Shutter Share

Completed as Term 2 Ruby on Rails assessment at Coder Academy's GenTech 2019 Bootcamp.

Table of Contents

• Problem Statement
• Important Links
• Description
  • Purpose
  • Functionality and Features
  • Sitemap
  • Screenshots
  • Target Audience
  • Tech stack
• User Stories
• Wireframes
• ERD Diagram
• Components
• Third Party Services
• Models and Associations
• Database Relations
• Database Schema
• Project Management

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Problem Statement

• What

  To get started with photography a photographer not only requires to have a decent camera but plethora of accessories and lenses. For example, a typical professional level photo shoot requires a good camera body, at least two to three fast aperature lenses, a couple of lights (strobes or speed lights), light modifiers, light stands etc... Therefore it would be very costly to own all the gear when someone starts with the photography. In another use case there are situations where a specific kind of lens is required ony for specific kind of photography genre and it's not very practical to buy a new lens for one off use.

  In the kind of situations described above it would be very convenient to be able to get rent someone else's equipment, use and return it when done.

  The biggest problem is that due to the niche involved there are very few places who rent out equipment and due to the lack of competition the demand drives the prices which does not work well for small time individual photographers.

  Therefore it would add a lot value by creating an online platform that would bring photography community together that can help each other by sharing the gear and make some extra money.

• Why

  The platform needs to be online because in online space there are even less providers that encourages sharing the photography gear among the photographers. The options that exists are limited to specific camera brand, or are not two sided, or are mainly focused on big production houses or otherwise does not operate in Australia.

  Therefore it is important have an online platform which is brand independent and caters to individual photographers within Australia. Moreover having an online platform gives scalability to bring photography community from different locations to come together and cater to each other's photographic equipment requirements.

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Important Links

• Project: https://shutter-share.herokuapp.com/

• GitHub Repo: https://github.com/hirengondhiya/shutter-share

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Description

• Purpose

  The purpose of this app is to create a two sided online marketplace for photographer to rent out their camera gear.

• Functionality and Features

  The app provides following functionality.

  1. User management

     User management functionality provides ability to identify the user who is accessing the app. The functionality is implemented through features such as Sign up, Sign in, and Sign out.

     It is implemented through following features.

     Ability to

     • Sign up
     • Sign in
     • Sign out

  2. Profile management

     The profile management functionality help user provide more information about them selves and also find out more details about the listing creator or lease requester. It is implemented through following features.

     Ability to

     • View profile
     • Edit profile
     • Upload image to signed in user's profile
     • Remove image from signed in user's profile
     • View signed in user's public profile
     • View other user's public profile

  3. Listing management

     The listing management functionality helps user to list their items and manage their listings so that it can be viewed and leased by other users.

     Following Listing management features were implemented.

     Ability to

     • Add listing
     • Edit listing
     • Remove listing
     • View listing
     • View all other user's listings
     • View all listings created by signed in user
     • Upload images to the listing
     • Remove images from the listing

  4. Lease management

     Lease management functionality provides ability to make requests on other user's listings and accept requests on listings of signed in user.

     It is implemented using following features.

     Ability to

     • Create a lease request on someone else's listing
     • Edit a lease request created by the signed in user
     • Cancel a lease requet created by the signed in user
     • Accept lease requests received on a items listed by signed in user
     • Reject lease requests received on a items listed by signed in user
     • View all lease requests created by a signed in user
     • View all lease requests received on listings created by a signed in user

• Sitemap

• Screenshots

1. Home Page Not Signed in

2. Home Signed in

3. Home Page Signed in - Expanded MyShutterShare Menu

4. View Listing as Visitor

• When not signed in

  

• When signed in

  

5. View Listing as Owner

6. View My Listings

7. Add Listing

8. Edit Listing

9. Make Lease Request

10. Edit Lease Request

11. View Lease Request - Lease Requester

12. View Lease Request - Listing Owner

13. View All Lease Requests - Sent

14. View All Lease Reqeuests - Received

15. View My Profile

16. Edit My Profile

17. View Public Profile(My/Any other user)

• Target Audience

  Target audience of this app is any photographer who would like to rent someone else's photo gear and/or rent out their own photography equipment. This way the person renting someone's equipment can avoids costs associated with owning the gear that is not frequently used and the users renting out can have more value out of their investment.

