BookJS

NodeJS Server to host Web Books.

Book Structure

Books are stored in database/books. A typical BookJS-formatted book is structured like this:

[example]
│   info.json
│   cover.png
└───[pages]
    ├───[intro]
    │   │   page.ejs
    │   └───[content]
    │           author.png
    │           rainbow-text.css
    └───[chapter-1]
            page.ejs

• [example] is the topmost directory of the book.
• cover.png is the book cover in PNG format, if there is none, the server will simply display a placeholder.
• info.json is the book info file. For more info on this one, keep reading.
• [intro] and [chapter-1] are page folders, names and IDs for these folders are are defined in info.json.
• page.ejs contains the content for each page.
• [content] folders are folder used to serve additional content displayed in the book (like images) for each page, and can be referenced by setting an elements source to content/[filename]. You can put (almost) anything you like here.

Book Info File Format

For the above "example" book, it's info.json file is formatted like this:

{
    "title": "Example Book",
    "author": "Cool Guy",
    "website": "https://coolguy.example.com",

    "desc": "Super epic example book!",

    "pages": [
        ["Introduction", "intro"],
        ["chapter 1: Hello, World", "chapter-1"]
    ]
}

• title & author are, obviously, the title and author of the book.
• website is an optional link to the author's webpage.
• desc is a short description of the book, displayed on the page list.
• pages is an array of page titles and directory names. Each item in the array must be structured as ["Title", "dir"]. Note: All books MUST follow this info format, no matter what.

Configuration Options

BookJS is configurable through server/config.json.

• port: Pretty self-explanitory, tells the webserver which port to run on, which is 80 by default.
• servername: This is the name of your BookJS server, which appears in the title of every page. Make sure to change this so your server isn't generic.
• database: The directory of all the server data (libraries, books, etc). Changing this allows for the database to be placed elsewhere (for example, an alternate network location).
• logrequests: Whether or not valid requests to the server will be logged. This is only intended for debugging.
• purifypages: Whether or not to purify the DOM content for book pages. It is highly recommended that this remains set to true for security and compatibility.
• sanitizemetadata: Whether or not to sanitize book metadata. Once again, it is highly recommended this remains true.

Security Notes

For those who are concerned about security, here are a couple of my notes:

• BookJS never, ever phones home. Even if I had the money to employ a data collection service, I still would not do that.
• When page purification is enabled (which it should be), DOMPurify is used to clean and sanitize book page DOMs.
• When metadata sanitation is enabled (which it should be), sanitize-html is used to sanitize book metadata.
• As of now, HTTPS is not supported or implemented yet. I will be adding it in the near future.

Shameless Self-Plug

As these docs may be confusing, I may soon post tutorials on my YouTube channel, Ben Codes.