# Canon

A self-hosted page for **your** ranked favorites: movies, TV shows, albums, songs, video games, theater, and anything else you care to rank in a custom list. One owner, as many lists as you like, each with its own size (Top 5, Top 100, … up to 65,535), with proper posters and cover art pulled from the best free metadata sources.

Your page is titled **"*Your name*'s Canon"** by default. Set your name under Settings → Profile, or give the site any title you like there.

Visitors just see your lists. There's no sign-up, no feed and no login button. You manage everything from `/login`.

- **Ranked lists per category**: Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Songs, Video Games and Theater. Each list sets its own size, title, description and style.
- **Search-to-add** from TMDB, TheTVDB, IGDB, Deezer/MusicBrainz and Wikipedia, with add-manually as a fallback for anything they miss.
- **Custom lists** for anything else, like sports teams, drinks or restaurants. You name the list and add entries by hand (with your own photo or logo), or pull a name and picture from Wikipedia.
- **Theater by production**: record *which* staging you mean (Broadway, West End, North American Tour, a revival…) plus venue and cast, and use that production's own poster.
- **Four styles per list**: **Podium** (top 3 on a medal podium, the rest behind "Show more"), **Spotlight** (#1 as a big feature), **Grid** and **List**. You pick each list's style in List settings, and visitors can switch styles on a list's own page.
- **Drag to rank**, or use the arrow buttons or type a new number. Paginated editing keeps huge lists usable.
- **Art is cached on your server**, so pages never hotlink and keep working if a source changes. You can also paste an image URL or upload your own.
- **Preview clips** for songs and albums: a play button plays 30 seconds from Deezer (an album plays its most popular track). Clips stream through your server, so visitors never connect to Deezer. You can turn this off in Settings → Profile.
- **Export** any list as a titles-only `.csv` or `.txt`.
- **Descriptions and your reasons**: each entry keeps the source's description (TMDB overview, IGDB summary, Wikipedia intro), and you can add a "Why it's #N" note explaining its spot. Both show in the detail view.
- **12 theme presets** plus a custom CSS box. Every color is a CSS variable.
- **Single binary + SQLite**, no external database. Around 15 MB, and it runs anywhere Docker does.

## Quick start (Docker Compose)

```sh
git clone https://git.iamchrisama.com/cdnutter/canon && cd canon
cp .env.example .env        # optional: admin account + API keys
docker compose up -d
docker compose logs canon # shows the one-time setup code if you didn't set an admin in .env
```

Open `http://localhost:4242/setup`, enter the setup code and create your account. Then go to **Settings → Integrations** to add API keys.

To skip the setup page, set `CANON_ADMIN_USERNAME` and `CANON_ADMIN_PASSWORD` in `.env` before the first start. They're only used when no account exists yet.

### Opening it from other devices

Canon listens on all network interfaces (`0.0.0.0`) by default, so phones and other computers on your network can open `http://<this computer's IP>:4242`. When run outside Docker, the startup log prints the exact addresses. If another device can't connect, the host's firewall is probably blocking the port (for example `sudo ufw allow 4242/tcp`). To keep Canon private to one machine, set `CANON_HOST=127.0.0.1`, or publish `127.0.0.1:4242:4242` in `docker-compose.yml`.

### Without Compose

```sh
docker build -t canon .
docker run -d --name canon -p 4242:4242 -v canon-data:/data canon
```

Or from source (Go 1.26+): `go run ./cmd/canon` stores data in `./data`.

## Data sources and API keys

| Category | Source | Key? | Get one |
|---|---|---|---|
| Movies | [TMDB](https://www.themoviedb.org) | Yes (free) | [themoviedb.org/settings/api](https://www.themoviedb.org/settings/api). The v3 key or the v4 Read Access Token both work. |
| TV Shows | [TheTVDB](https://thetvdb.com) (default) or TMDB | Yes | [thetvdb.com/api-information](https://thetvdb.com/api-information). Switch TV to TMDB in Settings to reuse your TMDB key. |
| Video Games | [IGDB](https://www.igdb.com) | Yes (free, via Twitch) | Register an app at [dev.twitch.tv/console](https://dev.twitch.tv/console/apps) and use its Client ID + Secret ([guide](https://api-docs.igdb.com/#account-creation)). |
| Albums & Songs | [Deezer](https://developers.deezer.com/api) and [MusicBrainz](https://musicbrainz.org) + [Cover Art Archive](https://coverartarchive.org), searched together (or either alone) | No | Nothing to set up. |
| Theater | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org) | No | Nothing to set up. |
| Custom | Manual entry, or [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org) | No | Nothing to set up. |

**Why these for music and theater?** Neither needs a key.
- **Music:** Canon searches Deezer and MusicBrainz together and merges the results. Deezer's public API has no key, generous limits, 1000×1000 covers and 30-second preview clips, but its search misses some albums it carries (Death Magnetic only turns up for an exact artist + album query) and has few game soundtracks. MusicBrainz is fully open, finds those, and tags soundtracks, but allows only one request per second. Entries added from MusicBrainz or by hand are matched to Deezer when saved, so they can play previews too. Spotify, Apple Music and Last.fm all need keys or OAuth and have stricter terms. For game music, [VGMdb](https://vgmdb.net) has the deepest catalogue but no public API, so add anything missing by hand.
- **Theater:** there's no open theater database with an API (IBDB and Playbill don't offer one). Wikipedia covers nearly every musical, play and opera, usually with poster or logo art. Canon filters search to pages that use the musical, play or opera infobox. Wikipedia describes the *work*, so you pick the production yourself and can swap in that production's poster.

