wonderful-readme-stats

wonderful-readme-stats – A self-hosted solution for repository statistics

A wonderful out-of-the-box and self-hosted solution for displaying statistics (stargazers, contributors, etc.) about your repository in your README file.

Features:

• 100% free and Open Source under the Apache 2.0 license;
• For any level of developer's knowledge and technical expertise;
• Write on the pure Go programming language, without any overheads;
• Used minimum dependencies, well-tested and well-optimized for the production;
• Delivered as a self-hosted solution in the Docker image, independent of anyone else;
• Has the Complete user guide to understand the basic principles and deployment processes;
• Well-documented, with a lot of tips and assists from the author.

⚡️ Quick start

Feel free to using the latest version of the wonderful-readme-stats from our official Docker image.

💡 Note: See the Complete user guide to understand the basic principles of the project.

Run the wonderful-readme-stats container with your environment variables:

docker run -d \
  -p 9876:9876 \
  -e REPOSITORY_OWNER=<OWNER> \
  -e REPOSITORY_NAME=<NAME> \
  -e SERVER_PORT=9876 \
  -v /etc/ssl/certs:/etc/ssl/certs:ro \
  --name wonderful_readme_stats --restart=unless-stopped \
  koddr/wonderful-readme-stats:latest

After starting, the wonderful-readme-stats backend will be available at http://localhost:9876 on your local machine. To test the backend, open your browser and navigate to:

• /github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/stargazers.png to see the stargazers stats of the repo (PNG image).
• /github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/contributors.png to see the contributors stats of the repo (PNG image).

That's it! 🔥 A wonderful stats are ready to be deployed to a remote server and added to your repo's README.

🛠 Manual way to quick start

If you want to build the image yourself (or change something in the code), just git clone this repository.

I made sure that the documentation in the code is comprehensive and covers as much functionality as possible.

📦 Other way to quick start

Download ready-made exe files for Windows, deb, rpm, apk or Arch Linux packages from the Releases page.

📖 Complete user guide

To get a complete guide to use and understand the basic principles of the wonderful-readme-stats project, I have prepared a comprehensive explanation of each step at once in this README file.

💬 From the author: I always treasure your time and want you to start building really great web products on this awesome technology stack as soon as possible!

I hope you find answers to all of your questions! 👌 But, if you do not find needed information, feel free to create an issue or send a PR to this repository.

Step 1: Configure remote server with Portainer

I recommend using the Portainer Community Edition platform to make the process of deploying the wonderful-readme-stats backend more comfortable and faster. Almost every cloud provider has a ready-to-use Docker image that can be deployed directly from the dashboard.

Let's take a look at Timeweb.Cloud as an example:

• Login (or register) to the cloud provider.
• Click to the Server link on the left panel.
• Click to the Create button on the top right.
• Switch to the Marketplace tab and type word portainer in the Search field:

• Click to the Portainer card and select your preferred GNU/Linux distribution.
• Fill the required fields (region, CPU, RAM, disk, backup and so on).
• Click to the Order for ... button and wait for the process to complete.

Now, you're ready to continue configuring the wonderful-readme-stats backend.

Manual configuration

If you don't want to use the pre-built image provided by your cloud provider, here are instructions on how to manually install Portainer on your server.

❗️ Warning: All steps must be performed strongly after installing Docker to your server. See documentation page for more information.

• Create a new Docker volume for Portainer data:

docker volume create portainer_data

• Start the Portainer container:

docker run -d \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -p 9443:9443 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v portainer_data:/data \
  --name portainer --restart=always \
  portainer/portainer-ce:latest

• Check the status of the container:

docker ps

Step 2: Prepare the wonderful-readme-stats backend

Excellent, let's now set up the wonderful-readme-stats backend that will collect and display statistics on the selected repository.

• Go to your Portainer dashboard.
• Click to the Add stack button.
• Place the following content to the Web editor field:

version: '3.8'

# Define services.
services:
  # Service for the backend.
  wonderful_readme_stats:
    # Configuration for the Docker image for the service.
    image: 'koddr/wonderful-readme-stats:latest'
    # Set restart rules for the container.
    restart: unless-stopped
    # Forward the exposed port 9876 on the container to port 9876 on the host machine.
    ports:
      - '9876:9876'
    # Set required environment variables for the backend.
    environment:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${GITHUB_TOKEN}
      REPOSITORY_OWNER: ${REPOSITORY_OWNER}
      REPOSITORY_NAME: ${REPOSITORY_NAME}
      SERVER_PORT: 9876
      SERVER_READ_TIMEOUT: 5
      SERVER_WRITE_TIMEOUT: 10
      AVATAR_SHAPE: rounded
      AVATAR_SIZE: 64
      AVATAR_HORIZONTAL_MARGIN: 12
      AVATAR_VERTICAL_MARGIN: 12
      AVATAR_ROUNDED_RADIUS: 16.0
      OUTPUT_IMAGE_MAX_PER_ROW: 16
      OUTPUT_IMAGE_MAX_ROWS: 2
      OUTPUT_IMAGE_UPDATE_INTERVAL: 3600
    # Set volumes for the container with SSL certificates.
    volumes:
      - /etc/ssl/certs:/etc/ssl/certs:ro

• Go to Environment variables options and click to the Advanced mode button.
• Paste your secret data as a plaintext (key-value pairs, separated by a newline) to the field:

GITHUB_TOKEN=your-secret-github-token-123456789
REPOSITORY_OWNER=your-repo-owner
REPOSITORY_NAME=your-repo-name

• Then, click to the Deploy the stack button on the bottom of the page.
• After starting the container, the backend will be available at http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:9876.
• To test the wonderful-readme-stats backend, open your browser and navigate to:
  • http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:9876/github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/stargazers.png to see the stargazers statistics of the repository in the auto-generated PNG image.
  • http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:9876/github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/contributors.png to see the contributors statistics of the repository in the auto-generated PNG image.

