Apus

A social wall for conferences with additional features.

The name Apus is based on Apus Apus, Latin for common swift. This is a bird species that is extremely adapted to a life in the air and can stay in the air for around ten months almost without interruption and can reach speeds of more than 200 km/h during flight maneuvers. This bird breeds in a wall, flies reliably for extremely long periods without crashing and is also extremely fast. Hopefully all of this also applies to Apus: fast execution, uninterrupted and reliable operation!

See:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_swift
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apus_(bird)

Screenshot

Features

Show posts from Social Media

Platform	Status
Bluesky	planned
Instagram	planned
Mastodon	DONE
Twitter	planned

Show event agenda

Event	Status
BaselOne	planned
CyberLand	DONE
JavaLand	DONE
Voxxed Days Zürich	planned

And more

Feature	Status
Running text with updates	planned
Show sponsor information	planned
Use event based styling	planned

Build

Maven

Apus uses Maven to build the project. Please use standard Maven commands to build what you need:

Command	What it does
./mvnw	compile and run the app
./mvnw clean	cleanup generated files and build artefacts
./mvnw compile	compile the code without running the tests
./mvnw test	compile and run all tests
./mvnw package	compile, test, and create a JAR file to run it with Java directly
./mvnw verify	compile, test, package, and run analysis tools

There is no need to run the install or deploy tasks. They will just run longer, produce unnecessary output, burn energy, and occupy your disk space. Don't just blindly run mvn clean install...

Docker

Apus comes with a complete dockerized build for production use. It is not recommended to use the self-contained build for development purposes. Please take a look at the section about Production Build below.

Running and debugging

Running from the command line.

To run from the command line, run ./mvnw and open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Running and debugging in Intellij IDEA

• Locate the Application.java class in the project view. It is in the src folder, under the main package's root.
• Right-click on the Application class
• Select "Debug 'Application.main()'" from the list

After the server has started, you can view the UI at http://localhost:8080/ in your browser. You can now also attach breakpoints in code for debugging purposes, by clicking next to a line number in any source file.

Running and debugging in Eclipse

• Locate the Application.java class in the package explorer. It is in src/main/java, under the main package.
• Right-click on the file and select Debug As --> Java Application.

Do not worry if the debugger breaks at a SilentExitException. This is a Spring Boot feature and happens on every startup.

After the server has started, you can view it at http://localhost:8080/ in your browser. You can now also attach breakpoints in code for debugging purposes, by clicking next to a line number in any source file.

Configuration

Apus can be started without any specific configuration. All configuration options have working default values. To modify these default values just specify environment variables with the following names:

Variable	Default	Description
ADMIN_PASSWORD		The hashed password to get admin access (empty = disabled).
DEMO_ROOM_COUNT	0	Number of rooms for the event demo plugin (0 = disabled).
DOAG_EVENT_API	[1]	The URL of the DOAG event API to read the conference agenda.
DOAG_EVENT_ID	0	The ID of the DOAG event to read the conference agenda (0 = disabled).
FILTER_LENGTH	500	Hide social media posts which exceed this length (0 = disabled).
FILTER_REPLIES	true	Hide social media posts which are replies.
FILTER_SENSITIVE	true	Hide social media posts which contain sensitive information.
FILTER_WORDS		Hide social media posts which contain these words.
MASTODON_HASHTAG		The hashtag for the mastodon wall (empty = disabled).
MASTODON_IMAGE_LIMIT	1	Limit number of images per post (0 = no limit).
MASTODON_IMAGES_ENABLED	true	Enable or disable images in mastodon posts.
MASTODON_INSTANCE		The Mastodon instance used to read the posts from (empty = disabled).
TZ	UTC	The timezone used for date and time calculations.

The environment variables will override the default values. Some default values might be too long to be displayed in this table. They are marked with a number in square brackets and can be looked up in the following list:

1. https://meine.doag.org/api/event/action.getCPEventAgenda/eventId.%d/

Create Hashed Password

For security reasons the password is not stored in cleartext. Apus requires the password to be hashed using bcrypt. Of course, Apus can do this for you. Start the JAR file providing the parameter -p followed by the password you want to create a hash for. The output will show you two lines of code. The first line contains the hashed password and the second line contains the same hashed password, but with the dollar signs escaped ready to copy and paste it into a docker-compose.yaml. Example:

java -jar apus.jar -p 12345
Hashed password for environment variable: $2a$10$nybQbl/iY8SRJkfHJVncS.L5.OC3KJ6VRBYVAID7qnUqwylmn/BtK
Hashed password for Docker Compose file: $$2a$$10$$nybQbl/iY8SRJkfHJVncS.L5.OC3KJ6VRBYVAID7qnUqwylmn/BtK

Configuration Files

All configuration files are completely optional and stored in an .apus subdirectory of the home directory of the user running Apus.

