Making a basic website interact with a program
reddit / selfhosted

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Terrible_West5469 · 2023-10-09 18:42

I have a C# .NET console program that takes an audio file as input
then outputs lines of text in a console about the file. I want to make
this accessible to a group of users. I'm thinking a very simple
website with an upload button then the output data is shown in a box
or something. I asked ChatGPT for help and it gave me 10 bulletpoints
about Web development...it seems overwhelming and not very helpful. I
have a web server with the reverse proxy (thanks you all), a domain
and console program all working. I'm in over my head and would
appreciate any advice. My C# knowledge is limited. I know some html.

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sk1nT7 · 2023-10-09 22:27

You may write some wrapper script in PHP or Python Django/Flask. The
wrapper script will provide a simple web interface with an upload
button.

You would have to validate uploaded files and ensure that it is indeed
an audio file only. Validate filename, extension as well as the MIME
type. Then store the file on your server in a specific directory,
which is not the webroot. Define read permissions only, no execute.

Then use system calls to trigger your console app by passing in the
audio file's path on your server. Obtain the console output and pass
it back to the user. Catch errors and ensure that your console app is
secure and does not allow for code injections.

The whole concept consists of a frontend, backend and likely a
database to store results and maybe provide some authentication. Not
sure whether this is a simple exercise for you.

Maybe have a look into olivetin:

https://noted.lol/olivetin-self-hosted-predefined-shell-commands/

Otherwise, I guess it's likely a programming challenge.

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HomieMorphic · 2023-10-10 03:38

The comment from /u/sk1nT7 describes the typical way of doing this.
You write a web app that executes the program and reports the results
back to the user. However, if you wrote the program yourself and have
a decent grasp of how it works, you could consider writing the web app
functionality in C# as well and just adding it to your existing
program. [I'd suggest following this tutorial since you'd probably be
familiar with most of the steps
already](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/get-
started/csharp/tutorial-aspnet-core?view=vs-2022).

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Terrible_West5469 · 2023-10-10 15:29

Thank you for the guidance! Sounds like I have some learning to do

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BusyEmployer6806 · 2023-10-10 18:57

Hey there, I'm an it student currently working on my masters. If you
need some help send me a message, I could use some distraction