Environment variables explanation

Yes, I create a container with the settings defined from the environment variables. This was done on purpose to make it easier to deploy to a remote server so that you don't have to create and store a configuration file.

The full list of the environment variables are used to configure the wonderful-readme-stats backend.

Environment variables for the GitHub API:

❗️ Warning: Do not leave the token for GITHUB_TOKEN exposed as a string, only as a variable! This is not safe. If you want to commit this to your repository, make sure you don't leave any secret data in the file first.

💡 Note: You can choose not to define GITHUB_TOKEN, but then the update time interval of the output image in the OUTPUT_IMAGE_UPDATE_INTERVAL parameter cannot be lower than the recommended 3600 seconds.

This is because without defining a GitHub token, the wonderful-readme-stats backend will work with public limits for getting data from the API.

Environment variables for the repository name and owner:

Environment variables for the server options:

Environment variables for the user avatar options (used for the each avatar image):

Environment variables for the output image options:

Step 3: Configure Nginx Proxy Manager

To avoid thinking about configuring Nginx proxy and Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, let's install Nginx Proxy Manager on the remote server using Portainer. He's going to do it all for us.

• Go to your Portainer dashboard.
• Add a new Docker network called nginx_proxy_manager_default in the Networks section.
• Click to the Add stack button.
• Place the following content to the Web editor field:

version: '3.8'

# Define the services.
services:
  # Service for Nginx Proxy Manager.
  nginx_proxy_manager:
    # Configuration for the Docker image for the service.
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    # Set restart rules for the container.
    restart: unless-stopped
    # Forward the exposed ports on the container to ports on the host machine.
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '81:81' # port for the Nginx Proxy Manager
      - '443:443'
    # Uncomment the next line if you want to uncomment anything in the section.
    # environment:
      # Uncomment this if you want to change the location of the SQLite DB file within the container
      # - DB_SQLITE_FILE=/data/database.sqlite
      # Uncomment this if IPv6 is not enabled on your host.
      # - DISABLE_IPV6=true
    # Set volumes for the container.
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt
    # Set networks for the container.
    networks:
      - nginx_proxy_manager_default

# Define networks.
networks:
  # Network for Nginx Proxy Manager.
  nginx_proxy_manager_default:
    external: true # require external access

• Then, click to the Deploy the stack button on the bottom of the page.
• After starting the container, Nginx Proxy Manager will be available at http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:81.

❗️ Warning: A default email for the first login to the Nginx Proxy Manager is admin@example.com, and password is changeme. Do not forget to change this credentials! See official documentation page for more details.

Step 4: Configure domain and SSL certificate

💡 Note: It is assumed that you already have a domain name purchased and its NS servers configured on your cloud provider, on which we have deployed Portainer and the rest of the tools.

Let's configure the domain name and create the SSL certificate.

• Go to your Nginx Proxy Manager dashboard.
• Click to the Add Proxy Host button and fill the required fields:
  • Domain Names with the purchased domain names (e.g., example.com and www.example.com).
  • Scheme with the HTTP scheme (by default, http).
  • Forward Hostname / IP with the IP address of your remote server.
  • Forward Port with the port of the wonderful-readme-stats backend (by default, 9876).
  • Check the Cache assets and Block Common Exploits checkboxes.
• Next, go to the SSL section:
  • In the SSL Certificate field select the Request a new SSL certificate option.
  • Check the Force SSL, HTTP/2 Support, HSTS Enabled and HSTS Subdomains checkboxes.
  • Email Address for Let's Encrypt with your real email address.
  • Check the I Agree to the Let's Encrypt Terms of Service checkbox.
• Then, click to the Save button and wait for the process to complete.

Step 5: Add the statistics to your README

Now, you can add the statistics of your repository to the README.

• For the repository Stargazers (users that have starred the repository):

![Repository stargazers](https://your-domain.com/github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/stargazers.png)

• For the repository Contributors (users that have contributed to the repository):

![Repository contributors](https://your-domain.com/github/<OWNER>/<NAME>/contributors.png)

• And the final image will be like this:

💡 Note: In this example I use stargazers statistics of the gowebly repository with a default settings.

🎯 Motivation to create

I've always loved making beautiful and informative READMEs for my projects.

Yes, there are so many tools out there already, but not all of them can be installed on the remote server (as a self-hosted solutions) and/or have advanced settings to display the final result.

That's why I created a Docker image with wonderful-readme-stats that I've been using since a long time. And now, I put it to the Open Source for the whole developer community.

Treasure your time and create only clear and handsome README pages with me! ✨

💬 From the author: Earlier, I have already saved the world twice: it was Create Go App and gowebly (yep, that's my projects too). The GitHub stars statistics of these projects can't lie: more than 2.2k developers of any level and different countries start a new project through these CLI tools.

🏆 A win-win cooperation

If you liked the wonderful-readme-stats project and found it useful for your tasks, please click a 👁️ Watch button to avoid missing notifications about new versions, and give it a 🌟 GitHub Star!

It really motivates me to make this product even better.

And now, I invite you to participate in this project! Let's work together to create and popularize the most useful tool for developers on the web today.

• Issues: ask questions and submit your features.
• Pull requests: send your improvements to the current.
• Say a few words about the project on your social networks and blogs (Dev.to, Medium, Хабр, and so on).

Your PRs, issues & any words are welcome! Thank you 😘

⚠️ License

wonderful-readme-stats is free and open-source software licensed under the Apache 2.0 License, created and supported by Vic Shóstak with 🩵 for people and robots. Official logo distributed under the Creative Commons License (CC BY-SA 4.0 International).