• Tech stack

  • Ruby on Rails
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • SASS
  • Bootstrap 4
  • Bootstrap Studio
  • Heroku
  • Amazon S3
  • Devise (for authentication)

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User Stories

• User Management

  Features

  • Sign up:

    As a site visitor, I should be able to sign up with my email id and create a password in order to register my self in site database.

  • Sign in:

    As an existing user, when I am not signed in, I should be able to sign in using the credentials that I signed up with to use logged in user features.

  • Sign out:

    As a Signed in User, I should be able to Sign out of my signed in account to end my sign in session.

• Profile Management

  Features

  • Edit Profile:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to update my public information in order to make my details visible on my profile.

  • Upload Profile Pic:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to upload my profile picture to make it is visible to other users.

  • Delete Profile Pic:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to delete my profile picture to make it unavailable to other site users.

  • View My Public Profile:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to view my public profile page in order to see how it appears to other users.

  • View Other Site User's Public Profile:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to view other site user's public profile page in order to see their listings and Recent transactions.

• Listing Management

  Features

  • Create listing:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to create a new listing in order to advertise my gear for leasing.

  • Update listing:

    As a signed in listing owner, I should be able to update previously created listing in order to keep my listing updated with current information about the gear.

  • Remove listing:

    As a signed in listing owner, I should be able to remove previously created listing to make it unavailable for leasing.

  • Upload photos for listing:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to upload photos to the listing created by me in order to show item condition.

  • View individual listing:

    As a site visitor, I should be able to view an individual listing in order to find out details of the item and to be able to lease it.

  • View all listings:

    As a site visitor, I should be able to view all the available listings on the site in order to find all available items.

• Lease Management

  Features

  • Request for lease:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to send lease request on someone else's listing in order express my intent to lease the item.

  • Cancel lease request:

    As a signed in lease request owner, I should be able to cancel my pending lease requests in to withdraw my request to lease the item.

  • Accept or Reject:

    As a listing owner, I should be able to accept or reject the lease requests on my own listings in order to approve or deny lease requests from various users.

  • View all lease requests received:

    As a listing owner, I should be able to view all lease requests received on my listings in order to act on various lease requests.

  • View all lease requests made:

    As a signed in user, I should be able to view all lease requests that I made on someone else' listing in order to view statuses of my requests as well as to update my requests.

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Wireframes

1. Home Page Not Signed in

2. Home Signed in

3. Home Page Signed in - Expanded MyShutterShare Menu

4. View Listing as Visitor

5. View Listing as Owner

6. View My Listings

7. Add Listing

8. Edit Listing

9. Make Lease Request

10. Edit Lease Request

11. View Lease Request - Lease Requester

12. View Lease Request - Listing Owner

13. View All Lease Requests - Sent

14. View All Lease Reqeuests - Received

15. View My Profile

16. Edit My Profile

17. View Public Profile(My/Any other user)

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ERD Diagram

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Components

The Shutter Share App is built using Ruby on Rails framework which follows MVC design pattern.

As per MVC the app is made of mainly three high level compents

a. Model:

Models in MVC are the business entities that represent state of the application. It also implements the business logic.

Shutter Share implements following model.

1. User
2. Profile
3. Listing
4. Lease Requests

b. View:

Views in MVC are the front end layer. It dictates how state of the app is represented to the user on their browser.

Shutter Share has many different views which handles various user stories.

For example

• Sign In
• Sign Up
• Edit User Profile
• View User Profile
• View Public Profile etc...

c. Controller:

The controller binds models to views. It fetches data through models and provides it to views to render.

Shutter Share app has following controllers

1. Home
2. Profiles
3. Listings
4. LeaseRequests

Apart from rails components other components of the app are

Devise:

Devise is a gem which provides authentication functionality.

