Favoritter

A self-hosted web application for collecting and sharing favorites. Movies, songs, cars, lego sets, flowers, pictures — anything you love.

Built as a single Go binary with SQLite, server-rendered HTML, and HTMX for interactivity. Designed to be easy to deploy for technical users who can share access with friends and family.

Features

• Favorites — Add favorites with a description, optional URL, optional image upload, and tags
• Tags — Autocomplete from existing tags, browse by tag
• Privacy — Each favorite can be public or private, with a configurable default
• User profiles — Public or limited visibility, with avatar, bio, and display name
• Admin panel — User management, tag management, signup request approval, site settings
• Signup modes — Open registration, approval-required, or closed
• Atom feeds — Global, per-user, and per-tag feeds
• Import/Export — JSON and CSV, for data portability
• JSON API — Full REST API under /api/v1/ for third-party clients
• OpenGraph — Rich link previews when sharing favorites
• Accessible — Semantic HTML, keyboard navigation, screen reader support, lang="nb", WCAG 2.2 AA target
• Proxy-aware — Supports deployment behind Caddy/nginx on a different machine (WireGuard, Tailscale)

Quick Start

Run directly

# Build
go build -o favoritter ./cmd/favoritter

# Run (creates admin user on first start)
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin \
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=changeme \
./favoritter

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Run with Podman/Docker

BUILDAH_FORMAT=docker podman build \
  --build-arg BUILD_DATE="$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  --build-arg GIT_REVISION="$(git describe --always --dirty)" \
  -t favoritter .

podman run -d \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v favoritter-data:/data \
  -e FAVORITTER_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin \
  -e FAVORITTER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=changeme \
  favoritter

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables. Sensible defaults are provided for everything except the initial admin credentials.

Variable	Default	Description
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_USERNAME	(none)	Initial admin username (created on first run)
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_PASSWORD	(none)	Initial admin password
FAVORITTER_DB_PATH	./data/favoritter.db	SQLite database file path
FAVORITTER_LISTEN	:8080	Listen address (e.g. :8080, 10.0.0.5:8080)
FAVORITTER_BASE_PATH	/	Base path for subpath deployment (e.g. /faves)
FAVORITTER_EXTERNAL_URL	(auto)	Public URL (e.g. https://faves.example.com). Used for feeds, cookies, OpenGraph. If unset, inferred from Host header.
FAVORITTER_TRUSTED_PROXIES	127.0.0.1	Comma-separated IPs/CIDRs to trust for X-Forwarded-For (e.g. 100.64.0.0/10 for Tailscale)
FAVORITTER_UPLOAD_DIR	./data/uploads	Directory for uploaded images
FAVORITTER_MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE	10485760	Maximum upload size in bytes (10 MB)
FAVORITTER_SESSION_LIFETIME	720h	Session cookie lifetime (30 days)
FAVORITTER_ARGON2_MEMORY	65536	Argon2id memory cost in KiB (64 MB)
FAVORITTER_ARGON2_TIME	3	Argon2id iterations
FAVORITTER_ARGON2_PARALLELISM	2	Argon2id parallelism
FAVORITTER_RATE_LIMIT	60	Auth endpoint rate limit (requests/minute/IP)
FAVORITTER_SITE_NAME	Favoritter	Site name shown in UI and feeds
FAVORITTER_DEV_MODE	false	Enable live template reload and debug logging

Deployment

Behind Caddy (subdomain)

faves.example.com {
    reverse_proxy 10.0.0.5:8080
}

Set FAVORITTER_EXTERNAL_URL=https://faves.example.com and FAVORITTER_TRUSTED_PROXIES=<caddy-ip>.

Behind Caddy (subpath)

example.com {
    handle_path /faves/* {
        reverse_proxy 10.0.0.5:8080
    }
}

Set FAVORITTER_BASE_PATH=/faves and FAVORITTER_EXTERNAL_URL=https://example.com/faves.