Keys entered in the UI are stored in the SQLite database on your server. Keys set as environment variables take precedence and show as locked in the UI.

## Configuration

| Variable | Default | |
|---|---|---|
| `CANON_HOST` | `0.0.0.0` | Interface to listen on. `0.0.0.0` makes it reachable from other devices on your network; `127.0.0.1` keeps it on this machine |
| `CANON_PORT` | `4242` | Listen port |
| `CANON_DATA_DIR` | `/data` (Docker), `./data` | Database + cached images |
| `CANON_ADMIN_USERNAME` / `_PASSWORD` | | Create the owner account on first start |
| `CANON_TMDB_API_KEY` | | |
| `CANON_TVDB_API_KEY` / `CANON_TVDB_PIN` | | The PIN is only for user-supported keys |
| `CANON_IGDB_CLIENT_ID` / `_SECRET` | | Twitch app credentials |
| `CANON_TRUST_PROXY` | `false` | Trust `X-Forwarded-*` headers (set behind a reverse proxy) |
| `CANON_SECURE_COOKIES` | `false` | Force `Secure` cookies (set if served over HTTPS) |
| `CANON_LOG_LEVEL` | `info` | `debug` logs every request |

### Reverse proxy

Canon serves plain HTTP. Put it behind Caddy, Traefik or nginx for HTTPS, and set `CANON_TRUST_PROXY=true` so logins are rate-limited per real client and cookies are marked secure. Caddy example:

```
favorites.example.com {
    reverse_proxy canon:4242
}
```

## Theming

Pick a preset under **Settings → Appearance**: Midnight, Obsidian, Nord, Dracula, Mocha, Rosé Pine, Gruvbox, Forest, Synthwave, Crimson (red on OLED black), Daylight, Paper or Latte. Then add your own CSS if you like. It loads after the theme on every page, so overriding variables is enough for a whole new look:

```css
:root, [data-theme] {
  --bg: #0d0b12;
  --surface: #16131d;
  --accent: #ff5a7a;
  --font-display: "Georgia", serif;
  --radius-art: 14px;
}
```

See [`web/static/css/themes.css`](web/static/css/themes.css) for every variable.

## List sizes

A list can hold 1 to 65,535 entries. The editor recommends **100 or fewer** and warns past 1,000. Long lists work (public pages and the editor paginate at 100), but they're hard for visitors to take in.

## Exporting a list

Every list can be downloaded as its titles only, in rank order, one per line. There are no ranks, header row or other fields.

- **Export → Titles as CSV** (`/l/<list>/export?format=csv`): a single column. It starts with a UTF-8 BOM so Excel shows accented titles correctly.
- **Export → Titles as text** (`/l/<list>/export?format=txt`): plain lines.

The Export menu appears in the list editor and, when you're signed in, on the list's public page. The links follow the list's visibility: anyone can download a public list, and only you can download a hidden one.

## Upgrading from TopDeck

Canon was called TopDeck, and upgrading keeps all your data:

- The database is renamed from `topdeck.db` to `canon.db` automatically on first start.
- Environment variables changed prefix from `TOPDECK_` to `CANON_`. Rename them in your `.env`.
- You'll be signed out once (the session cookie was renamed).
- Docker Compose now always uses the project name `canon`. If you ran the old compose file, your data is in the `topdeck_topdeck-data` volume. Copy it into the new one before starting:

  ```sh
  docker volume create canon_canon-data
  docker run --rm -v topdeck_topdeck-data:/from -v canon_canon-data:/to alpine cp -a /from/. /to/
  ```

## Backups

Everything lives in the data volume: `canon.db` (SQLite) and `images/`. Copy the volume, or while running:

```sh
docker compose exec canon sh -c 'cd /data && tar c canon.db* images' > canon-backup.tar
```

## Development

```sh
go run ./cmd/canon        # http://localhost:4242
go test ./...
go test -tags live ./internal/providers   # hits the real music APIs
```

Templates and static assets in `web/` are embedded into the binary, so rebuild after editing them. The front end is plain ES modules with no build step.

```
cmd/canon         entry point, first-run bootstrap
internal/store      SQLite schema, lists, items, ranking, settings, sessions
internal/providers  TMDB, TheTVDB, IGDB, Deezer, MusicBrainz, Wikipedia
internal/imgcache   downloads and stores artwork
internal/server     HTTP routes, auth, JSON API, page rendering
web/                templates, CSS themes, JS, icons
```