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josephg
ShareJS
JavaScript2011–2026
josephg / ShareJS

ShareJS

Collaborative editing in any app

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
20Distinct people
22Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Collaborative editing in any app

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year22 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2011-06-17 23:28:34 UTC to 2026-03-16 08:24:15 UTC.

02462011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments20112012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

22 sources
marknadal·Feb 19, 2015
Actually yes! I'm one of the people who accidentaly sparked a long discussion in the #1 issues thread: https://github.com/share/ShareJS/issues/1 that I've seen other people on HN link to. GUN doesn't have OT-style text collaboration yet, so go with ShareJS if that is what you need now. I do plan on implementing it on top of GUN though, or trying to get ShareJS integrated with GUN. Joseph is a really great guy. Yupe, I've talked to Steve Marx at Dropbox Datastore at a hackathon before. He's a great guy as well. They're using algorithms that require some centralized conflict resolution though. Which is great, but I'm interested in the decentralized side.
In Show HN: Gun v0.1.0 – The Easiest Database Ever
espadrine·Oct 30, 2014
I'll help you, but you should know that what they do is nothing like that. They used Operational Transformation. They have convergent properties which guarantee that you won't ever have merge conflicts. They also have, depending on the implementation, certain causality guarantees that ensure that what you edited stays the way you intended. The basic idea is that you receive operations that modify your local operations. The challenge is in writing the function that takes each two operations and mutates them. Therefore, the protocol is of no practical interest, it simply serves that function's purpose. Here's a set of libraries that implement this for strings: https://github.com/Operational-Transformation Implementing this for JSON is certainly possible, and has been done. See this for instance: https://github.com/share/ShareJS
In JSON Patch – a format for describing changes to a JSON document
yaddayadda·May 8, 2014
Quill's WYSIWYG + HTML<->MD bidirectional support (e.g. leeoniya's example) + ShareJS' operational transformation [1] == awesome collaborative JS-ish web editor stack Throw in a ShareJS script to autosave [2], an it's even more awesome! [1] http://sharejs.org/ [2] https://gist.github.com/josephg/1341527 Relevant Githubs: - https://github.com/quilljs/quill - https://github.com/josephg/ShareJS Edited: to account for leeoniya's explanation that follows
In Quill – An Open Source Rich Text Editor with an API
filearts·Mar 5, 2014
"Wow, plunker seems really nice. You really do make a strong case with the package catalogue." Thanks! Server-side processing: If you make a style.less file and link to style.css from your markup, the less will be transpiled by the preview server. This applies to most compiled web languages (including ES6: script.es6.js -> script.js). If something is missing, I'll do my best to add it. Collaborative editing: Yes, this is true collaborative editing thanks to ShareJS [1]. However, at the moment, I have an issue hidden away somewhere whereby a streaming session may be corrupted when several users are concurrently editing. I have been unable to boil it down to a reproducible case though. 1: https://github.com/share/ShareJS
In The Best Tools for UI Hacking (not jsFiddle)
schrijver·Dec 29, 2013
I wonder if React’s algorithm could be used to implement support for ‘operational transformations’ on DOM trees? OT is the technique used for collaborative editing, etherpad-style. Current implementations don’t work with conventional DOM’s: Etherpad has its own model of plain text with an additional ’attribute pool’. Libraries like http://sharejs.org/ only know to deal with plain text and JSON. I would love if I could implement a collaborative editor that hooks into an existing HTML element on the page, in the way contentEditable allows for in single-user apps. cf https://github.com/share/ShareJS/issues/1
In React's Diff Algorithm
josephg·Apr 14, 2013
As a maintainer of a project with almost 2000 stars on github, I sway back and forth between being allowing ("Just submit code to get what you want done. We can fix it once its in the repository") and a stickler for details ("I don't want your change until you give me tests.") I really wish I could just give everyone who submits patches commit access and let them at the repository. It would save me time. It would save you time. It would make my project better. And I don't write opensource software because I enjoy being a policeman. I hate it. I hate saying no to real work that solves real problems. Unfortunately, the majority of pull requests are simply bad. - Many do not understand the project's conventions (eg, if my project is written in coffeescript, so your code needs to be in coffeescript too). Example: https://github.com/josephg/Sh
Read the rest
areJS/pull/36/files . After I insisted on the code being ported to coffeescript, several users whinged on the project's mailing list about my language choice. - Most pull requests don't have tests. Submitters usually don't even run the unit tests before submitting, and their pull requests often break the tests we do have. I understand that you don't write tests in your application, but the rules are different in an infrastructure project that many people rely on. - People often have extra modifications in their PR that have nothing to do with the patch. For example, this pull request has good parts near the top and also makes my code uglier riiiight down the bottom in the name of 'optimization'. Quotes because optimization was never run, and the changes didn't actually improve performance. https://github.com/josephg/Chipmunk-js/pull/15/files - Some bug reports exist only to waste my time and complain about my programming language choices. This is what I was doing instead of triaging your bug. I'm sorry, ok? https://github.com/josephg/Chipmunk-js/issues/11 I usually err on the side of allowing changes and fixing stuff later, but my projects have suffered for this several times. I've had maintainers accept pull requests that break the unit tests (and leave them broken for weeks). I've had otherwise normal code suddenly sprout extra levels of indentation. I've had mountains of bugs appear, filed against a feature I didn't write, don't understand and I never use, who's author has disappeared. I've been burned enough that I can totally understand maintainers who ignore patches and bug reports. I still love everyone who cares about my projects enough to submit a bug report or takes the time to make a pull request. I need contributors to make good software, but it breaks my heart when nice people submit slightly bad code, and I need to either whinge at you or stop working on my own pet feature to clean up your mess. I'm sorry to everyone who's patches gets ignored, but sometimes I get tired too. In short, its fun to complain about The Man because your precious donation of code is being ignored. But its just as thankless running a project, only we shoulder way more responsibility and burn way more time doing it. If you want me to look at more of your bug reports, help triage my other pending bugs and pull requests. If you want me to stay excited about the project, email me to say how much you like it, and tell me about the cool things you're doing with my code. If you want commit access, ask for it. Finally, if you think you can do a better job running a project, use the fork button and do something about it.
In A plea for better open source etiquette

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