PublicLab.org

The content management system for the Public Lab research community, the plots2 web application is a combination of a group research blog -what we call "research notes"-and a wiki. Read more about the data model here.

Begin running (and contributing to) this codebase immediately with GitPod:

It showcases a variety of features that help the Public Lab community collaborate on environmental technology, design, documentation, and community organizing. Originally a Drupal site, it was rewritten in 2012 with Ruby on Rails and has since extended but not yet entirely replaced the legacy Drupal data model and database design. We ❤️ Open Source and actively participate in various OSS programs such as Google Summer of Code(GSoC), Rails Girls Summer of Code (RGSoC), Outreachy, and Google Code-In (GCI). Some key features include:

• A Q&A portal for peer-based problem solving
• A rich text and Markdown editor
• Wiki editing and revision tracking
• Tagging and topically-based groups and content organization
• Email notification subscriptions for topics and comments
• A search interface built out of our growing API
• A user dashboard presenting recent activity
• A privacy-sensitive, Leaflet-based location tagging system and community map

Roadmap

We are developing a draft Roadmap for plots2 and our broader Public Lab code projects; read more and comment here.

A full description of the features, audiences, inter-relationships, and goals of Public Lab software projects can be found here: https://publiclab.org/software-overview

Table of Contents

1. What Makes This Project Different
2. Data model
3. Contributing
4. Prerequisites
5. Installation
   • Standard Installation
   • Windows Installation
   • Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Installation
   • Redis Installation
6. SSL in Development
7. Login
8. Testing
9. Maintainers
10. How to start and modify cron jobs
11. Bundle Exec
12. Reply-by-email
13. Bugs and Support
14. Recaptcha
15. Internationalization
16. Security
17. Developers
18. First Time?
19. Hacktoberfest

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What makes this project different

The people who create our platform make very different design and technology decisions from other projects. This stems from our deep belief that, to see a change in the world, we must build and maintain systems that reflect our values and principles.

From design to system architecture to basic vocabulary and communication patterns, our systems have grown organically since 2010 to support a powerful, diverse, and cooperative network of people capable of taking on environmental problems that affect communities globally. The platform we have built together speaks to this shared history in many ways, big and small. It reflects input from people facing serious health issues, on-the-ground organizers, policy specialists, hardware hackers, educators, and civil servants.

This broad community and the Public Lab team have facilitated a space where we can discuss, break down, construct, prototype, and critique real-world projects. Together we have shaped a platform that incorporates familiar pieces but ultimately looks and feels quite different from anything else on the internet. Despite the growth of our platform, it remains committed to hearing the voices of others, mutual respect and support, an awareness of the barriers and challenges presented by gaps in expertise and knowledge, and a sensitivity to the inequalities and power imbalances perpetuated by many mainstream modes of knowledge production and technological and scientific development.

Our mutual aim to democratize inexpensive and accessible do-it-yourself techniques has allowed us to create a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment. Our goals are supported and facilitated by a system which questions and even challenges how collaborative work can happen.

Data Model

(Above: draft of our Data model)

Contributing

We welcome contributions, and are especially interested in welcoming first time contributors. Read more about how to contribute below! We especially welcome contributions from people belonging to groups under-represented in free and open source software!

Code of Conduct

Please read and abide by our Code of Conduct; our community aspires to be a respectful place both during online and in-­person interactions.

Prerequisites

For installation, prerequisites include sqlite3 and rvm. Click here for a complete list and instructions.

Installation

Standard Installation

1. Fork our repo from https://github.com/publiclab/plots2.
2. In the console, download a copy of your forked repo with git clone https://github.com/your_username/plots2.git where your_username is your GitHub username.
3. Enter the new plots2 directory with cd plots2.
4. Set the upstream remote to the original repository url so that git knows where to fetch updates from in future: git remote add upstream https://github.com/publiclab/plots2.git
5. Steps to install gems:
   • You may need to first run bundle install if you have older gems in your environment from previous Rails work. If you get an error message like Your Ruby version is 2.x.x, but your Gemfile specified 2.7.3 then you need to install the ruby version 2.7.3 using rvm or rbenv.
     • Using rvm: rvm install 2.7.3 followed by rvm use 2.7.3
     • Using rbenv: rbenv install 2.7.3 followed by rbenv local 2.7.3
   • Run this bundle config set without 'production mysql' from the rails root folder to set your project to exclude libraries only needed in production.
   • Install gems with bundle install from the rails root folder.
6. Run cp db/schema.rb.example db/schema.rb to make a copy of db/schema.rb.example in db/schema.rb.
7. You could choose to use mysql2 or sqlite3 as your database. We recommend using sqlite3 as your plots2 database as some of our contributors have reported issues while using mysql2.
   • If mysql2, run cp config/database.yml.mysql.example config/database.yml to make a copy of config/database.yml.mysql.example in config/database.yml
   • If sqlite3, run cp config/database.yml.sqlite.example config/database.yml to make a copy of config/database.yml.sqlite.example in config/database.yml. kindly note if you choose to use sqlite some tests may fail. The project was setup initially to use mysql and some tests are tailored for mysql db. No need for alarm, we are working to fix these and this will not interfere with your development process
8. Run rake db:setup to set up the database
9. Install static assets (like external javascript libraries, fonts) with yarn install
10. Setup React & webpacker by running rails webpacker:install && rails webpacker:install:react && rails generate react:install(for local SSL work, see SSL below)

• If you get any prompt to overwrite files in this step please choose no. The prompt will be something like "Overwrite /home/plots2/config/webpacker.yml? (enter "h" for help) [Ynaqdhm]" :- type "n" a