Persistence when using http protocol

#1

I am seeking other’s ideas as to persistence when a wiki is served through the http protocol.

All my wikis served through http require the download of the saved wiki on completion of the user’s interaction, followed by the upload of the changed wiki back to the server location.

This has served me well in that each copy of the wiki is saved on my local drive with the name of the wiki suffixed by the date the wiki was saved., ie. testwiki20250521. This gives me the ability to unwind a wiki back to a particular day as well as providing backup of the ‘live’ wiki in case of failure.

However, for the wiki I am planning, it would be great to have persistence so that users can make changes and those changes are automatically included in the online wiki.

Now I understand that is not possible with TW in single file mode right now. I did come across an announcement by @jeremyruston in 2024 detailing a multiserver plugin but have not come across any more since.

So I am wondering, how do others handle persistence in a practical manner?

bobj

#2

I am not exactly sure what you want but have you tried using the local storage plugin on single file wikis?

#3

Not come across that plugin before, @TW_Tones , but will have a look.

If it does what I suspect, then that is the functionality I am already using. So on leaving the online wiki, the user must save it to local storage else their changes are lost. This local copy must then be uploaded over the live version. This means, persistence is only available to users having ftp rights over the server storage, which is always the web master (ie. me in most cases).

That limitation is why I now provide ‘read-only’ wiki’s for http delivery.

thanks for your prompt reply. Must be a slow day for you :slight_smile:

bobj

#4

I am currently settled in a House sit in Canberra and revisiting my tiddlywiki universe.

Local storage uses browser storage which is not perfect but can keep a wiki usable until you reconect.

#5

In short, the PUT saver.

I’m not sure what all supports it, but I know TiddlyServer does (I made it, although it’s basically unsupported at this point, feel free to open an issue if you run into trouble).

Then there’s Node TiddlyWiki, which is a simple webserver built into TiddlyWiki and allows you to serve any of the “editions” folders. It saves changes to individual files in the specified folder.

And TiddlyServer also supports running multiple Node TiddlyWiki folders, although if you’re in a really low-memory environment (not a desktop or laptop) you might run into problems.

Then there’s also Bob, which is sort of an amalgamation of all the previous ideas, but constrained for low-memory.

There is also TiddlyDesktop

#6

@Arlen22 , I have followed your link to TiddlyServer but can not work out whether this runs on a server or just on a local desktop?

Can you clarify please.

bobj

#7

Are you familiar with NodeJS? If not, then you’re probably better off using either Bob or TiddlyDesktop.

#8

I feel like you’re not making it clear what problems you’re having and what you’re trying to solve.

You can try each of the tiddlywiki saving methods and choose the one you like.

If you need a cloud service use tiddlyhost. if you want your own cloud service then run your own nodejs version of the tiddlywiki server, or find a webdav server.

If you need to publish a wiki, you can use tiddlystow to edit the wiki. then upload it to github. github provides static website services. In addition, tiddlywiki offers the ability to save to github.

If you only need to save locally, there is local softwares for each platform.

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#9

Agreed, I reread the original post and the word “users” has being used, this hints at multiple users of the same wiki, and this complicates things, especialy the idea of persistence because then the wiki may persist on multiple devices and users.

@Bob_Jansen
If the users are all inside a LAN providing one of a number of node/server installs we can approach a multiuser wiki, especialy with Bob (Now aging) and now the new MWS implementation, but it gets much harder to publish these server implimentations on the internet. TiddlyHost is great for single users, and can allow serial editing, one user at a time, but needs to stop persistence over another user persistence.

I have long planned to make a list of questions that help one choose how to navigate between all the options and ask the questions that apply to all the different user needs and platforms, and extended version of the tiddlywiki.com tool at the bottom of GettingStarted, however this quickly gets very complicated and then demands all the resulting solution branches to be added.

  • This is also regularly changing and has subtle complexities.
#10

Thanks for everyone’s feedback. It seems I am doing the only thing possible right now. The MultiWiki server plugin sounds appealing but we’ll have to wait for that.

Onwards and upwards …

bobj

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