post-disaster-comms

This repository is a collection of resources for post-disaster communications. It is a work in progress and will be updated as the project progresses.

Frontend Technology Stack

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google.

This will be used for the mobile application development.

See Official Documentation

Backend Technology Stack

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative. It is a service that provides a Postgres database with a RESTful API and real-time capabilities. It is used as the backend for the project.

For this project, we will be utilizing the community supabase kubernetes helm chart. The helm chart can be found in supabase-community/supabase-kubernetes.

Deploying supabase via Kubernetes allows for a cloud agnostic deployment as long as a Kubernetes cluster is available.

See Official Documentation

Running locally

To run this app locally, follow these steps:

0. Install Pixi: https://github.com/prefix-dev/pixi?tab=readme-ov-file#installation

1. In the package's directory, run the following to install both frontend and backend tools

   # Install frontend tools
   pixi run -e frontend install-tools
   # install backend tools
   pixi run -e backend install-tools

Backend

1. Run the Docker daemon

2. Set up the infrastructure. You should have a Supabase instance running at http://localhost

   pixi run -e backend setup-infra

   After the setup, when prompted to log in, enter your Supabase project credentials (Username and Password) for successful authentication. The credentials can be found in deployment/values.dev.yaml.

3. Optional: If you want to add sample entries in your local Supabase Instance. Run the following command in a new terminal session.

   pixi run setup-db-data-via-k8s-job

At this point your backend is now ready to go! Now off to frontend

Frontend

1. Install Android Studio

2. Run Android Studio, which will help you install the Android toolchain. Be sure to include all required components

   1. Android SDK Platform
   2. Android SDK Command-line tools
   3. Android SDK Build-Tools
   4. Android SDK Platform-Tools
   5. Android Emulator

3. Accept the Android licenses (or check that you have already done so) and get frontend dependencies by running the command below. There may be an issue indicated with XCode -- that is okay and can be ignored

   pixi run -e frontend setup-infra

4. Run Flutter. This will open the Android app in a new Chrome window

   To ensure the app connects to Supabase, set the SUPABASE_URL and SUPABASE_ANON_KEY with:

   pixi run -e frontend flutter-run --dart-define=SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=secret.jwt.anonKeyValue --dart-define=SUPABASE_URL=http://localhost

   The credentials can be found in deployment/values.dev.yaml.

   At this point your frontend is now ready to go! You are all set.

Running in the cloud

Where's the cloud stuff?

It's in ./deployment/cloud and we're using OpenTofu

Overview of AWS account setup, including information on getting credentials

Please see our information here

Editing deployment/values.cloud.yaml

(Optional) To open the file with VSCode, run the following first

export EDITOR="code --wait"

Then run the following. Save and close the file when you're done editing for all of your new values to be re-encrypted.

pixi run edit-cloud-values

If you run into an issue like gpg: decryption failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device, run the following command and retry

export GPG_TTY=$(tty)

Deploying infrastructure changes

The following commands will allow you to do what you gotta do to update and deploy the infrastructure

Initialize the infrastructure on your machine

From the tofu init docs

This is the first command that should be run for any new or existing OpenTofu configuration per machine. This sets up all the local data necessary to run OpenTofu that is typically not committed to version control.

pixi run cloud-init

Preview the changes to your infrastructure

pixi run cloud-plan

Deploy your infrastructure changes

pixi run cloud-deploy

Destroy all cloud infra (WARNING: ask if you think you gotta do this)

pixi run cloud-destroy

Run the development server

This will start up the development server and populate it with sample data.

pixi run cloud-server-run

Stop the development server

The server will stop daily at 01:00 UTC (6PM PDT/5PM PST), but if you wanna be a good citizen and stop it when you're done, run the following

pixi run cloud-server-stop

Access the development server when it's running

This command uses AWS's Session Manager to access the development server without needing to distribute ssh keys. Assuming you have access to the IAM roles needed for everything else related to the cloud here, this command should just work!

pixi run cloud-server-access

Contributing

You can contribute to this project by creating issues or forking this repository and opening a pull request.

Please review our Code of Conduct before contributing.

License

BSD 3-Clause License