# DiscordChatExporter Frontend DiscordChatExporter Frontend (DCEF) is a self-hosted viewer for the JSON exports produced by [[DiscordChatExporter]]. It renders them in an interface that looks and behaves like [[Discord]] itself, with search across the whole archive. Built by slatinsky, GPL-3.0, around 800 stars. Different project, different maintainer. DCE exports; DCEF reads what DCE exported. ## Why it exists [[DiscordChatExporter]]'s HTML output is genuinely good, and for a single channel it's all you need. The problem shows up at scale. Export a whole server and you get a pile of standalone HTML files with no navigation between them and no search across them. You know the answer you're looking for is in there somewhere, in one of forty channels, in a thread whose name you can't remember. Which puts you back where you started: scrolling, hoping. DCEF takes the JSON exports instead and rebuilds the thing you actually wanted. A server list, a channel list, threads, and a search box that covers all of it at once. Your data, on your machine, in the interface your brain already knows. ## Features - **Discord-like interface**: servers, channels, threads, replies, reactions, all where you expect them - **Search with autocomplete** across the full archive rather than one file at a time - **Built for large exports**: performance is an explicit design goal, not an afterthought - **Self-hosted**: runs locally or on your own server. Nothing leaves your machine ## How it runs The stack is SvelteKit and [[Node.js]] on the front, [[Python]] and FastAPI on the back, MongoDB for the index, nginx in front, packaged with [[Docker]] and PyInstaller. - **Windows**: portable executable from the releases page. Needs Windows 10+, x64, an AVX-capable CPU, and ports 21011, 27017, and 58000 free - **Linux**: [[Docker]] or Podman, x64 or arm64, AVX required - **macOS**: not supported ## Limitations worth knowing upfront - Large exports take a while to preprocess before you can browse them. Start it and go do something else - Moving or deleting files inside the exports folder means resetting the database - On Windows, assets sitting beyond the 260-character path limit fail to load. Keep the export folder near the drive root ## License GPL-3.0. ## References - Repository: https://github.com/slatinsky/DiscordChatExporter-frontend - Releases: https://github.com/slatinsky/DiscordChatExporter-frontend/releases ## Related - [[DiscordChatExporter]] - [[Discord]] - [[Discord Sync CLI]] - [[Docker]] - [[Self-hosting]] - [[Open Source]]