5 minute fork

Heard of 10 minute email? Well this is the same thing, except for github repos.

The number of times I've come across a cool demo, only to be faced with a github repo and no live link - it just bums me out.

So I made this (quickly - literally about 90 minutes), which reads the url, and forks the project. If the url is idle for 5 minutes, then it's automatically swept under the carpet.

The code is pretty gnarly, but don't judge me - I wanted quick and dirty.

Running

The project requires a github OAuth token to place API requests. If you are not sure how to generate an OAuth token Github have an article to help

To run:

GITHUB_TOKEN=token node index.js

Alternatively, you can put the token in a file in the root of this project called .env:

GITHUB_TOKEN=token
NODE_DEBUG=true #Set to false for production

.gitignore should ensure the file isn't sent up to github.

Development & debug mode

Since 5minfork uses the format http://<hash>.host.com/ as the cloned repo, testing locally can be challenging (unless you have a CNAME star rule - whic most people don't). So there is a debug mode that points all repos to abc123 as the hash, and unpon restart the forks and forks-loading directories are completely reset.

To enter debug mode:

NODE_DEBUG=true node index.js

How to fork for 5 minutes

Simply take a public github url and swap out the https://github.com for http://5minfork.com, wait a moment for the project to be cloned, and then you'll be redirected to a unique url which will serve up static content from the project.

License

MIT http://rem.mit-license.org