Faceless

Faceless is where you can talk freely. Share messages with your friends and the whole world.

Preview

Main screen	Message details	Adding messages

Installation

Android

1. Rename Android/src/im/delight/faceless/ConfigExample.java to Config.java and replace all occurrences of REPLACE_THIS_WITH_VALUE with a proper configuration value for your setup
   • For CRYPTO_HASH_SEED_ROT13, generate a long random string, e.g. 9QMfiOCPJ78gaRY6DZjzR7HQ
   • For CRYPTO_HMAC_KEY_ROT13, generate a long random string as well, e.g. 7zKCg9pU2ulUgYTi8ImHZETQg5AtCP3UWNwrLI2QCwl8Aiil3jOUmh52HCHF29ssOezUMx4c
2. Add the following dependencies as library projects:
   • Android-Countries
   • Android-Time
   • ActionBar-PullToRefresh with SmoothProgressBar

Server

1. Set up a web server with Apache + PHP + MySQL
2. Optionally, set up a Twilio account and register an SMS-enabled phone number POSTing to the public URL of Server/htdocs/internal/sms_verify.php. If you skip this step, users will still be able to use the app, but only on a single device. When switching to a new device, they won't be able to use the app anymore. This is because re-activation on the new device is done via this SMS verification.
3. Rename Server/config.example.php to Server/config.php and replace all occurrences of REPLACE_THIS_WITH_VALUE with a proper configuration value for your setup
   • For CONFIG_CLIENT_HASH_SEED, take the value of CRYPTO_HASH_SEED_ROT13 from the Android configuration and encode it using ROT13
   • For CONFIG_API_SECRET, take the value of CRYPTO_HMAC_KEY_ROT13 from the Android configuration and encode it using ROT13
   • If you haven't set up SSL/TLS for your server yet, disable CONFIG_ENFORCE_SSL by setting it to false
   • Set CONFIG_API_DEBUG to true while setting up and debugging your server instance
4. Set up cron jobs for htdocs/workers/dispatcher.php, htdocs/workers/score_updater.php and htdocs/workers/cleaner.php
5. Enable mod_rewrite for the Apache web server
6. If you don't host your server on Heroku, you can delete the two files Server/Procfile and Server/web-boot.sh

Troubleshooting

• If the app responds with "please check your internet connection"
  • Please copy the value of API_BASE_URL from your Android configuration and append /messages/list to it
  • Try to open that URL in your web browser
  • If the URL doesn't exist (404 Not Found), either your directory paths are wrong or mod_rewrite is not working correctly
  • If mod_rewrite is not working, please ask your hosting provider for help or check your httpd.conf for LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so and AllowOverride FileInfo
• If the app responds that it is "out of service"
  • Please check that CONFIG_API_LIVE is set to true in your server configuration
  • Please check that the database configuration in the CONFIG_DB_* constants in your server configuration is correct
• Optionally, if you want to debug the server responses in general
  • Please open Android/src/im/delight/faceless/Server.java from the Android app
  • Search for the method protected static int parseStatus(final String responseText, final boolean requireError)
  • Add something like System.out.println(responseText); as the first line inside that method
  • All your server responses will now be logged to your console by the Android app

Translations

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• View the full list of translators

Known issues

Android

• The app cannot be installed on devices without telephony features (e.g. tablets). This is because (a) the app is optimized for phones and (b) users would have to enter their phone number manually, otherwise, and (c) the app curently can run on a single device only.

Twilio

• "At the receiving end of SMS messages, Twilio cannot guarantee that every international SMS message sent to us will be received in your SMS log. Twilio accepts these messages, however it is the responsibility of the sending phone number carrier to deliver the SMS message to our network. I'd particularly recommend using our UK mobile numbers or Swedish mobile numbers. These numbers have been pretty successful at receiving SMS from other countries. There are two other things you should be aware of which affect the delivery of inbound international SMS: not all users will have plans which support international SMS, and international roaming might make the phone unable to send or receive SMS. If your users are primarily travelers, it's very likely that you will see issues of this type." (Lauren B. from Twilio)

Similar services

• Secret
• Whisper
• Yik Yak
• Experience Project
• PostSecret

License

Copyright (c) delight.im <[email protected]>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see {http://www.gnu.org/licenses/}.