Remote proxy (WireGuard/Tailscale)

Caddy and Favoritter can run on different machines. Set FAVORITTER_TRUSTED_PROXIES to the proxy's IP or CIDR (e.g. 100.64.0.0/10 for Tailscale, 10.0.0.0/24 for WireGuard).

API

The JSON API lives under /api/v1/. Authenticate by posting to /api/v1/auth/login to get a session cookie, then use it for subsequent requests.

# Login
curl -c cookies.txt -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/auth/login \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"username":"admin","password":"changeme"}'

# List your faves
curl -b cookies.txt http://localhost:8080/api/v1/faves

# Create a fave
curl -b cookies.txt -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/faves \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"description":"Blade Runner 2049","url":"https://example.com","privacy":"public","tags":["film","sci-fi"]}'

# Export
curl -b cookies.txt http://localhost:8080/api/v1/export/json

See the route list for all available endpoints.

Routes

Web

Method	Path	Description
GET	/	Home page / public feed
GET/POST	/login	Login
GET/POST	/signup	Signup (mode-dependent)
POST	/logout	Logout
GET/POST	/reset-password	Forced password reset
GET	/faves	Own faves list
GET	/faves/new	New fave form
POST	/faves	Create fave
GET	/faves/{id}	View fave
GET	/faves/{id}/edit	Edit fave form
POST	/faves/{id}	Update fave
DELETE	/faves/{id}	Delete fave
GET	/tags/search?q=	Tag autocomplete (HTMX)
GET	/tags/{name}	Browse by tag
GET	/u/{username}	Public profile
GET/POST	/settings	User settings
POST	/settings/avatar	Upload avatar
POST	/settings/password	Change password
GET	/export	Export page
GET	/export/json	Download JSON
GET	/export/csv	Download CSV
GET/POST	/import	Import page
GET	/feed.xml	Global Atom feed
GET	/u/{username}/feed.xml	User Atom feed
GET	/tags/{name}/feed.xml	Tag Atom feed
GET	/admin	Admin dashboard
GET/POST	/admin/users	User management
GET	/admin/tags	Tag management
GET/POST	/admin/signup-requests	Signup request management
GET/POST	/admin/settings	Site settings
GET	/health	Health check

API (/api/v1/)

Method	Path	Description
POST	/api/v1/auth/login	Login, returns session
POST	/api/v1/auth/logout	Logout
GET	/api/v1/faves	List own faves
POST	/api/v1/faves	Create fave
GET	/api/v1/faves/{id}	Get fave
PUT	/api/v1/faves/{id}	Update fave
DELETE	/api/v1/faves/{id}	Delete fave
GET	/api/v1/tags?q=	Search tags
GET	/api/v1/users/{username}	Public profile
GET	/api/v1/users/{username}/faves	User's public faves
GET	/api/v1/export/json	Export own faves
POST	/api/v1/import	Import faves

Tech Stack

• Go (1.22+ stdlib router, html/template, embed, log/slog)
• SQLite via modernc.org/sqlite (pure Go, no CGO)
• HTMX for interactive UI without a JS framework
• Pico CSS for semantic HTML styling
• Argon2id for password hashing
• gorilla/feeds for Atom feed generation

Only 3 external Go dependencies.

Security

• Argon2id password hashing with timing-attack prevention
• CSRF double-submit cookie pattern (auto-included by HTMX)
• Security headers: CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy
• Rate limiting on authentication endpoints
• Image uploads: EXIF metadata stripped, re-encoded, UUID filenames, path traversal protection
• Proxy-aware: trusts X-Forwarded-For only from configured proxy CIDRs
• Session cookies: HttpOnly, Secure (from EXTERNAL_URL or X-Forwarded-Proto), SameSite=Lax

Development

# Run in dev mode (live template reload, debug logging)
FAVORITTER_DEV_MODE=true \
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin \
FAVORITTER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=dev \
go run ./cmd/favoritter

# Run tests
go test ./...

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0-or-later)