Shariff Node Backend

Shariff is used to determine how often a page is shared in social media, but without generating requests from the displaying page to the social sites.

This document describes the Node backend. The following backends are also available:

• shariff-backend-php
• shariff-backend-perl

The frontend is available here:

• shariff

Installing the Shariff backend on you own server

Option 1: Run the standalone server

Create a project folder and install the Shariff server using npm:

$ mkdir my-shariff-server
$ cd my-shariff-server
$ npm init
$ npm install --save shariff-backend-node

The node package contains a configuration file shariff.json. The following configuration options are available:

| Key | Type | Description | |-------------|------|-------------| | port | integer | Port Shariff runs on | | host | string | Host/IP address Shariff runs on | | cache | object | Cache settings described below |

Cache settings:

| Key | Type | Description | |-------------|------|-------------| | engine | string | catbox backend | | expiresIn | integer | Cache duration in milliseconds |

Start Shariff with:

$ node node_modules/shariff-backend-node/run.js
141104/143603.929, info, Server ist running at: http://localhost:3001

Option 2:

Alternatively, you may call the Shariff backend from your own code. If called directly, the code will still use a cache and honor the expiresIn setting, the engine will however not be used in this case, just a simple object store.

Sample:

var Shariff = require('shariff-backend-node');

Shariff.getCounts('google.com').then(function(counts) {
    console.log('Success, counts:', counts);
}, function(err) {
    console.log('Failed to grab counts!', err);
});

If passed true as second parameter, the getCounts() method will not use its cache and instead re-query the services.

Testing your installation

Visit http://localhost:3001/?url=www.example.com to get a JSON structure containing the share counts:

{"facebook":1452,"googleplus":23}