Demo mode

Demo mode

This page documents some features of the Sandstorm demo mode, which is the mode in which demo.sandstorm.io runs. The code for demo mode is in the main Sandstorm repository but usually is not enabled.

Purpose of demo mode

The main purpose of the demo mode is to let people learn more about the Sandstorm platform by using a Sandstorm instance without having to think about registering for an account.

A secondary purpose, the code for which is not yet fully implemented, is to enable people to try out Sandstorm apps without having to think about registering for an account or "installing" the app.

Data deletion

A demo user and their data is deleted one hour after the user is created. To learn about how, read the code implementing the demo.

At the time of writing, the period of data deletion is not configurable.

Enabling demo mode

Demo mode is mainly intended to run on demo.sandstorm.io, since the purpose is to show you what Sandstorm looks like before you've installed it. That said, you can enable it on your own installation.

To enable demo mode, add the following line to sandstorm.conf:

ALLOW_DEMO_ACCOUNTS=true

App demos

When a Sandstorm instance allows demo accounts, a visitor can surf to:

/appdemo/:appId

(where appId is the key ID of an app installed on that server).

At that URL, we show a screen to the visitor indicating that their data will vanish in a hour. When they click on the "Try appName" button, they find themselves in a working instance of the app.

This hinges on the app named by appId being installed on the server.

An easy way to find an app's ID is to look in the data-app-id attribute on https://sandstorm.io/apps/. Another way is to run spk unpack; the value it prints out is the app's ID.