OGProxy - a replacement for iFramely

[DownPW]

your solution working fine. It should be as simple to implement as Julian’s plugin and it would be perfect ^^

[phenomlab]

@DownPW yes, mine is doing the same now.

[phenomlab]

@DownPW it’s not going to be a plugin as it requires it’s own reverse proxy in a sub domain as I mentioned previously and everything is client side so a plugin would be pointless as it has no settings - only custom JS code.

[phenomlab]

I have literally one bug (a simple one) to resolve, then clean up the code and restyle done of the elements (@DownPW is right in the sense that they are a bit big ) and it’s ready for testing.

In reality, I expect this to work almost flawlessly on other user forums as the code has been though several iterations to ensure it’s both lean and efficient. If you test it in sudonix.dev you’ll see what I mean. I found an ingenuous way to extract the favicon - believe it or not, despite the year being 2023, web site owners don’t understand how to structure meta tags properly 🤬🤬.

I learned today that Google in fact has a hidden API that you can use to get the favicon from any site which not only works flawlessly, but it’s extremely efficient and so, I’m using it in my code - pointless reinventing the wheel when you don’t have to.

The final “bug” isn’t really a “bug” in the traditional sense. In fact, its nothing to do with my code, but one specific variable I look for in the headers of each URL being crawled is

ogSiteName

The “og” part is short for OpenGraph - an industry standard for years, yet often missing in headers. This has the undesired effect of returning undefined when it doesn’t exist, meaning reviews look like this

Notice the “undefined” text where the site title will be - that looks bad, to I’ll likely replace the with the domain name of the site of the title is missing.

Seriously, if you haven’t tested this out yet, if suggest to do so on sudonix.dev as soon as you can.

Currently, this site is running nodebb-plugin-link-previews but will be switching to my client side version in the coming days.

As soon as it’s running here, I’ll release the code and a guide.

[DownPW]

@phenomlab said in Potential replacement for iFramely:

believe it or not, despite the year being 2023, web site owners don’t understand how to structure meta tags properly 🤬🤬.

Ha ha I believe you !!

@phenomlab said in Potential replacement for iFramely:

Notice the “undefined” text where the site title will be - that looks bad, to I’ll likely replace the with the domain name of the site of the title is missing.

yep be clearly better with domain name when OpenGraphi when he is absent in headers

@phenomlab said in Potential replacement for iFramely:

Seriously, if you haven’t tested this out yet, if suggest to do so on sudonix.dev as soon as you can.

Already tested, very fast

@phenomlab said in Potential replacement for iFramely:

Currently, this site is running nodebb-plugin-link-previews but will be switching to my client side version in the coming days.

As soon as it’s running here, I’ll release the code and a guide.

Hell yeah

[phenomlab]

Ok, spent some time on this late last night, and the good news is that it’s finished, and ready for you to try out.

Please do remember that this isn’t a plugin, but a client side js function with a server side proxy. However, don’t be put off as the installation is simple, and you should be up and running in around 30 minutes maximum.

It does require some technical knowledge and ability, but if you’ve setup NodeBB, then you can do this easily - besides, there will be full documentation so you are taken through each step.

Some other points to note are that not every site returns valid Open Graph data - in fact, some don’t even return an image (yes, Reddit, I’m taking about you) when they are closed to the public, or behind a registration form / membership grant, or in some cases, a paywall.

When this scenario is met, the problem arises that no valid image is being returned. I did toy with the idea of using a free random image API , and even wrote the code for it - then realised nature scenery didn’t quite align with a tech site like Reddit.

Ok - the only thing to do here is to generate your own image then, and bundle that in with the proxy. For this purpose, I chose an image (I have a subscription to stockphotosecrets.com, which is an annual cost to me. I’ve cancelled the subscription as I don’t use it, but provided I downloaded the image before the term expires, I have the right to use any images after the fact) and then added some text parts to it so that it could then be used as a placeholder for when the image is absent.

Here’s that image

It’s sparse, but functional. And given my comment earlier around membership and paywalls, here’s what that specific scenario would look like when encountered

Before I go ahead and provide the documentation, code, and proxy server, I’d recommend you try out the latest code on sudonix.dev.

Enjoy.

[cagatay]

Mark could you please install to my site also?

[phenomlab]

@cagatay Let me put the guide together first, and see if you can get it working by yourself. It’s not a difficult installation, and once you understand how the components intersect and work together, I think you’ll be fine. If the worst comes to it however, I’m always happy to help.

[phenomlab]

UPDATE: OGProxy is now live on this forum

https://sudonix.org/topic/498/setup-ogproxy-for-use-in-nodebb

[phenomlab]

Already found 2 bugs, which have been committed to live code

• Relative path is provided in some instances, so a function now exists to return the full path instead so the image is rendered
• OGProxy does not target chat - this has been fixed