This Week in Past

This week in past is a lightweight, self‑hosted photo gallery that aggregates images taken on the current calendar week across all previous years. It serves a single, high‑performance web page that displays those images in an automated slideshow. The application is written entirely in Rust, compiled statically for maximum portability, and can be run natively or as a Docker container on any modern architecture (amd64, arm64/v8, arm/v7, arm/v6). From a developer’s perspective it offers a clean API surface for image ingestion, configuration via environment variables, and a highly cache‑friendly memory model that reads all metadata at startup.

Key Features

• Calendar‑based aggregation – Automatically selects photos whose capture date falls within the current week of the year, spanning multiple years.
• In‑memory caching – All image metadata (EXIF, file paths) are loaded into a hash map on startup, eliminating disk I/O during slideshow rendering.
• Fallback logic – If no images exist for the current week, the app selects a random set of photos to keep the gallery populated.
• Static binary – Built with musl so it runs on any Linux distribution without external dependencies.
• Docker‑ready – Official image supports multi‑arch builds and exposes a single port (default 8080) for easy deployment.

Technical Stack

The core engine parses file paths, extracts EXIF timestamps, and stores them in a HashMap<WeekKey, Vec<ImageMeta>>. A simple scheduler (timer) triggers the slideshow logic at SLIDESHOW_INTERVAL seconds, sending the selected image URLs to the front‑end via HTTP/HTML templates.

Core Capabilities & APIs

• RESTful endpoint – / serves the slideshow page; optional query parameters can filter by year or month for advanced use.
• WebSocket/Server‑Sent Events (optional) – Potential extension to push new images without page reload.
• Environment‑driven configuration – No hardcoded paths; developers can mount any directory structure as the image source.
• Extensibility hooks – The metadata cache can be replaced with a database (e.g., SQLite) if persistence is required for larger collections.

Deployment & Infrastructure

• Self‑hosting – Requires only a recent Linux kernel and Docker (or no dependencies for the static binary).
• Scalability – The application is single‑process and stateless; horizontal scaling can be achieved via a reverse proxy or load balancer if the image set grows beyond memory capacity.
• Resource footprint – Typical RAM usage is proportional to the number of images (metadata only), usually a few megabytes even for tens of thousands of photos.
• Containerization – Official Docker image (rouhim/this-week-in-past) supports amd64, arm64/v8, arm/v7, and arm/v6. Users can override environment variables to point to remote storage mounts (e.g., NFS, SMB).

Integration & Extensibility

• Plugin architecture – While not present out of the box, the codebase exposes a clear boundary for adding new image sources or filters via Rust traits.
• Webhooks – Developers can wrap the binary in a CI/CD pipeline to trigger a rebuild when new images are added, ensuring the cache stays fresh.
• Custom front‑end – The HTML/CSS is minimal; teams can replace it with React/Vue if they need richer UI interactions.

Developer Experience

• Zero‑config – Apart from environment variables, no additional setup is required.
• Documentation – The README provides clear usage examples and CI status badges; the source code is well‑commented.
• Community – Listed on Awesome Self‑Hosted under photo galleries, indicating community recognition; active GitHub actions for CI and security audits.
• Licensing – Open source under a permissive license (not explicitly stated but implied by the repository), enabling commercial use without royalties.

Use Cases

1. Personal Photo Archive – Hobbyists who moved from cloud services to a local NAS can enjoy the nostalgic slideshow without re‑uploading.
2. Digital Signage – Small businesses can display seasonal memories on a kiosk or TV screen with minimal overhead.
3. Event Recap – Organizers can mount a dedicated folder of event photos and let the app automatically cycle through them week‑by‑week.
4. Developer Demo – Showcasing Rust’s performance and static binary capabilities in a simple web app.

Advantages Over Alternatives

• Performance – In‑memory metadata caching and a static binary yield low latency and zero external dependencies.
• Simplicity – No database or ORM required; the entire application fits in a single executable.
• Portability – Multi‑arch Docker images and mus