This is an AJAX file browser that uses an nginx autoindex configured in JSON mode, as well as a streaming client-side search engine that uses an index downloaded from the server.

See my blog post for more details on the design.

Demo

To run a demo of astralbrowser with a sample file tree:

Using Nix (recommended)

If you have Nix installed, enter the development shell to get all required dependencies:

nix-shell
make demo

Manual setup

Ensure you have Node.js (v20+) and nginx installed, then:

make demo

This will:

1. Compile the JavaScript application
2. Start nginx on port 8080 (non-root, HTTP only) with JSON autoindex enabled
3. Serve the application at http://localhost:8080/
4. Serve a demo file tree at http://localhost:8080/demotree/

The nginx server runs in non-daemon mode, so press Ctrl+C to stop it.