstart.

It uses the crypto library OpenSSL to securely encrypt every word you write, with token-based authentication using JWT.

It’s database-free, since it uses a JSON file structure to store everything, so you can easily make file backups, import and export data, and manage it completely without any privacy breaches.

Structure

Words uses a single file, meta.json in the root for all your settings. This file contains the directory location to save and view all posts from, as well as your root password, OpenSSL key and initialization vector.

It looks something like this:

{
	"files": "./words/",
	"key": "example_secure_key",
	"iv": "example_initialization_vector",
	"password": "$2y$10$wc5FaC/hnNipOAMHLh4yxuaYFBm0wSa1mE07mH187JSDCumtujfk6",
	"token_valid_for": "25 hours"
}

The password in this file is an output of password_hash("example_password", PASSWORD_DEFAULT). You should use the same function to generate a hash of your password and store it in this file.

An example post looks like then when saved:

{
    "title": "TmZRWXZZVDNBM21LWWJ1WW9Fd1FzZz09",
    "date": "2018-03-05 11:33:20",
    "body": "R2d5SkkrTTJrVWlCWjZubkU4T3VvTElPRU1mdzNkM1cySFJGTmNJTTlGWT0="
}

So, only when you have the same meta.json parameters will you be able to decrypt the contents and view the post.

REST API

All requests (except when generating a new token) need to be authenticated with a token header.

POST / to get a new token

Request body:

{
	"password": "example_password"
}

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJleHBpcmVzIjoiMjAxOC0wMy0wNiAxMjoyOTo1MiJ9.Coe969vqWQDmd34G04Y5HxOhOaz5citBOr5yEjxI6j0",
    "expires": "2018-03-06 12:29:52"
}

GET /posts to get a list of all posts

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "posts": [
        {
            "id": "20180305104246d5bfde2cdc.json",
            "title": "Post title has been edited",
            "date": "2018-03-05 11:26:44"
        },
        {
            "id": "20180305113204b375272648.json",
            "title": "Post title",
            "date": "2018-03-05 11:32:04"
        }
    ]
}

PUT /posts to create a new post

Request body:

{
	"title": "Post title",
	"body": "<p>This is an example post!</p>"
}

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "created": true
}

GET /post/{id} to get a specific post

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "post": {
        "title": "Post title has been edited",
        "date": "2018-03-05 11:26:44",
        "body": "<p>This is an example post!</p>"
    }
}

DELETE /post/{id} to delete a specific post

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "deleted": true
}

PUT /post/{id} to update a specific post

Request body:

{
	"title": "Updated post title",
	"body": "<p>This is an example post which has been updated!</p>"
}

Response body:

{
    "api": "words",
    "version": "4.1",
    "updated": true
}