HaskellHost

A configurable HTTP server for hosting websites with safe proxy.

How to use

Start out by making a new folder for the website inside the HaskellHost repo and clone your website

mkdir dist-website
cd dist-website
git pull *your website repo*

Once we have the website ready, we can configure the server. Open the config file and fill it out:

initialize = false
port = 8080
folder = example-website

Now, the initialize = false line tells the web-server that we do not have a startup script. If you want the server to run a script before starting the server, set this to initialize = true and make a shell script inside the HaskellHost repo:

touch initialize.sh
vim initialize -- Write the shell script
chmod +x initialize.sh

Now, when the server starts, it will run this script. Finally, to start the web=server, simply run cabal run or build the executable cabal build.

Using .env files - no more API-keys on the front-end!

HaskellHost provides an interface to proxy http requests with API-keys safely using string interpolation in a JavaScript style. Simply make an environment file secrets.env and fill in the lines with KEY=SECRET pairs. Then from the frontend send a string https://api.endpoint/${KEY} and the server will return the result to the client.

Using JavaScript on the client

Running the example website displays how this can be done. In the secrets.env we have KANYE_API_KEY=kanye, then on the front-end we can do the following:

const placeholderUrl = "https://api.${KANYE_API_KEY}.rest/";
const response = await fetch(
          `/api/proxy?url=${encodeURIComponent(placeholderUrl)}`
        );

Notice that this is the same syntax as JavaScript, but without the backticks. Now the client will never see our secret "kanye" keeping it hidden on the server-side. Run the example and see for yourself using the example-website directory.