Shutdown Notice

The OpenFarm servers were shutdown in April of 2025 after being online for a little more than 10 years. The codebase was no longer being maintained and the server infrastructure it was running on was set to no longer receive security updates starting in May of 2025. As a matter of precaution, and considering the dwindling usage of the site in recent years, we have decided to shutdown the servers indefinitely and publicly archive this GitHub repository.

We are proud of and thankful for the effort that was put into OpenFarm over the years by all of our software, design, and data contributors, and are happy that the service was able to provide value to various API users and passersby on the web for over a decade. While OpenFarm never quite got the traction it needed to become a self sustaining and truly comprehensive "Wikipedia for growing plants", we hope new efforts like this one will sprout up in the future and accomplish what we couldn't.

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Security Concerns

We take security seriously and value the input of independent researchers. Please email security@farmbot.io for issues that require immediate attention. Please follow responsible disclosure. Do not use Slack or Github issues to discuss security vulnerabilities.

The Community of Contributors: How it Works

About

OpenFarm is a free and open database and web application for farming and gardening knowledge. One might think of it as the Wikipedia for growing plants, though it functions more like a cooking recipes site.

The main content are Growing Guides: creative, crowd-sourced, single-author, structured documents that include all of the necessary information for a person or machine to grow a plant, i.e.: seed spacing and depth, watering regimen, recommended soil composition and companion plants, sun/shade requirements, etc. In this Freebase platform, gardeners can find answers to questions like “How do I grow tomatoes?”

Start by Joining Existing Contributors

To start the discussion, get involved, and meet OpenFarm core community of contributors, we strongly recommend joining our Slack room! This is where you'll find the latest conversation about Openfarm and the most active contributors.

Check also the FAQ for some frequently asked questions about contributing (Angular, Issue Trackers, IRC Channels).

Check the ongoing issues that need work on in the priority list.

Look for Something You Want to Work On

For front-end and back-end code contributions, we aim at maintaining and prioritizing the Github issues through Github Projects, the Trello-like web-based project management board of Github: OpenFarm Projects.

Need to use OpenFarm Assets? Here they are!

We have few more languages missing for the website content to be translated: help us translate the website!

Who Can Contribute

Everyone is welcome to bring value to the Open Source community of OpenFarm. Time is our most valuable assets here, so any minute of your time counts to make things happen! "Better done, than perfect!" We strive for diversity in our community and want to ensure we provide a safe and inclusive space for everyone by adopting a Code of Conduct.

Our community is composed of tech and non-tech folks, newbie as well as experts in gardening, overall great people willing to take actions for a better future and sharing knowledge and growing our own food.

Our problem-solving process

On the way we work together, we aim at:

• having transparency in reasoning behind actions: taking time for documentation, questions and answers
• prefering done, than perfect: breaking down tasks so that anyone can contribute few minutes of their time on a regular basis
• taking shortcuts: what's the most obvious for a better usability? what's the shortest way to build a feature? What's the most valuable inputs for a feedback?

Development

Getting Started (The Easy Way)

You should use Vagrant to get the OpenFarm system running on your computer. It will avoid having to install the things listed in The Hard Way below.

1. Install Vagrant.
2. Install VirtualBox.
3. Open your terminal.
4. $ git clone https://github.com/openfarmcc/OpenFarm.git - this tells your computer to fetch the data stored in this repository using git.
5. $ cd OpenFarm - change to the OpenFarm directory.
6. $ vagrant up This will take a long time. We're downloading a whole bunch of stuff. Go make yourself a pot of coffee, or brew some tea. If something goes wrong at this point, reach out to us directly via GitHub issue.

Accessing Vagrant

Once Vagrant is set up on your system, you might want to actually access it. For example, if you want to start up the server (though vagrant up should run rails s for you):

8. $ vagrant ssh - this makes you access the new virtual server we just created to run OpenFarm on.
9. cd /vagrant - the vagrant directory is mirrored in your own computer. If you add a file there, you'll see it appear here.
10. rails s - actually run the Rails server!
11. you should now be able to access OpenFarm on your local system at http://localhost:3000. If all went well, you will have a seeded database and can use the account admin@admin.com with password admin123.

The above is still being patched, so please reach out to us if something went wrong!

Getting Started (The Hard Way)

You will need to install Ruby, Rails, ElasticSearch v6.5.0, and Mongodb before you can get an OpenFarm server up and running on your local machine. Once you have these prerequisites to get started with a local copy of the project, run:

$ git clone https://github.com/openfarmcc/OpenFarm.git
$ cd OpenFarm
$ bundle install
$ rake db:setup
$ echo "ENV['SECRET_KEY_BASE'] = '$(rake secret)'" >> config/app_environment_variables.rb
$ echo "ENV['GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY'] = ''" >> config/app_environment_variables.rb # or get an actual API key at https://console.developers.google.com/flows/enableapi?apiid=maps_backend&keyType=CLIENT_SIDE&reusekey=true&pli=1
$ rails s

Then, visit http://127.0.0.1:3000/ in your browser to see the OpenFarm web application running on your local machine. If all went well, you will have a seeded database and can use the account admin@admin.com with password admin123.

Note about ElasticSearch: Some Linux users have noted issues installing ElasticSearch onto a host machine. One workaround is to install ElasticSearch via Docker:

sudo docker pull elasticsearch:6.5.0
sudo docker pull mongo

sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144 # <= Some linux users must run this
sudo docker run -p 9300:9300 -p 9200:9200 elasticsearch:6.5.0
sudo docker run -p 27017:27017 mongo

If you had any problem installing bundles getting up and running etc see the Common Issues Page.

Remember that /vagrant folder in the Vagrant VM is largely for convenience, and working in it can cause unexpected behavior with other tools - you should do your work in your own non-vagrant environment. Use the environment you're most familiar with to program, and Vagrant will do the rest.

Become a Core Contributor

If you've made two PRs, we'll add you as a core contributor.

For core-code contributors, here are a few basic ground-rules:

• No --force pushes or modifying the Git history in any way.
• Non-master branches ought to be used for ongoing work.
• External API changes and significant modifications ought to be subject to an internal pull-request to solicit feedback from other contributors.
• Internal pull-requests to solicit feedback are encouraged for any other non-trivial contribution but left to the discretion of the contributor.
• Contributors should attempt to adhere to the prevailing code-style.

(based on the OPEN open source model)

Further reading

Actual Code Contributors

Here are some of the Github contributors.

Outside of Github, there's a whole host of people who also contributed financially, by building gardening content on the website, on providing more visibility for OpenFarm in any ways!

Donate to OpenFarm as a Backer

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

<a href="https://opencollective.com/openfarm" target="_blank"><img src="https://opencollective.com/openfarm/backers.