Allow server to serve recipes and clients to fetch them

[LuNeder]

Hey!

It'd be cool if the cookcli server could serve via an api or something recipes to clients. Then clients could automatically fetch the recipes from one or more user-specified domains/ips, instead of limiting it only to iCloud or the desktop app.
As far as I understand, right now if you want the self-hosted server you need to use the webUI, which is cool, but it'd be nice if we could also use the clients fetching the recipes from a self-hosted server. It'd allow us to use multiple devices with the same recipe sources too and etc!

Thanks for reading, cooklang is really cool :D

[dfego]

Hi @LuNeder! Can you expand a little bit on what you envision? You specifically mention the server, but how is this different than, say, hosting your .cooklang files on an HTTP server?

[LuNeder]

Hmmm yeah you’re right, didn’t think of that but that would probably work too. Should I open an issue on clients asking to let them fetch recipes from an http server instead?

I guess the only difference of having it on the server would be making sure the webui and the clients fetching have the same recipes, but it’d be easy to just configure the cooklang server and the http server to grab them from the same place. I guess the only advantage of having this on the server would be not needing extra configuration, as well as maybe having an “add to app” button or something on the webui, but that isn’t really needed at all either.

A feature in the clients to automatically fetch recipes from one or more server’s url/ip would definitely be enough.

[dfego]

No need to open a new issue at this time -- we can flesh out the feature request here!

Just to clarify, when you're talking about clients, which clients are you referring to?

[dubadub]

Yes, I'm also trying to understand the request. 1 Is that about having an option in Android/iOS to specify self-hosted server URL to sync files from. Also make it as part of CLI. Or 2 implement something like ActivityPub and allow people to create network of servers and share their recipes via it?

[LuNeder]

No need to open a new issue at this time -- we can flesh out the feature request here!

Just to clarify, when you're talking about clients, which clients are you referring to?

Okii!

I mean the iOS and Android mobile apps. Right now you need either iCloud or the desktop app to sync (android only), but if you could provide an url for syncing that wouldn’t be necessary.
This is useful for like when you have a NAS: you could keep your recipes on your NAS and then just specify its address on the mobile apps and have them sync without needing to deal with iCloud and stuff.

You’d have like a config in the settings page “URL(s) to fetch recipes from” or something, and then you could put your NAS’s IP or domain in there and the app would download recipes from it instead of (or alongside to) iCloud.
Didn’t use the android app / desktop sync app since I don’t have an android device so I don’t really know how it works, but I imagine this would make syncing easier on the android version too.

Yes, I'm also trying to understand the request. 1 Is that about having an option in Android/iOS to specify self-hosted server URL to sync files from. Also make it as part of CLI. Or 2 implement something like ActivityPub and allow people to create network of servers and share their recipes via it?

It’s 1, but as an ActivityPub fangirl I definitely think 2 would be cool af too lmao (a lot more work tho probably)

[dubadub]

Alright, definitely doable as Android app uses https://github.com/cooklang/cooklang-sync and at some point iOS will get it. Not sure there's big demand for this feature though, so can't say when I can get it done as I want to implement other basic things like servings and search in the apps first