solvent

README

Solvent

Efficient, self-hostable, no-fuzz to-do list.

A hosted instance is running at solvent.eldelto.net.

Motivation

Back in 2020 I had troubles with some to-do list applications I used because they wouldn't sync state between devices fast enough. The first implementation was based on React and CRDT data-structures that worked alright but still had the same issues for me as the other applications I was familiar with.

I kept using it for the next 4 years and then finally decided to give it some love, implement some new features, a proper login process and radically simplify everything so it is easy to maintain and host.

As simple as it is, it is still, to this day, my most used hobby project and I'm quite fond of it and hope that it might also be of some use to fellow strangers on the internet.

User Guide

A bit of info about different features in depth.

General

The application tries to immediately sync every user action with the backend server. This has the advantage that the user's data is always up to date, no matter which device they choose. The obvious downside is that a internet connection is required for the application to work.

Most actions require very little bandwith though and a somewhat flaky internet connection is usually enough for the application to be useable.

Theoretically a read-only mode could be implemented rather easily but is currently not in place.

Item Deletion

Single items can be deleted by long-pressing on the checkbox icon.

A caveat to this is that it also triggers the browser's long-press action and it is not very discoverable. This will most likely be changed in the future (for the better hopefully).

Bulk Editing

The bulk edit mode can be reached via the cog icon -> Bulk edit.

In this mode the whole to-do list is treated as plain text. The first line represents the headline and all subsequent lines are to-do items. To-do items can optionally be prefixed with - [ ] or - [x] to designate their intended state.

Sharing

Lists can be shared with other people via clicking on the cog icon -> Share. A share link will be created that can be distributed to persons that should be able to edit/view the list.

Everyone who has access to this link also has full edit permissions, regardless if they have a Solvent account or not. If the other user has a Solvent account though, the shared to-do list will be added to their account and it will be displayed in their list view.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Solvent supports a basic set of keyboard shortcuts to make editing more convinient.

Shortcut	Context	Description
ctrl + a	List view	Focuses the add item field.
ctrl + e	List view	Switches into bulk edit mode.
ctrl + enter	Bulk edit	Confirms the current changes.
shift + enter	Bulk edit	Confirms the current changes.

Self-Hosting

Solvent can easily be self-hosted as it is a single binary that can be run on any architecture/OS combination that is supported by the Go toolchain.

Prerequisites

You need a installed Go toolchain with version 1.21 or higher. Please refer to the official Go installation guide.

Building the Binary

With Go installed you can issue go install github.com/eldelto/core/cmd/solvent@latest to install the binary in your $GOPATH/bin directory (usually ~/go).

There are currently no tagged releases for Solvent as it is too much overhead for me. Generally you should be fine by using the latest commit from main as this is also what I run at solvent.eldelto.net.

Environment Variables

Solvent can be configured via a couple of environment variables. It will still start without issues if none of them are set but for example E-mail sending will only work once you have configured the respective env vars.

Env var	Description
PORT	The listening port for the HTTP server.
HOST	The public-viewable domain name + protocol (e.g. https://to-do.list).
SMTP_USER	The SMTP user to use for E-mailing.
SMTP_PASSWORD	The SMTP password to use for E-mailing.
SMTP_HOST	The SMTP server's host name.
SMTP_PORT	The SMTP server's port.