Standard Notes

Summarizing my attempts to understand StandardNotes codebase.

• How does it sync?

• How does it encrypt?

• How does it deal with conflicts?

• Overall front-end code structure?

• How does it store on user disk?

• How does it store on the server?

Code

• Web client (also core for desktop): https://github.com/standardnotes/web

• Desktop client: https://github.com/standardnotes/desktop

  • JS/TS: https://github.com/standardnotes/web/tree/develop/app/assets/javascripts

  • Angular.

• Syncing server: https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server-js

• Core js logic: https://github.com/standardnotes/snjs

Thoughts & Observations

• Web

  • I love how easy it is to start it locally. yarn install && yarn start. Done.

  • What is the rails server doing inside the client app?

  • Are there any tests?

• Sync server

  • DI with inversify.

  • Specs are located right next to the code under test.

  • Bindings are helpful to understand where everything is https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server-js/blob/develop/src/Bootstrap/Container.ts

  • What is extensions server?

    • I thought all extensions were client-side? If so, why do anything about them when syncing items?

  • Are notes just rows in MySQL?

    • https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server-js/blob/5114b03c273ca99aacc40f1c2f6b29a0c998d48c/src/Domain/Item/Item.ts

    • I expected them to be blobs in some blobstore or something.

    • Is there a limit on the item size then?

  • S3, SNS, SQS - what are they doing here?

  • ItemService - seems to actually handle persistence https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server-js/blob/5114b03c273ca99aacc40f1c2f6b29a0c998d48c/src/Domain/Item/ItemService.ts

  • What exactly does "projection" mean?

    • Conversion between persistent-data and some transfer format?

  • S3 backup

    • https://github.com/standardnotes/syncing-server-js/blob/develop/src/Infra/S3/S3ItemBackupService.ts