~cafe

Welcome to tilde.cafe!

spartan

spartan is a relatively new internet protocol that is somewhat similar to gemini but a lot of simpler to play with because of the lack of TLS.

like gemini, it is much lighter than the web and has a much smaller user base.

first time hearing about spartan? you should check out its homepage: gemini://spartan.mozz.us

at tilde.cafe, we run a spartan server (spsrv), and all ~cafe users can have their own files hosted on spartan by putting content in their ~/public_spartan directory.

your spartan site will then be live at both spartan://tilde.cafe/~username/ and spartan://username.tilde.cafe

the ~/public_spartan directory is not created by default. use mkdir ~/public_spartan to create it, then you can start building your site!

spartan uses gemtext markup (instead of, say, html for the web) for more information about how you write gemtext, check out the Introduction to Gemtext Markup, there is also a cheatsheet.

to browse spartan content, you will need a client or a web proxy.

clients

CGI

make sure you set the correct shebang and make the file executable.

then, print the status and type per the spartan spec: here's a simple example in sh

#!/bin/sh
printf "2 text/gemini\r\n"
echo "hello world"

note that the first line must send \r\n

if you want to debug your script, you can redirect your stderr into a file, if you use shell scripts, you'd do it like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec 2>/tmp/my_spartan_debug.txt
printf "2 text/gemini\r\n"
echo "hello world"

keep in mind that all cgi scripts run under a single user ("spartan"), so it might not have permission to run scripts, or write files, that you can

also be careful about what the scripts can write, because there's nothing preventing someone else from overwriting your files, with their scripts!

you can also check for the user's input. for example, you your index.gmi you can have a input prompt:

=: echo.sh send some input

then in echo.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

printf "2 application/octet-stream\r\n"
cat /dev/stdin

try visiting your spartan page, enter some input on that link line and see the result!

alternatively you could send input directly in gelim:

gelim spartan://username.tilde.cafe/echo.sh -Ii 'hello!'

(note: -I is so gelim quits immediately after displaying output, -i is for sending the input)

greeter example

what makes spartan distinct from gemini is the ability to send in data together with any spartan request. for example, try doing:

gelim spartan://mozz.us/echo -Ii 'hello spartan'

this sends the data "hello spartan" along to the request, and the /echo path of mozz.us server would then echo back whatever you've sent it, in this case, "hello spartan".

you can make your own echo CGI script too! first, create a new executable file for your script:

mkdir ~/public_spartan
cd ~/public_spartan
touch echo.sh
chmod o+x echo.sh

then open the script with the editor of your choice and add the following:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

printf "2 application/octet-stream\r\n"
cat /dev/stdin

save the script, then try it out!

gelim spartan://username.tilde.cafe/echo.sh -Ii 'this is my input'

it's that easy :) remember to replace username with your username and echo.sh to the path of your script

next, let's try building a simple greeter program.

create a new file that will hold your script, make it executable, then put the following in:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

printf "2 text/plain\r\n"
name=$(cat /dev/stdin)
echo "Hello, ${name:-World}!"

simple, right? let's try it out!

gelim spartan://username.tilde.cafe/greet.sh -Ii 'yourname'

replace username with your username, greet.sh with the path to your script, and yourname to anything you like.

feel free to drop by #spartan or #cafe on tilde.chat irc if you have questions.