Vernissage Server

API server for Vernissage, written in Swift and built with Vapor. Vernissage is a federated, photo-first social platform connected to the fediverse through ActivityPub.

This repository is the backend for the Vernissage ecosystem. It handles authentication, timelines, statuses, media processing, moderation, instance settings, federation, queues, and scheduled jobs for the mobile and web clients.

Highlights

• Swift 6.2 backend built on Vapor 4
• SQLite for local development, PostgreSQL for production deployments
• Redis-backed queues and scheduled jobs, with optional in-process workers
• S3-compatible object storage support for media files
• ActivityPub federation with WebFinger, HTTP Signatures, and NodeInfo
• Automatic migrations and seed data, including a default administrator account
• DocC-based API and hosting documentation

Quick Links

• Documentation: docs.joinvernissage.org
• API documentation: docs.joinvernissage.org/documentation/vernissageserver
• Federation notes: FEDERATION.md
• Mobile client: VernissageMobile
• Web client: VernissageWeb
• Project website: joinvernissage.org

Architecture

Vernissage Server is organized around a conventional backend split:

• Controllers expose HTTP and ActivityPub endpoints.
• Services contain domain logic for accounts, timelines, statuses, federation, storage, notifications, and search.
• Models, DTOs, and Migrations define persistence and the public API contract.
• QueueJobs and ScheduledJobs handle asynchronous and recurring work.
• ActivityPubKit contains reusable federation-specific code.

At runtime, the API sits between client applications and the infrastructure it depends on:

• clients: Vernissage Mobile, Vernissage Web, external OAuth clients, federated servers,
• persistence: SQLite or PostgreSQL via Fluent,
• async infrastructure: Redis queues and schedulers,
• media layer: local storage for development or S3-compatible object storage in real deployments.

The application startup sequence is worth understanding: on startup it loads configuration, registers routes, configures the database, runs migrations, seeds dictionaries and the default admin user, initializes cached settings, then enables middleware, queues, schedulers, email, and storage.

Requirements

• Swift 6.2
• macOS 15+ or a modern Linux distribution supported by Swift
• system libraries for image and EXIF processing:
  • gd
  • libexif
  • libiptcdata
• optional for fuller setups:
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • S3-compatible storage such as AWS S3 or MinIO

macOS

$ brew install gd libexif libiptcdata

Linux

$ apt install -y libgd-dev libexif-dev libiptcdata0-dev

Getting Started

For local development, the default configuration is intentionally simple:

• the app reads appsettings.json,
• it creates or uses a local SQLite database file,
• migrations and seed data run automatically,
• a default admin user is created with password admin.

Run the server from the repository root:

$ swift run

By default, the API starts on http://localhost:8080.

Useful first checks:

• root: GET /
• health: GET /api/v1/health

Example Login

$ curl --location 'http://localhost:8080/api/v1/account/login' \
  --header 'Accept: application/json' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{
    "userNameOrEmail": "admin",
    "password": "admin"
  }'

Example response:

{
  "accessToken": "<jwt>",
  "refreshToken": "<refresh-token>",
  "xsrfToken": "<xsrf-token>",
  "expirationDate": "<iso-8601-date>",
  "userPayload": {
    "userName": "admin"
  }
}

Use Authorization: Bearer <accessToken> for authenticated requests.

If authentication is based on cookies, state-changing endpoints also require XSRF protection via the X-XSRF-TOKEN header. When the access token is sent in the Authorization: Bearer header, the extra XSRF header is not required.

Configuration

Configuration is loaded in this order:

1. appsettings.json
2. appsettings.<environment>.json
3. appsettings.local.json
4. environment variables

For local overrides, create appsettings.local.json next to appsettings.json:

{
  "vernissage": {
    "baseAddress": "http://localhost:8080",
    "connectionString": "postgres://postgres:secretpass@localhost:5432/postgres",
    "dbMaxConnectionsPerEventLoop": 1,
    "dbConnectionPoolTimeoutSeconds": 10,
    "dbConnectTimeoutSeconds": 10,
    "queueUrl": "redis://127.0.0.1:6379",
    "s3Address": "https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com",
    "s3Region": "eu-central-1",
    "s3Bucket": "your-bucket-test",
    "s3AccessKeyId": "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY",
    "s3SecretAccessKey": "YOUR_SECRET_KEY",
    "s3Http1OnlyMode": "false",
    "disableQueueJobs": "false",
    "disableScheduledJobs": "false"
  }
}

Most important keys:

Key	Purpose
baseAddress	Public base URL of the instance. Important for federation and links.
connectionString	SQLite file path or PostgreSQL connection string.
dbMaxConnectionsPerEventLoop	Maximum number of PostgreSQL connections per event loop (FluentPostgresDriver, default: 1).
dbConnectionPoolTimeoutSeconds	How long a request waits for a free DB connection before timeout (default: 10).
dbConnectTimeoutSeconds	Timeout for opening a new PostgreSQL TCP connection (default: 10).
queueUrl	Redis connection string used for queues and cache.
s3Address	Base URL of S3-compatible storage.
s3Region	AWS region. When set, AWS S3 settings take precedence over custom S3 address handling.
s3Bucket	Bucket name for uploaded media.
s3AccessKeyId / s3SecretAccessKey	Credentials for object storage.
s3Http1OnlyMode	Forces HTTP/1 mode for S3 client integrations when needed.
disableQueueJobs	Disables in-process queue workers.
disableScheduledJobs	Disables in-process schedulers.

