Listen to your users during product development with ClearFlask
Open-source Feedback Management Tool.

• Managed hosting
• Self hosting
  • Quick start
  • Deploy dependencies
    • Via Docker
    • Via AWS
  • Deploy ClearFlask
    • Setup
    • Run
• Contributing
  • Code quality
  • Building
  • Architecture
  • Release
• Security Policy

Support our open-source development by choosing cloud hosting with scalable pricing, check us out on our website.

For a quick start using Docker, download the Docker Compose service file as docker-compose.yml, and run the following:

docker-compose --profile with-deps up

Point your browser at http://localhost and create an account using email admin@localhost.

If you wish to host it remotely other than localhost, read the DNS section.

Otherwise read on to deploy a long-term installation.

There are several dependencies you need for running ClearFlask:

• ScyllaDB or AWS DynamoDB or API-compatible alternative
• MinIO or AWS S3 or API-compatible alternative
• ElasticSearch or OpenSearch
• Email service via SMTP or AWS SES

And a few optional:

• Google ReCaptcha
• Let's Encrypt automagic certificate management
• CloudFront as a CDN (Use in front of clearflask-connect)

Although not intended for production, you can spin up all dependencies via Docker.

Simply add the --profile with-deps to your docker-compose command when starting ClearFlask.

All database content will be persisted to local filesystem under data folder.

For production workload, you will want to spin up these dependencies yourself and point ClearFlask to their endpoints.

For AWS services, clearflask-server auto-detects Access Keys using either a configuration property or the default locations. If you are running in EC2 or ECS, keys detection is automated, you just need to create the appropriate IAM role.

Provide IAM access including create table permission as table is created automatically by ClearFlask on startup.

IAM actions:

• CreateTable
• BatchGetItem
• GetItem
• Query
• BatchWriteItem
• DeleteItem
• PutItem
• UpdateItem

Create a private bucket with IAM access to ClearFlask.

IAM actions:

• ListBucket
• GetObject
• DeleteObject
• PutObject

You can also use an API-compatible alternative service such as Wasabi, MinIO...

Recommended is AWS ES, give the proper IAM access

IAM actions, all in these categories:

• List
• Read
• Write
• Tagging

Alternatively you can deploy it yourself (cheaper) or host it on Elastic

In order to setup SES, you need to seek limit increase via AWS support.

Change the config property ...EmailServiceImpl$Config.useService to ses and give the proper IAM access.

IAM actions:

• SendEmail
• SendRawEmail

Alternatively use any other email provider and fill out the SMTP settings

ClearFlask consists of two components:

• Tomcat application for serving API requests
• NodeJS for SSR, dynamic cert management and serving static files

1. Download the Docker Compose service file
2. Run it with docker-compose --profile with-deps up which creates few configuration files in your local directory
3. Carefully read and modify server/config-selfhost.cfg.
4. Carefully read and modify connect/connect.config.json.
5. Adjust the Docker Compose service file to add/remove dependencies if you are hosting them outside of Docker

By default, everything is assumed to be on localhost. If you wish to host your portal on yoursite.com or 192.168.1.123, set the following properties:

• connect.config.json:parentDomain: yoursite.com
• config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.Application$Config.domain: yoursite.com

If you wish to have certificates fetched and renewed for you automagically using Let's Encrypt, ensure your DNS is correctly pointing to your server, it is publicly accessible, and set the following config parameters:

• connect.config.json:disableAutoFetchCertificate: false
• connect.config.json:forceRedirectHttpToHttps: true
• config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.security.AuthCookieImpl$Config.authCookieSecure: true

Once you load your site for the first time, a Certificate is auto-magically fetched for you.

If you are managing TLS certificates behind a reverse proxy, redirect all http requests to https, set the following config:

• connect.config.json:disableAutoFetchCertificate: true
• connect.config.json:forceRedirectHttpToHttps: true
• config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.security.AuthCookieImpl$Config.authCookieSecure: true

Although discouraged, you can run ClearFlask over HTTP only. Ensure these settings are set:

• connect.config.json:disableAutoFetchCertificate: true
• connect.config.json:forceRedirectHttpToHttps: false
• config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.security.AuthCookieImpl$Config.authCookieSecure: false

For you to manage the dashboard, you need to whitelist an email to be able to create a super-admin account:

config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.security.SuperAdminPredicate$Config.superAdminEmailRegex: ^[email protected]$

After you sign-up, disable further signups using:

config-selfhost.cfg:com.smotana.clearflask.web.resource.AccountResource$Config.signupEnabled: false

1. Run docker-compose up or docker-compose --profile with-deps up to also start dependencies.
2. Point your browser at http://localhost or if you configured your DNS https://yoursite.com.
3. Create an account using admin@localhost email or based on your configuration of superAdminEmailRegex.

Your contributions are very much appreciated. Please see here on how to contribute to our codebase.

• Generally following the Google Java Style Guide
• IntelliJ Recommended: Code style formatting is in .idea folder
• It is expected to write a test for each functionality.