Amazon S3:

Amazon S3 is cloud storage service provided by AWS. Shutter Share uses S3 to store all user uploaded images (profile and listing).

IAM:

IAM is Identity and Access Management service provided by AWS to control access on AWS resources. Shutter Share uses IAM to control access to S3 storage.

Heroku:

Heroku is a cloud platform as a service supporting several programming languages. Shutter Share is deployed on Heroku platform so that it can be accessed through internet.

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Third Party Services

The app uses following third party services,

• Amazon S3:

  A cloud based blob storage service, provided by Amazon AWS, to hold all the images uploaded by the users of Shtter Share the app.

• Amazon IAM:

  AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service to manage access to AWS services and resources securely.

  Used IAM, to create AWS user, and used permissions to allow and deny their access to Amazon S3.

• Heroku:

  A cloud based hosting provider to be able to deploy the app on cloud and access it using the internet.

  Used Heroku to deploy Shutter Share app on internet.

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Models and Associations

Following describes the Rails Models and their relationships

1. User

   The user model is generated by Devise gem to store user email and password.

   It has following associations.

   has_one :profile

   It relates to Profile model which stores details of the related user.

2. Profile

   The profile model is used to store information about the user. In the app it also the central model that relates every other model related to the user.

   It has following associations.

   belongs_to :user
   has_one_attached :picture
   has_many :listings
   has_many :lease_requests
   

   A Profile belongs to a User that it represents in the database. A Profile has one Picture attached of the user. Profile has many Listings that are created by the user. Profile has many Requests that the user has made on other listings.

3. Listing

   Listing model is used to store details related to listing that can be leased by other users.

   It has following associations.

   belongs_to :profile
   has_one_attached :image1
   has_one_attached :image2
   has_one_attached :image3
   has_one_attached :image4
   has_one_attached :image5
   

   A listing belongs to a Profile of the user that has listed the item. A listing has five images attached.

4. LeaseRequest

   LeaseRequest model stores details of the lease requests the user makes on other listings.

   belongs_to :profile
   belongs_to :listing
   

   A LeaseRequest belongs to a Profile of the user who makes the lease request. A LeaseRequest also belongs to a Listing that the user wants to lease.

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Database Relations

Following database relations are created to store the information.

1. Users

   The User table stores the data about user email and the encrypted password.

   It relates to Profiles relation via user_id foreign in Profiles relation.

2. Profiles

   The Profiles table stores the additional details about the user such as name, phone, location, picture.

   It is related to Users table via foreign key user_id.

   It is also related to Listings and LeaseRequests tables via profile_id foreign key in those tables.

3. Listing

   Listing table stores title, description, brandh, model, rate, category, and status details.

   It is related to Profile table via foreing key profile_id.

   It is also related to Lease_Requests table via foreign key listing_id stored in Lease_Requests table.

4. Lease_Requests

   Lease_Reqeusts table stores, start_date, end_date, duration, rate (from listing), and total (amount).

   It is related to Listing table via foreign key listing_id and Profile table via foreign key profile_id.

5. Active_Storage_Attachments

   This is a special table created by rails Active Storage engine. It stores information about files that are related to various entities that use file storage either local or third party.

   The attachements table relates dynamically to the tables that refers to stored files. The record_id and record_type fields are used for establishing the relationships. record_id is theoritically foreign key to the id of the related record in the record_type table. It also relates Active_Storage_Blobs table via foreign key blob_id.

6. Active_Storage_Blobs

   This is also another table generated by Active Storage engine. It stores various attributes of the attached file such as filename, content_type, byte_size(size of the file), metadata (file tags), checksum(to verify authenticity), and key (where file is located).

   It relates to Active_Storage_Attachments table via foreign key blob_id stored in Active_Storage_Attachments table.

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Database Schema

Following image shows schema diagram of the various tables and their relationships.

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Project Management

To manage the various tasks related to the project Trello board was used.

The project management was done using agile methodology. Initally the app started with a small prototype and then the app grew by add one feature at a time.

The state of the Trello board at different stages can be viewed from here

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