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# Using Joplin to publish a wiki
published 2024-12-05 · 3 min read · https://joaocosta.dev/blog/14

Recently I've been on an adventure to find a note-taking app that allows me to
publish my notes as a personal wiki. I've ended up choosing Joplin.

You can access the wiki here (https://wiki.joaocosta.dev/).

## Why Joplin as a wiki software

For a few years now, I've published a personal wiki. This basically means
sharing a part of my personal notes that I decided to make public. I used to use
dedicated wiki software. Started with DokuWiki
(https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki), then moved to Wiki.js (https://js.wiki/).
The problem was that reaching out to the wiki to take notes broke my workflow,
so I didn't write much. At the same time, I was trying to settle on a single
note taking software. This is where Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) comes in.

Joplin fits my use cases nicely:

→ It's open source.
→ Allows me to take notes in Markdown format.
→ Has self-hosted sync options (bonus by being builtin).
→ Allows me to have a shared notebook with my partner.
→ Allows me to publish notes aka my personal wiki (using Joplin Server
  (https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/packages/server/README.md)).

## How I did it

Joplin allows me to publish individual notes (make them publicly viewable), but
I wanted to publish an entire directory/notebook (my wiki). For this reason I
went with a slightly different approach. I'm using a Github action to fetch my
Wiki notebook through the joplin cli (https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/terminal/)
and export the contents as markdown files. There is another action that takes
these markdown files and builds the Wiki using mdBook
(https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/).

In other words:

→ I write in my notetaking app (Joplin) inside a Wiki notebook (directory).
→ Github fetches these notes and exports them as markdown files.
→ An intermediate step builds the Wiki summary (a sitemap needed by mdBook).
→ Lastly, Github builds and publishes the Wiki with Github pages.

This happens once a day at midnight (UTC). The contents of the repo
(https://github.com/joaocostaifg/wiki) are something like a daily snapshot of
the Wiki notebook.

## Hosting Joplin server

I host Joplin server using Docker compose:

┄───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── yml 
│ services:
│   joplin:
│     image: joplin/server:latest
│     container_name: joplin
│     ports:
│       - "22300:22300"
│     environment:
│       - APP_BASE_URL=https://joplin.myserver.com
│       - APP_PORT=22300
│       - SQLITE_DATABASE=/data/db.sqlite
│     volumes:
│       - joplin_data:/data
│     restart: unless-stopped
│ 
│ volumes:
│   joplin_data:
┄──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

This runs the server on port 22300 using an SQLite database. Unless you have
lots of users, I see no reason to use the PostgreSQL database option.

## Want to the same as well?

→ Fork the repo (https://github.com/joaocostaifg/wiki).
→ Set the following Github secrets (for the action):
- JOPLIN_PATH - your Joplin server instance URL. Something like
https://joplin.myserver.com - JOPLIN_USER - the Joplin user that is gonna be
used to fetch the contents. I created a user for this with whom I share the Wiki
notebook. - JOPLIN_PASSWORD - the password for the Joplin user.

The step that builds the mdBook is on a separate action
(https://joaocosta.dev/blog/.github/workflows/mdbook.yml). If you want to build
another kind of site, for example a personal blog, you can change this action to
build something else. There's a bunch of Github actions already setup for that.

## Conclusion

Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) and mdBook
(https://github.com/joaocostaifg/wiki) are pretty cool. Finally, I can write my
notes in a single place and easily keep them synced between my devices. I highly
recommend giving Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) a try.

Stay safe :P

└─ → view online: https://joaocosta.dev/blog/14