Pipes CE

The open source CE edition of pipes.digital

The CE edition

pipes.digital is a spiritual successor to Yahoo Pipes, a graphical interface to get data from the web and to manipulate it by connecting block. It's heavily focused on the concept of feeds, that data flows item by item from block to block, with RSS as the default and internally used format. The CE edition is the FOSS core of pipes.digital, minus things like a pricing page and user plans.

To get an impression of how pipes works without installing anything, try pipes.digital first.

How to install and run

Clone this repository. You need to install Ruby and the bundler gem:

gem install bundler

Then cd into the cloned repository and download the required gems with bundler:

bundle install

Some gems won't install without some additional requirements, like sqlite3.

When everything is installed you can start the server:

bundle exec puma -e development

Activating the twitter block

The Twitter block accesses the official Twitter API, the documentation to get started is on developer.twitter.com and the repo of the twitter gem. Four variables need to be filled with environment variables you can provide when starting the server:

TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN
TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET

Logging in

Pipes CE uses portier to provide an easy passwordless login. After the installation you can immediately login with every email address you control.

Development

This blog article explains the architecture and most of the software used. It is a good starting point if you want to make changes.

The code is dual licensed: AGPL, but with the exception of not having to share code run on pipes.digital, the founding project (this so far only touches stuff like the pricing page, as explained above).

Feature and Pull Requests are welcome. If in doubt open an issue before investing the work to discuss deeper changes, though those are also welcome.

You can also join the gitter channel.