WebTrackerPOC

This was intended to demonstrate that a pure Haskell web service was a viable option. While a lot more could be done even within this limited goal, it's unlikly I'll return to do any further work in this repo.

Goals

• User associates a (potentially new) username with a browser-session (cookie). ✓
• Requests to a particular address have the http-referer logged with the corrisponding username. ✓

Next Steps

• Confirm that a webpage can't fire spoofed "Referer" (and/or "Origin") headers from an unconsenting browser.
• Decide if Persistent (a Template-Haskell based Domain Specific Language for talking to databases) would be more appropreate than Hasql.
• Decide if Yesod (a heavier, more complete Haskell web framework) would be more approoreate than Scotty
• Generally refactor stuff to have a flatter, more idiomatic layout.
• Consider building our own Monad stacks, or use existing stacks better for validation and database interaction.
• Move type changes to the perifiery, and make them automatic (using type classes) where possible. Have more of our own types for business atoms.
• Maybe have fewer in-line type declarations, and let function declarations be more vague (via typeclases).
• Use DB transactions.

Installation

A brand new ubuntu-style linux box is assumed.

Some of the installation steps are very ram-hungry. On smaller servers I suggest using the instructions here to give yourself extra swap space (try 4G).

This is all taken from a tutorial here.
Install Nix blindly, or figure out the proper secure way of doing it.

curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

There will be a second step, which the output of the above should promt you for. something like:

. /home/ubuntu/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

Next use nix to set up some Haskell specific utilities.

nix-env --install cabal2nix
nix-env --install nix-prefetch-git
nix-env --install cabal-install

Download and build the project

git clone https://github.com/ShapeOfMatter/WebTrackerPOC.git
cd WebTrackerPOC/
cabal2nix . > default.nix
nix-build unpinned.nix

You'll need a config file. For now it has to be named "defaults.config", and it should go right in the WebTrackerPOC directory.

[DatabaseConnectionPool]
host = "example.com"
port = 5432
user = "example"
password = "xxx"
database = "example"
maxconnections = 5
maxidleseconds = 60
[SiteSettings]
baseurl = http://example.com
port = 80

Finally, you can set the server running just by calling:

result/bin/poc_scotty_server

But remember to disown the process from your shell before loggin out.