JAlbum / Sharing server

You can share albums on your computer with other devices on your network by turning on the built in web server and selecting the album(s) to share. The web server is found under Menu/Tools/Share…

Note: The built in web server can also be used to view JSON based albums locally in any browser

MenuTools.png

This will open the share window, see below right. If you hover over the black circle with an 'i' in it you will see a tool tip pop up telling you about jAlbum's built in web server. The first time you use the server all of the fields will be empty..

Before sharing make sure your local project has been built, so that the 'album' is available!

To start sharing select the project in jAlbum's recent project pane and then in the same window click on the 'Share current album' button. If you get a warning dialogue pop up it will be because your computer is behind a firewall and jAlbum can't make the required TCP connections. You will need to resolve the firewall settings before other devices can access your album. You can remove a shared album by selecting it and then clicking on the 'remove' button.


Sharing server-window.png

The album will appear in the field below the button and the green 'Start' button will background will go from grey to white, the 'stop' button will become active going from grey to white. Click the stop button to turn the server off, this stops sharing of all shared albums.

Clicking on the 'Settings' control button will open a window

Sharing server-settings.png

A default value for the port to be used will be selected, you can override it if you want to use a different value. You can enter a 'host' name to make it easier to find on other devices, you could enter, for example, jAlbum. This will change the album's address from say,

http://37.152.228.135:5079/myAlbum

to

http://jAlbum:5079/myAlbum.

There is an option to have the web server activate whenever jAlbum is launched. You can also have jAlbum attempt to make the required port mappings automatically, see the warning about firewalls above.

By default there is no logging of activity of the web server but you can enable logging and decide to log to the system console (F7 to view) or to a file. When logging to a file you can decide on the date format to be used for log events and also that filename to use for the log. The log file will be written to your 'home' or account root folder.

If more than one album has been shared then you need to select (highlighted by a coloured background) an album to see it's details in the 'selected share' section. Do not change the URI name, it is used to locate the local album.

Sharing server-security.png

Clicking on the 'security settings' button will open a window allowing you to set a username and password for the selected album. When trying to access a protected album the viewer will need to enter those details before they can view the album.

The local path to the selected album is also shown along with the address for the album. You can copy the address by clicking on the icon to the right of the address.

If you change any of the settings you will need to click on the 'update' button to have those changes applied.

Finally, you can stop sharing an album by unchecking the 'active' checkbox, this affects only the selected album.


Once sharing has been setup you can close the jAlbum window, leaving the server running in the background. You can quickly reopen the main window by clicking on the JA icon in the menu bar.

Sharing server-menubar.png

Note, if the web sharing window is left open you will not be able to quit jAlbum until you close it.

Note: The built in server will produce an address that has URL encoded links, so for example a space will appear as %20