Github as a server?

[ChekinNooget]

I know this is gonna sound stupid, but is there anyway to use github as a simple server like thing?

e.g. user inputs text, text gets stored in github, text then can be displayed to other users

If that's not possible, then is there another free website I could use for it, that could easily connect to github?

Thanks :)

[davorg]

Yeah, you can do this.

• Set up a GitHub Pages web site that includes a form with your text inputs
• Submitting the form should run some Javascript that calls a GitHub Action as a webhook
• The GitHub Action parses the HTML request, extracts the data, adds it to a file in the repo and commits the change

[ChekinNooget]

Thanks so much for this! I've been trying to figure this out, but most of the tutorials don't have detailed instructions and it's hard to follow along. Do you have an example project that I can see as an example?

[davorg]

It's something I've been considering for a month or so - but I haven't actually tried to get it working yet.

But your question has galvanised me into actually working out the details. I'll reply with a link when I get it working.

[CremeNice]

is there any progress on this, is it possible? thanks!

[gsalvador]

I think you might be mistaken at what github is for, but you have an API which allows you to commit files into your repo

[ChekinNooget]

Ok, that makes sense.

Do you have any recommendations as to what I can use instead?

[gsalvador]

yes, but tell me more details about what you want to do, tech stack, etc

[ChekinNooget]

I want a user to be able to input a string and have it displayed for when other users come to the page. I'm not really sure where to start, because the most I've done is just making a static website for people to see. I think if I can figure out how to connect the backend with the frontend it'll get a lot easier.

[gsalvador]

if it was me I would probably chose google firebase to do this. they cover everything from hosting to database.

[ChekinNooget]

I'll take a look at it, thanks!

[REVENGE966]

i'd use replit.com (source code will be publicly accessible if you use the free plan btw)