OpenCrisisBoard (OCB) is a lightweight forum application based on ReForum that enables social-backed, accesssible, long-form and short-form communication around crisis-related topics. OpenCrisisBoard is most useful when deployed in small communities, supported by local government as administrators and moderators. It allows users to log in with verified social media accounts to have meaningful discussions around relevant topics, in addition to offering services such as volunteering.
- Users can log in with verified social accounts (Facebook and Twitter only, no email or account sign up allowed for social proof reasons)
- Users can post a discussion
- Users can reply their opinions regarding discussion
- Users can favorite discussions
- Users have their own profile page
- Admin can create new forum categories
- Admins have a lot of power over every users discussions and opinions
In order to deploy to Heroku you will need to create a Heroku account, during deployment you will be prompted for a series of keys:
To add map functionality you will need to obtain keys from Google (this is the only required key needed to deploy)
To have social login you will also need keys for Twitter and/or Facebook and/or Github:
You need to grab the following information from the application.
- Client ID
- Client Secret
- Callback URL
The Callback URL is the domain where Twitter or Facebook or Github will redirect the user after a successful login. You can use a domain name or local host. But you need to append the URL with the path /api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or /api/user/authViaFacebook/callback.
- So, the complete url will look like:
https://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaTwitter/callbackorhttps://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaFacebook/callbackorhttps://TheNameOfYourApp.herokuapp.com/api/user/authViaGitHub/callback
The entire application is built to deploy with docker compose, you can edit all of the below environment variables in the file docker-compose.yml. The file looks like this:
version: "2"
services:
web:
build: .
ports:
- "8080:8080"
depends_on:
- mongo
environment:
- PORT=3030
- DBURL=mongodb://localhost:27017/OpenCrisisBoard'
- FB_APPID=[FB APP ID HERE]
- FB_CBURL=[FB CALLBACK URL HERE]
- FB_SECRET=[FB SECRET HERE]
- TW_APPID=[TWITTER APP ID HERE]
- TW_CBURL=[TWITTER CALLBACK URL HERE]
- TW_SECRET=[TWITTER SECRET HERE]
- GH_APPID=[GITHUB APP ID HERE]
- GH_CBURL=[GITHUB CALLBACK URL HERE]
- GH_SECRET=[GITHUB SECRET HERE]
mongo:
image: mongo
ports:
- "27017:27017"
If you are already running mongodb, simply remove the mongo: section and expose the port mongo is running on to 27017 on the image:
ports:
- "27017:27017"
Then once you're all setup, simply run docker-compose up to launch the full forum
Please make sure you have following software installed in your system:
- Node.js > 6.0
- NPM / Yarn
- Git
- MongoDB
First you need to clone the repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/crisisboard/opencrisisboard
Then you have to install the necessary dependencies using either NPM or Yarn:
$ npm i
$ yarn
Then, ensure the mongodb service is installed and running locally. There are multiple ways of doing this, but this guide should help if you don't know how to do this.
Since the app currently uses Twitter, Facebook, and Github authentication, we need to configure a Twitter and Facebook application and/or GitHub. You can register a new application from these links:
We need to grab the following information from the application.
- Client ID
- Client Secret
- Callback URL
The Callback URL (CBURL) is the domain where Twitter, Facebook or Github will redirect the user after a successful login. You can use a domain name or local host. But we need to append the URL with the path /api/user/authViaTwitter/callback or /api/user/authViaFacebook/callback. So, the complete url will look like:
https://localhost:8080/api/user/authViaTwitter/callback, https://localhost:8080/api/user/authViaFacebook/callback, or https://localhost:8080/api/user/authViaGithub/callback
Additionally to add map functionality you will need to obtain keys from Google (this is the only required key needed to deploy)
Now, we need to configure the credentials inside of the codebase. You can either edit the credentials file directly in config/credentials.js or add the details to your environment variables when you run the application:
module.exports = {
DBURL : process.env.DBURL_URI || process.env.DBURL || 'mongodb://localhost:27017/reforum',
// facebook details
FB_APPID : [FB APP ID HERE],
FB_CBURL : [FB CALLBACK URL HERE],
FB_FIELDS : ['id', 'displayName', 'picture.type(large)', 'email', 'birthday', 'friends', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'middle_name', 'gender', 'link'],
FB_SECRET : [FB SECRET HERE],
// twitter details
TW_APPID : [TWITTER APP ID HERE],
TW_CBURL : [TWITTER CALLBACK URL HERE],
TW_SECRET : [TWITTER SECRET HERE],
// github details
GH_APPID : [GITHUB APP ID HERE],
GH_CBURL : [GITHUB CALLBACK URL HERE],
GH_SECRET : [GITHUB SECRET HERE]
};OR
FB_APPID='[FB APP ID HERE]' FB_SECRET='[FB SECRET HERE]' FB_CBURL='[FB CALLBACK URL HERE]' npm run start:dev
We need to provide all the information here. You can notice that we need the database url here too. My local MongoDB url looks like:
mongodb://localhost:27017/OpenCrisisBoard
Now we are ready to run the application. You can run either run the development environment of the application which will include Hot-Reload for JS codes using Webpack and the Redux dev tool extension, or you can run the production edition. The default port for developer edition is 3030, and for production is process.env.PORT.
To run the app in development environment:
$ PORT=3030 npm run start:dev
To run the app in production environment:
$ PORT=3030 npm run start
Now, if you visit http://localhost:3030 (if you ran the dev), or the production URL, you will see that the application is up and running. Congratulation! But, wait a minute, it's showing you Sorry, couldn't find the forum. That is because, we didn't create any forum yet. You can now sign up via github and then visit the admin panel with the url http://localhost:3030/admin. The application is currently configured in a way that, the first user will become the admin for the system.
Here we can create new forums and that forum will be displayed in the application. The first forum will be used as default forum.
- Add search functionality
- Add unit tests for both backend and frontend
- Ability to change the name and logo of the site from admin panel.
- Make the installation process more interactive
- Add multiple theme support.
- Add geolocation support
MIT License. Do whatever you want to do. :-)
A minimal forum application built with the following technologies:
Any pull request, issues and contribution is very appreciated.
OpenCrisisBoard:
ReForum (what the project is based on):
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent