You can think of bytebin a bit like a pastebin, except that it accepts any kind of data (not just plain text!).
Accordingly, the name 'bytebin' is a portmanteau of "byte" (binary) and "pastebin".
bytebin is:
- fast & (somewhat) lightweight - the focus is on the speed at which HTTP requests can be handled.
- relatively low CPU usage
- relatively high memory usage (content is cached in memory by default, but this can be disabled)
- standalone - it's just a simple Java app that listens for HTTP requests on a given port.
- efficient - utilises compression to reduce disk usage and network load.
- flexible - supports any content type or encoding. (and CORS too!)
- easy to use - simple HTTP API and a minimal HTML frontend.
I host a public instance of bytebin for some of my own projects, which you are welcome to use too.
There is also a traditional "pastebin" frontend for sharing code/configs/whatever, see lucko/paste for more information.
The easiest way to spin up a bytebin instance is using Docker. Images are automatically created and published to GitHub for each commit/release.
Assuming you're in the bytebin directory, just run:
$ docker compose upYou should then (hopefully!) be able to access the application at http://localhost:3000/.
It's that easy!
- Just send a HTTP
GETrequest to/{key}(e.g./aabbcc).- The content will be returned as-is in the response body.
- If the content was posted using an encoding other than gzip, the requester must also "accept" it.
- For gzip, bytebin will automatically uncompress if the client doesn't support compression.
- Send a POST request to
/postwith the content in the request body.- You should also specify
Content-TypeandUser-Agentheaders, but this is not required.
- You should also specify
- Ideally, content should be compressed with GZIP or another mechanism before being uploaded.
- Include the
Content-Encoding: <type>header if this is the case. - bytebin will compress server-side using gzip if no encoding is specified - but it is better (for performance reasons) if the client does this instead.
- Include the
- A unique key that identifies the content will be returned. You can find it:
- In the response
Locationheader. - In the response body, encoded as JSON -
{"key": "aabbcc"}.
- In the response
I host a public instance at https://bytebin.lucko.me
You can use it in your application as long as:
- you're not malicious
- you don't needlessly spam it
- your usage isn't illegal, infringing copyright or otherwise going to get me into trouble
- you provide a
User-Agentheader uniquely identifying your application
If you're planning something likely to be super duper popular or use a lot of data (say >5GB per month across all users), then please run it past me first - otherwise, go for it!
If you come across any content which is illegal or infringes on copyright, please get in touch and let me know so I can remove it.
bytebin uses:
- jooby and netty for handling http requests
- caffeine for caching and rate limiting
- gson to read the configuration file on startup
and plain ol' Java for everything else.
I haven't had time to do any accurate benchmarks or performance testing, however, the libraries bytebin uses (see above) are known to be pretty efficient.
The public instance handles approx ~250k requests per day and stores ~1M items at any one time. It uses very little CPU resources and memory only up to the desired cache size.
MIT, have fun!