# Lift
A simple CLI-tool to share data quickly, without needing to trust external servers with your data.
The only outside connection made is to [bore.pub](https://github.com/ekzhang/bore), which provides a tunnel to your
machine, so that you don't have to keep any ports permanently open. Neither bore nor any other server will ever have a
copy of your data.
## Showcase
We simply `lift` an image we want to share...
pass the URL to our friend, who will type it into his browser or fetch it...
and can then see the cute image we sent him!
(Credits for the cat go to <cataas.com>)
I personally use lift whenever I would've previously used limewire or similar services, because now the data always
stays on my own device, and I don't have to trust any external server provider with it.
## Usage
Usage: `lift [OPTIONS] [FILENAME]`
The available options are:
* `-f` - file mode
* `-c, --count <MAX_COUNT>` - how often the link may be accessed before it expires [default: 1]
* `-t, --time <TIMEOUT>` - the time in seconds after which the link expires [default: 0 / never]
* `-r, --remote <REMOTE>` - the bore remote to use [default: "bore.pub"]
By default, `lift` reads from standard input. This means you can run it without any parameters like so:
```
$ lift
Hello world!
Pressing Enter inserts a newline.
End your message by pressing Ctrl+D.
```
This means you can also pipe into `lift`:
```
```
and so on. Piping files is not supported; please use `lift -f <filename>` instead.
When a filename is specified, lift will use the contents of that file instead. This means, that `cat message.txt | lift`
is equivalent to `lift message.txt`.
If you want to send an actual file, instead of just its contents, you can use the [-f]ile flag.
For example, `lift -f cat.png` will send the image as such, and not just as text consisting of meaningless bytes.
More technically, this sets `content-type` to `application/octet-stream` instead of `text/html`.
You will then receive your randomised one-time access link:
```
$ lift message.txt
Data available at http://bore.pub:12345/a1b2c3d4
```
Opening it in your browser (or requesting the data using tools such as `wget`) reveals your data. When `-f` was used,
the file will be downloaded (or displayed by the default file handler) instead of rendered as text in your browser.
`lift` will terminate and the link will become useless after the file has been accessed `MAX_COUNT` times, or the
`TIMEOUT` has elapsed.
A full example:
```
$ lift -c 2 -t 120 -r "bore.pub" -f panda.png
```
This will host `panda.png` as a downloadable file, which can be downloaded a maximum of two times and will expire after
2 minutes (120 seconds). The bore tunnel will be the "bore.pub" server.
## Bore
The only thing bore does is bypass your firewall to open up a port on your machine, so it can be accessed remotely.
If you wanted to do manually what `lift` does for you, you would run `bore local <PORT> --to bore.pub`, and then start a
webserver on port `<PORT>`. The command will give you a URL, e.g. `bore.pub:8993`, which will then route all incoming
traffic to `<your machine>:<PORT>`. `lift` additionally sets up the timeout and access counting for you - so you can
make sure scrapers have no time to find your data.
## Build
`lift` is written in Rust 1.94.1, although the MSRV (minimum supported rust version) is likely way lower.
It depends on the [warp](https://crates.io/crates/warp), [tokio](https://crates.io/crates/tokio),
[rand](https://crates.io/crates/rand), [bore-cli](https://crates.io/crates/bore-cli)
and [clap](https://crates.io/crates/clap) crates. You need to have a
[Rust](https://rust-lang.org) installed on your system in order to build `lift`.
To build `lift` yourself, clone this repository, then run `cargo build --release`. Your resulting binary will be located
at `target/release/lift`.
To build and install `lift`, you can also use the `install.sh` script, which builds the binary and copies it into
`~/.local/bin` for you.