• VisualCode recommended: code formatting and properties are defined in .vscode folder
• We are yet to establish a proper test framework. A proposal would be welcome.

Development has been done under Mac, Linux, and Windows (with WSL)

The following requirements are a minimum:

• Java 11
• Maven
• Makefile (for local and production deployment)
• Docker
• FFmpeg and ffprobe (For babel-plugin-transform-media-imports)
• OpenSSL (For local deployment's self-signed certs)

brew install maven ffmpeg make openssl

Please let us know if we missed anything.

Building is straightforward and can be done by running:

mvn clean install

Add -DskipTests or -DskipITs to skip all tests or just Integration tests respectively.

For developing integration tests, you may want to start a local instance of ClearFlask and run integrations directly from your IDE. Otherwise you will have to alwasy spin up all dependencies.

There are several ways to run locally depending on what you want to test.

Ideal for fast-iteration on frontend changes. Changes to code take effect immediately.

make frontend-start

Open browser at http://localhost:3000.

Intended for testing Connect and SSR. For code changes to take effect, you must rebuild clearflask-frontend.

make connect-start

Open browser at http://localhost:9080.

Intended for testing the whole deal before deployment. For code changes to take effect, you must completely rebuild clearflask.

make local-up
make local-down

Open browser at https://localhost.

Intended for testing self-host deployment, uses locally built Docker images rather than officially released images. For code changes to take effect, you must completely rebuild clearflask.

make selfhost-up
make selfhost-down

Open browser at https://localhost.

When running a local deploy, you can debug various components:

For debugging clearflask-server running on Tomcat, point IntelliJ IDEA or your favourite IDE to remote JVM debug on localhost:9999.

For changing configuration parameters or running exposed operations, connect via JMX using your favourite tool ( JVisualVM, JConsole, ...) on localhost:9950 without credentials and without SSL.

To look at the ES cluster and run commands, point your browser at http://localhost:5601.

To look at the billing sysstem, point your browser at http://localhost:8081.

Credentials are admin/password and API key and secret is bob/lazar.

If you are debugging an Integration Test, a log line will reveal the API key and secret: KillBill test randomized apiKey {} secretKey {}.

You can use regular AWS command line tool and point it to our mocked up LocalStack services:

aws --endpoint-url=http://localhost:4566 ...

The following is a production deployment of ClearFlask. It was once scribbled down during a conversation and now it's an official architecture diagram until we have a better replacement.

Contains OpenAPI definition for communication between frontend and backend. Also includes definition of project settings.

Client side React application containing the Landing page, customer dashboard and portal. Entry point is index.ts.

Also contains a NodeJS server nicknamed Connect that serves static files, Server-Side Rendered page as well as handling dynamic TLS certificate issuing for customers. Entry point is connect.ts.

Resource module containing Privacy Policy and Terms of Service documents.

Server logging module used for formattinbg logs as well as sending criticial emails to SRE of any warnings or errors. It is a separate package since it's used by both clearflask-server as well as KillBill servers.

ClearFlask official vector logo and resources.

Server implementation of the OpenAPI definition to serve requests from clients. Uses several dependencies:

• DynamoDB: Most data is stored in this NoSQL database for fast access and scalability
• ElasticSearch: For relevant results and searching, data is replicated to ES for fast searching.
• S3: User uploaded images are served directly from S3.
• KillBill: For payment processing and billing management, KillBill is used.

Intended for ClearFlask developers, this guide is for making a release of ClearFlask to create Docker images and Maven artifacts.

You need credentials for uploading to GitHub Packages repository for both Docker and Maven.

In GitHub personal settings create a PAT with read:packages, write:packages, and delete:packages scopes.

For Docker registry, run this command and input your PAT as password:

docker login ghcr.io -u USERNAME

Then fill out the following with your PAT and put it under ~/.m2/settings.xml:

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
                          https://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">

    <servers>
        <server>
            <id>github</id>
            <username>matusfaro</username>
            <password>~~INSERT PAT TOKEN~~</password>
        </server>
    </servers>

    <profiles>
        <profile>
            <id>github</id>
            <repositories>
                <repository>
                    <id>central</id>
                    <url>https://repo1.maven.org/maven2</url>
                </repository>
                <repository>
                    <id>github</id>
                    <url>https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/*</url>
                    <snapshots>
                        <enabled>true</enabled>
                    </snapshots>
                </repository>
            </repositories>
        </profile>
    </profiles>

    <activeProfiles>
        <activeProfile>github</activeProfile>
    </activeProfiles>

</settings>

To perform a release, decide which version to increment and run the following Makefile target:

make release-<patch|minor|major>

If the perform:prepare Maven target failed, you can re-run the whole release again from beginning.

If the perform:release Maven target failed, you can resume it by:

cd target/checkout
mvn deploy -P docker-images-push -rf clearflask-<module-to-resume>

Please report to [email protected] for all vulnerabilities or questions regarding security. We will issue a bounty for useful vulnerabilities to pay for your contribution, however we do not have a set standard on the amount and type of vulnerabilities at this time.