Note to anyone blindly cutting and pasting this, the final EOF needs to be alone on the line with no indentation (VSCode did me a disservice and formatted it poorly which confused the hell out of shellcheck but left me learning something today, which was nice).
Since OP intended to learn a bunch of technologies while developing this project I'd be amused to see a version of this based on qrencode complied to WASM.
There is an inherent skepticism about typing your password into a web form even/especially if it says it is not sent to the server. My read of this comment was on the one hand telling security conscious people how to achieve the same goal in a way that does not leave the computer, and on the other hand putting a lower bound on the complexity of the value provided by the site.
I think the point of simplicity here is that you apt/yum/yay/whatever install qrencode and then go to town.
You're on your own machine, you know the exact spec used to generate the QR, and while you're at it, you can use the same tool to generate TOTP QR codes and WireGuard configurations and a bunch of other things like links to websites or automations for Tasker (et al).
The world is your oyster when you know what and how the "magic" works, and while you're at it, you aren't risking pasting your WiFi passwords into some random website.
I didnt read it as a criticism necessarily. Qrencode is just awesome. I like that someone made a UI for this though so non-ghost-in-the-shell folks can get down with this awesome use of QR code dopeness :^)
As other comments have pointed out, the tech stack used here is excessive for what it is trying to do. The author has said it was a project to learn some specific technologies. There is a lot of mirth for overcomplicated contraptions mucking up otherwise simple tasks (and rightfully so, IMO), hence the retort of a one-line console command.
It's not excessive. The linked post is way easier to use and doesn't require a terminal or installing packages manually. I wouldn't even know how to get the cli version to work on windows.
The only downside IMO is that you are entering your wifi details in to an untrusted website.
The command-line app is effectively eternal as long as it's mirrored and the runtime interface doesn't change. Can we count on this link to still be there when we need it?
Do you know how long most "Show HN" links still work after a year or two?
It's literally a webpage with some javascript, so if you save it along with the asset files, you can just open the page in browser from your filesystem, no need to specially host it or start anything.
But yes, I agree running a command like qrencode from terminal is easier in the long run.
Yes, but it depends if the node.js app has the option of generating a fully static site. But it will also need to generate relative links for the browser to be able to directlyy load the site
Late reply, but when I was setting up WPA3 a few months ago I used Android 11 as a reference and that is what it spits out from the Settings share screen. Without it iirc, it would search and search and never connect.
Why has it never occurred to me that I might be able to use a QR code? I always do `sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/TheSSID.nmconnection | grep psk`, type in my root password and then re-type the passphrase manually on my phone. The amount of time this is going to save me…
I was always aware my phone has an option to scan a QR to connect to WiFi, but I never thought to look up the QR spec for it. I had no idea nmcli had this functionality either, though I have used qrencode a lot for TOTP and WireGuard.
There is no real specification. This is the best source[1], which documents QR standards.
>There are some standards -- de facto and otherwise -- already in use. This wiki attempts to catalog some possible standards for encoding various types of information, and suggest a standard action associated to them.
Damn, that's saddening, but also answers a question I had about what the escape character is for a password containing `;` -- I guess there's no specification to tell me :-(
OTOH, I guess a "standard" is whatever the common implementations accept anyway, so if one could dig up the source to the WiFi QR scanner in source.android.com that's the 2nd best thing
In fairness, the string doesn't seem insaneo: T:=Type S:=SSID P:=Password then only the leading and trailing chars need to be "remembered", plus whatever the escape character is for that password string (or maybe even the SSID -- I'm not super clear on what characters can be in an SSID)
If the options for helping someone are sending them a URL or explaining how to install termux and then a new package and then running an obscure command in it, I know which option I would pick.
My new router came with the QR code stuck on. ios and apparently android have wifi sharing but its still going to be problem when an android user visits an ios user.