In production, configuration can be overridden with environment variables such as VERNISSAGE_BASEADDRESS, VERNISSAGE_CONNECTIONSTRING, VERNISSAGE_DBMAXCONNECTIONSPEREVENTLOOP, VERNISSAGE_DBCONNECTIONPOOLTIMEOUTSECONDS, VERNISSAGE_DBCONNECTTIMEOUTSECONDS, VERNISSAGE_QUEUEURL, and related VERNISSAGE_* keys.

The application also supports standard Vapor runtime configuration:

• Vapor runs in the development environment by default, which is the mode used when starting locally with swift run.
• The Docker image starts the server with serve --env production, so containers run in the production environment by default.
• You can change the environment explicitly with --env, for example swift run VernissageServer serve --env production.
• You can override the log level with Vapor's --log flag or the LOG_LEVEL environment variable.

Supported log levels are: trace, debug, info, notice, warning, error, and critical.

Vapor defaults to info logging in development and notice in production, unless you override it.

Storage, Queues, and Scheduled Jobs

The server runs in several modes depending on configuration:

• without queueUrl, Redis-backed jobs are disabled and the app falls back to a no-op queue driver,
• with queueUrl, Redis is used for queues and cache,
• with disableQueueJobs=false, workers can run in the same process,
• with disableScheduledJobs=false, recurring jobs also run in-process.

Examples of background work handled by the server:

• email delivery,
• web push notifications,
• ActivityPub inbox and outbox processing,
• status creation and federation side effects,
• import tasks,
• archive generation and cleanup,
• trending calculations,
• cleanup of temporary files, captchas, failed logins, and stale statuses.

For media storage, local files are enough for development, but S3-compatible storage is the expected setup for real deployments.

Federation

Vernissage Server is a federated backend, not only a private API.

Supported protocols and standards:

• ActivityPub server-to-server
• WebFinger
• HTTP Signatures
• NodeInfo

Important public endpoints include:

• /.well-known/webfinger
• /.well-known/nodeinfo
• /.well-known/host-meta
• /api/v1/nodeinfo/2.0
• /shared/inbox

See FEDERATION.md for the supported extensions and more precise federation notes.

Repository Layout

• Sources/VernissageServer - main application target
• Sources/VernissageServer/Controllers - HTTP and ActivityPub endpoints
• Sources/VernissageServer/Services - business logic
• Sources/VernissageServer/Models - Fluent models
• Sources/VernissageServer/Migrations - database migrations
• Sources/VernissageServer/QueueJobs - asynchronous jobs
• Sources/VernissageServer/ScheduledJobs - recurring jobs
• Sources/VernissageServer/VernissageServer.docc - DocC documentation
• Sources/ActivityPubKit - reusable ActivityPub support code
• Tests - unit tests
• TestRequests - request samples useful during manual API testing
• Public and Resources - static and bundled resources used by the server

Development

Build the project:

$ swift build

Run tests:

$ swift test --no-parallel

Preview the local DocC documentation:

$ swift package --disable-sandbox preview-documentation \
  --exclude-extended-types \
  --product VernissageServer

Generate static documentation output:

$ swift package --allow-writing-to-directory .build/docs \
  generate-documentation --target VernissageServer \
  --disable-indexing \
  --exclude-extended-types \
  --transform-for-static-hosting \
  --output-path .build/docs

Developer notes:

• object IDs are Snowflake-like bigint values, but the JSON API exposes them as strings,
• startup runs migrations and seeders automatically,
• many authenticated write endpoints are protected by both auth and XSRF validation,
• logs go to stdout, which keeps local development and containerized deployments simple.

Docker

The repository includes a Dockerfile and a minimal docker-compose.yml for running the API in a production-like environment.

Build and start locally with Docker:

$ docker compose build
$ docker compose up app

You can also build and run the Dockerfile directly, without docker compose:

$ docker build -t vernissage-server .
$ docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 vernissage-server

To pass custom configuration, provide standard VERNISSAGE_* environment variables when starting the container:

$ docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \
  -e VERNISSAGE_BASEADDRESS=http://localhost:8080 \
  -e VERNISSAGE_CONNECTIONSTRING=postgres://postgres:secretpass@host.docker.internal:5432/postgres \
  -e VERNISSAGE_QUEUEURL=redis://host.docker.internal:6379 \
  vernissage-server

The image entrypoint starts the server in the production environment and listens on port 8080.

Production images are published to Docker Hub.

For a fuller deployment, including proxy, web client, push service, and Redis, refer to the DocC hosting guides at docs.joinvernissage.org.

Security

If you find a security issue, please use GitHub Security Advisories or contact info@vernissage.photos.

See SECURITY.md for the disclosure policy.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.