Third Party Script FAQ

What's a third-party script?

Fiolin is a platform for running various scripts that perform different tasks. For example: combining PDFs, unpacking zip files, rotating images, etc. Some of these scripts were written by the developers of the Fiolin website (i.e., first-party scripts). Other scripts were written by software developers unaffiliated with the Fiolin website (i.e., third-party scripts).

Why do I have to approve third-party scripts?

Third-party developers do not need approval from the Fiolin developers to write and share their scripts. Since the Fiolin developers do not vet these scripts, we cannot endorse any third-party script as being useful or safe. Use at your own risk.

Can third-party developers see my files?

No. Just like with first-party scripts, your files don't leave your browser. They do control the code that generates the output files though.

What other risks are there?

Fiolin cannot guarantee that third-party scripts work as advertised. Output files may or may not have the properties they say they do. To give a silly but suggestive example, a third-party script could claim to convert pngs to jpgs but actually just ignore the input file and output a picture of Rick Astley.

To minimize these sorts of risks, Fiolin does not allow third-party scripts to generate certain risky file types (e.g., exe files). If a third-party script instructs you to change the file extension of an output file, don't do it!

How can I tell if a script is third-party?

Links to third-party scripts look like this: fiolin.org/third-party?gh=some-user/some-repo/some-script. Links to scripts written by the Fiolin developers look like this: fiolin.org/s/some-script. Also, third-party scripts always display the github profile picture of the script author and have links to their github page.

Who can write a third-party script?

Anyone with a github account can write a third-party script. If you want to find out who wrote a particular script, you can click on the author's github profile picture or their username.

I'm a developer. How do I write third-party scripts?

See the developer documentation.