The Openbook mobile app.

Table of contents

• Requirements
• Project overview
• Contributing
  • Code of Conduct
  • License
  • Other issues
  • Git commit message conventions
• Getting started

Requirements

• openbook-api
• Flutter

Project overview

The project is a Flutter application.

It's dependent on the openbook-api backend.

Contributing

There are many different ways to contribute to the website development, just find the one that best fits with your skills and open an issue/pull request in the repository.

Examples of contributions we love include:

• Code patches
• Bug reports
• Patch reviews
• Translations
• UI enhancements

Code of Conduct

Please read and follow our Code of Conduct.

License

Every contribution accepted is licensed under AGPL v3.0 or any later version. You must be careful to not include any code that can not be licensed under this license.

Please read carefully our license and ask us if you have any questions.

Responsible disclosure

Cyber-hero? Check out our Vulnerability Disclosure page.

Other issues

We're available almost 24/7 in the Openbook slack channel. Join us!

Git commit message conventions

Help us keep the repository history consistent 🙏!

We use gitmoji as our git message convention.

If you're using git in your command line, you can download the handy tool gitmoji-cli.

Getting started

1. Install the openbook-api backend.

Follow the instructions here and make sure the server is running.

2. Install Flutter

Visit the Flutter Install website and follow instructions.

Once you're done, make sure everything works properly by running flutter doctor.

flutter doctor

3. Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:OpenbookOrg/openbook-app.git
cd openbook-app

4. Create the env.json file

We use a .env.json file to pass environment variables to the application such as the backend endpoint.

Create a copy of .sample.env.json named .env.json

cp .sample.env.json .env.json

Edit the .env.json file with your environment settings.

{
   "API_URL": "<MANDATORY: The url of the openbook-api backend>",
   "MAGIC_HEADER_NAME" : "<OPTIONAL: The name of a header to append on every request used for access-control.",
   "MAGIC_HEADER_VALUE" : "<OPTIONAL: The value of the header to append on every request used for access-control.>"
}

5. Configure a signing key

(Android only step)

Create a keystore

If you have an existing keystore, skip to the next step. If not, create one by running the following at the command line:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore ~/key.jks -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -alias key

Note: keytool might not be in your path. It is part of the Java JDK, which is installed as part of Android Studio. For the concrete path, run flutter doctor -v and see the path printed after ‘Java binary at:’, and then use that fully qualified path replacing java with keytool.

Reference the keystore from the app

Create a file named /android/key.properties that contains a reference to your keystore:

storePassword=<password from previous step>
keyPassword=<password from previous step>
keyAlias=key
storeFile=<location of the key store file, e.g. /Users/<user name>/key.jks>

Note: Although the file /android/key.properties is ignored, make double sure the file remains private; do not check it into public source control.

6. Open the iOS/Android simulator or connect a device.

iOS Simulator

1. Launch Xcode

2. Click on the XCode top left menu item (Next to the Apple logo)

3. Open Developer Tool -> iOS Simulator

Android Simulator

1. Launch Android Studio

2. Select Tools -> AVD Manager

3. If no virtual device available, click Create Virtual Device and follow steps.

4. Select the ▶️ icon next to the device to run.

Connect a device

1. Plug the device

2. Allow any permission request shown in the device

7. Run the flutter app

Note: We use flavors to configure different names and settings for different environments.

Development flavor

flutter run --flavor development

Production flavor

flutter run --flavor production

Profile

Not a flavor but Flutter's way to profile the app. Read more here.

flutter run --profile

8. Contribute!

Help us keep Openbook going! Please look into our open issues. All contribution, no matter how small, makes a big difference.

Official work-around's list

Unfourtunately, Flutter is still in it's early steps as a framework and ecosystem.

Work-arounds to get the app to work are something we see frequently.

This is the section where we'll be documenting the work-arounds to avoid confusion in the future.

OneSignal iOS Build Failing

The OneSignal Flutter SDK does not work out of the box.

In Android, the SDK Setup Guide contains wrong instructions which were adressed on this Github Issue.

In iOS, there was no official solution to it and the fix was an absolute "hack".

The original issue for the build error is this one and the "hack" we implemented is found in this issue plus disabling bitcode in the service extension.

Questions/stuck?

Join our Slack channel, we're happy to help you troubleshoot your issue.

Glossary

Have a term we use you would like an explanation for? Let us know by opening an issue!

Circle

An audience composed of multiple people created with the purpose of sharing content exclusively with it.

For example, Friends, Family, Work, BFFs.

World Circle

The audience composed of the entire internet! Everyone can post to it.

Connection

A connection between two users, initiated by any of the two. It's linked to an specific circle.

Connections Circle

The audience composed by all of the people you're connected with

Linked users

Users that are either connected to us or are following us.

Community administrators

Members of a community that have the power to modify the community details + moderator powers.

Community moderators

Members of a community that have the power to ban, unban, review community post/comments reports and act on them.

Community member

A member of a community with the power to post to it and receive it's content in it's timeline.

Happy coding 🎉!