File	Description
blockedProfiles	This file contains blocked profiles, one per line.
hiddenPostIds	This file contains IDs of hidden posts, one per line.

Production

Production Build

Maven

You can use Maven to build Apus for production. Just specify the production profile. Example:

./mvnw clean package -Pproduction

Docker

To create a production build for Apus it is highly recommended to use Docker or Podman. Apus comes with a complete dockerized self-contained build. You don't need to have Maven or Java installed, Docker or Podman is enough. The Docker build file contains everything needed, just start a standard Docker build with the following command:

docker build -t apus .

This might run for a while and will produce a Docker image tagged apus on your local system.

Run in Production

It is highly recommended to use Docker or Podman to run Apus in production. Use the following command line as an example:

docker run \
    --name apus \
    -p 80:8080 \
    -v $HOME/.apus:/home/apus/.apus \
    -e ADMIN_PASSWORD=sEcrEt \
    -e DEMO_ROOM_COUNT=12 \
    -e MASTODON_INSTANCE=mastodon.social \
    -e MASTODON_HASHTAG=java \
    -e TZ=CET \
    -d \
    --rm \
    mcpringle/apus

Short explanation, consult the Docker or Podman documentation for more information about all available options for running an image.

Option	Explanation
--name apus	Specify the name for the running instance.
-p 80:8080	Make Apus available on host port 80
-e KEY=value	Configure Apus using environment variables.
-d	Run Apus in daemon mode (background).
--rm	Remove the container when stopping Apus.
mcpringle/apus	The Docker image to be started.

Modify this command according your needs and consult the configuration section above for more information about how to configure Apus. The Docker image of Apus will be pulled from Docker Hub automatically when not available locally.

Plugin Support

Event Plugins

Apus uses a simple plugin technology to import the agenda of various events. Plugins are currently available for the following events:

Plugin	Supported Events
DemoPlugin	Creates fake session data for demo purposes.
DoagPlugin	CloudLand, CyberLand, JavaLand, KI Navigator

Plugins for other events are planned.

Social Plugins

Apus uses a simple plugin technology to import posts from various social media services. Plugins are currently available for the following services:

Plugin	Supported Services
MastodonPlugin	Mastodon

Plugins for other social media services are planned.

Plugin Development

Everyone is welcome to contribute a plugin themselves. The implementation is very simple. There are two types of plugins: EventPlugin and SocialPlugin. For a new plugin, a new package is created under swiss.fihlon.apus.plugin.event or swiss.fihlon.apus.plugin.social, based on the plugin type. The implementation is carried out in this new package. Implement one of these two interfaces depending on the plugin type you want to contribute.

If your implementation requires a configuration, the Configuration class must be extended accordingly. Add a property and corresponding setters and getters in the marked sections. Implement the settings object as a record in your new plugin package. Take one of the existing plugins as a template. Default settings belong in the file application.properties and the corresponding schema is stored in additional-spring-configuration-metadata.json. Of course, this README.md must also be adapted.

Communication

Matrix Chat

There is a channel at Matrix for quick and easy communication. This is publicly accessible for everyone. For developers as well as users. The communication in this chat is to be regarded as short-lived and has no documentary character.

You can find our Matrix channel here: @project-apus:ijug.eu

GitHub Discussions

We use the corresponding GitHub function for discussions. The discussions held here are long-lived and divided into categories for the sake of clarity. One important category, for example, is that for questions and answers.

Discussions on GitHub: https://github.com/McPringle/apus/discussions
Questions and Answers: https://github.com/McPringle/apus/discussions/categories/q-a

Contributors

Special thanks for all these wonderful people who had helped this project so far (emoji key):

Marcus Fihlon 📆 🤔 💻 🎨

Jean-Christophe Gueriaud 💻

Marlon 🐛

tlangdun 🔧

MarkusBarthlen 🔧

Contributing

Good First Issues

For your first contribution to this repository, you can take a look at the issues listed here: good first issue.

Copyright and License

AGPL License

Copyright (C) Marcus Fihlon and the individual contributors to Apus.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.