PublicLab.org

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

It features a Bootstrap-based UI and a variety of community and attribution features that help the Public Lab community collaborate on environmental technology design and documentation, as well as community organizing. Originally a Drupal site, it was rewritten in 2012 in Ruby on Rails and has since extended but not entirely replaced the legacy Drupal data model and database design.

Some key features include:

• a Question and Answer system for peer-based problem solving
• a rich text and Markdown research note and wiki editor
• wiki editing and revision tracking
• tagging and tag-based content organization
• email notification subscriptions for tags 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

(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 from 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.

Table of Contents

1. Simple Installation with Cloud9
2. Prerequisites
3. Testing
4. API
5. Bugs and Support
6. Data model
7. Recaptcha

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Installation

1. In the console, download a copy of the source with git clone https://github.com/publiclab/plots2.git.
2. Enter the new plots2 directory with cd plots2.
3. Install gems with bundle install --without production mysql from the rails root folder, to install the gems you'll need, excluding those needed only in production. You may need to first run bundle update if you have older gems in your environment from previous Rails work.
4. Make a copy of db/schema.rb.example and place it at db/schema.rb.
5. Make a copy of config/database.yml.sqlite.example and place it at config/database.yml
6. Run rake db:setup to set up the database
7. Install static assets (like external javascript libraries, fonts) with bower install
8. (optional, not recommended) Install solr engine rails generate sunspot_rails:install
9. (optional, not recommended) Start the solr server in foreground by using bundle exec rake sunspot:solr:start
10. (optional, not recommended) Index your search database in solr server using bundle exec rake sunspot:reindex
11. Start rails with passenger start from the Rails root and open http://localhost:3000 in a web browser.
12. Wheeeee! You're up and running! Log in with test usernames "user", "moderator", or "admin", and password "password".
13. Run rake test to confirm that your install is working properly. For some setups, you may see warnings even if test pass; see this issue we're working to resolve.

Ruby version

Make sure to use ruby-2.3.4. To check your ruby version run ruby -v.If you are using some other version then install ruby-2.3.4 with rvm install 2.3.4. Later to use ruby-2.3.4, run rvm use 2.3.4. Always make sure that you are using the correct ruby version since it might go back to its original version if you close the terminal. You might have to redo the entire installation process after switching to a different version.

Bundle exec

For some, it will be necessary to prepend your gem-related commands with bundle exec, for example, bundle exec passenger start; adding bundle exec ensures you're using the version of passenger you just installed with Bundler. bundle exec rake db: setup, bundle exec rake db: seed are other examples of where this might be necessary.

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Bugs and support

To report bugs and request features, please use the GitHub issue tracker provided at https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues

For additional support, join the Public Lab website and mailing list at http://publiclab.org/lists or for urgent requests, email web@publiclab.org

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Internationalization

Publiclab.org now supports Internationalization and localization, though we are in the initial stages. This has been accomplished with rails-I8n.

To see it in action, click on the 'Language' drop-down located in the footer section of the page. All the guidelines and best practices for I18n can be found here.

Translations are arranged in the YAML files here, which are set in a similar way to views files. An example for adding translations can be found here.

To add new languages or for additional support, please write to plots-dev@googlegroups.com

Developers

Help improve Public Lab software!

• Join the 'plots-dev@googlegroups.com' discussion list to get involved
• Look for open issues at https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues
• We're specifically asking for help with issues labelled with help-wanted tag
• Find lots of info on contributing at http://publiclab.org/wiki/developers
• Review specific contributor guidelines at http://publiclab.org/wiki/contributing-to-public-lab-software
• Some devs hang out in http://publiclab.org/chat (irc webchat)
• Join our gitter chat at https://gitter.im/publiclab/publiclab

First Time?

New to open source/free software? Here is a selection of issues we've made especially for first-timers. We're here to help, so just ask if one looks interesting : https://publiclab.github.io/community-toolbox/#r=all

We also have a slightly larger list of easy-ish but small and self-contained issues: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/labels/help-wanted