HTMLpad

By Atul Varma

This is a simple Web application that, for any URL path, serves the contents of an Etherpad with the same path with the MIME type text/html.

For example, if the application is served from htmlpad.org and the Etherpad backend it's configured to use is at etherpad.mozilla.org:9000, then visiting http://htmlpad.org/foo will deliver the contents of http://etherpad.mozilla.org:9000/foo as HTML.

This effectively allows people to easily collaborate on writing HTML, and it provides a very fast feedback loop between trying something out, seeing how it looks in the browser, and sharing it with others.

Quick Start

To get started, run this at your shell prompt:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/hackasaurus/htmlpad.git
cd htmlpad/htmlpad_dot_org
python manage.py runserver

Then open your browser to http://localhost:8000. As you save changes to HTMLpad's source code, the server will automatically apply them, allowing you to iterate quickly.

Deployment

This Django application assumes the following custom settings variables:

• HTMLPAD_ROOT is the string prefix, including any trailing slash but no leading slash, of the HTMLpad instance on the Web server. It can be an empty string. For example, if a user browses to http://foo.com/mypad/ to access your HTMLpad's root, then the setting's value is 'mypad/'.

• ETHERPAD_HOST is the Etherpad instance that your HTMLpad delegates to, formatted as a hostname:port string.

See the hackasaurus-puppet-data repository for Puppet deployment files.

Security Considerations

Because the HTMLpad simply delivers universally-writeable Etherpad content as raw HTML, an HTMLpad instance should probably be served on its own dedicated domain.