Genie 🧞

A GUI for Stardoll debug search.

Running Locally 💻

Make sure you have npm installed. To run Genie locally, first clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/tammy-young/genie.git

Open a terminal in the project and do a make install. This will install all the required dependencies.

Configuring Your Environment ⚙️

Now you need to configure your environment variables. Create a .env file in the backend directory that looks like this:

PDH_USER=YOUR_PDH_USER_COOKIE

1. Login to Stardoll
2. Right click > inspect element
3. Find the cookies (usually under the Application or Storage tab)
4. Copy the value of pdhUser
5. Replace YOUR_PDH_USER_COOKIE in your .env file with the copied value

Now that your environment is configured, change the path to the backend from the default https://genie-api.netlify.app to localhost:8888 by changing the value of constants.backend in frontend/src/constants.js.

Finally, do a make run in your terminal to run Genie.

Troubleshooting 🛠️

The most common issue you will run into is infinitely long searching. The search function is desigend to time out in 8 seconds, or when it finds 20 matching items. If your search is running for a long time, it's likely due to the PDH_USER cookie being expired. You will need to follow the steps above for configuring your environment to replace the PDH_USER value in .env.

Security Concerns 🔒

Due to ongoing security concerns, here is a transparent explanation on how Genie works without you having to log in to your Stardoll account.

The base debug search link requires you to be logged in to use it. After comparing the cookies for a logged in user and one that is logged out, I noticed that the pdhUser cookie is the one that tells Stardoll's backend that you're logged in.

By sending this cookie as a header with the GET request to the debug search page (see below for how that's done), we can simulate a logged in user. As part of setting up your environment with the .env file, you were required to provide this cookie. This cookie will be used to send requests to Stardoll.

// backend/bazaarRequest.js

const response = await fetch(url, {
  withCredentials: true,
  headers: {
    Cookie: "pdhUser=" + process.env.PDH_USER + ";"
  }
});

Why? 🤔

I made Genie because I was frustrated with using the built-in search in Starbazaar. The launcher is slow, and the amount of customization I could do with filters was limited. I'm so glad I discovered the search API (aka "debug search"). I know many users don't want to look at the wall of text that the debug search shows, so I wanted to create a tool using it that's easy to use, and solves our shared issues of the Stardoll launcher.