SplashWebapp

SplashWebapp is a lightweight Express server that serves the static assets in the public/ directory, including the splash.html landing page.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or later (to provide native support for ES modules)
• npm (bundled with Node.js)

Installation

From the project root, install the dependencies:

npm install

Running the app

Start the development server:

npm start

By default the server exposes both HTTP and HTTPS endpoints on ports 80 and 443 respectively. Visit http://localhost or https://localhost to view the splash page.

Running with a Let's Encrypt certificate

If you have already issued a certificate with Certbot (for example under /etc/letsencrypt/live/alfe.sh/), use the provided helper script to start SplashWebapp with the production key and certificate on the standard HTTP/HTTPS ports:

./run_with_cert.sh

The script defaults to the alfe.sh certificate directory but you can supply an alternate domain as the first argument, or override any of the exported environment variables:

# Use a different domain folder under /etc/letsencrypt/live
./run_with_cert.sh example.com

# Override individual settings
HOST=127.0.0.1 HTTP_PORT=8080 HTTPS_PORT=8443 ./run_with_cert.sh example.com

run_with_cert.sh verifies that the expected certificate files exist before launching the server and automatically wires the correct environment variables (HTTPS_KEY_PATH, HTTPS_CERT_PATH, and optional HTTPS_CA_PATH).

Environment variables

The server can be configured with the following environment variables:

HTTP_PORT=8080 \   # Defaults to 80
HTTPS_PORT=8443 \  # Defaults to 443
HTTPS_KEY_PATH=./certs/server.key \    # Optional: path to a private key file
HTTPS_CERT_PATH=./certs/server.crt \   # Optional: path to a certificate file
HTTPS_CA_PATH=./certs/ca.crt \         # Optional: path to a CA bundle
HTTPS_PASSPHRASE=secret \              # Optional: passphrase for the private key
SSL_COMMON_NAME=example.com \          # Optional: CN when generating a self-signed cert
SSL_VALID_DAYS=365 \                   # Optional: validity when generating a self-signed cert
npm start

• When HTTPS_KEY_PATH and HTTPS_CERT_PATH are not provided, the server automatically generates a temporary self-signed certificate using the supplied SSL_* values (or sensible defaults).
• If you prefer to run on alternate ports (for example, in local development), override HTTP_PORT and HTTPS_PORT.

Binding to privileged ports without sudo

Unix-like systems require elevated privileges to bind to ports below 1024. To allow Node.js to listen on ports 80 and 443 without prefixing sudo each time, grant the Node.js binary the cap_net_bind_service capability once:

sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' $(which node)

After running the command above you can start the server normally with npm start and it will continue to bind to ports 80 and 443 without requiring sudo.

License

SplashWebapp is available under the Alfe AI License.