connect ghini.web to ghini.desktop

[mfrasca]

From @mfrasca on January 5, 2016 12:3

there is a web-based application, currently just a prototype project, started as mfrasca/ghini, it had the goal to become a full fledged independent "ITF2-compliant" program for botanical collections. after @mfrasca found bauble.classic and started maintaining it, the development of mfrasca/ghini stagnated. Now we have moved bauble.classic to ghini.desktop and we still need a web-based application, we have space at ghini.web for the original prototype. The goals now sound like:

• make ghini.desktop ITF2 compliant (related issues)
• use ghini.web as geographic interface to the data (this issue)

need documentation on how to set it up, and have to test it.

---

step-by-step

• set up a PostgreSQL database server.
  • what to do
  • where to find the files
  • psql -t -P format=unaligned -c 'show hba_file';
• you should have a user for administering your database, and some to just read from it
  • create user <USER> with createdb unencrypted password '<PWD>';
  • note: ghini.desktop cannot create a PosgreSQL database.
  • create database <DBNAME> with owner <USER> encoding='utf8';
• connect ghini.desktop the above PostgreSQL server and let it initialize a database.
  • this is just standard ghini.desktop usage. you will put the above DBNAME, USER in the configuration and ghini.desktop will ask you the above PWD to connect.
• add the coordinates fields to plant that are needed in ghini.web and not created by ghini.desktop.
  • alter table plant add column position_lon numeric(9,6), add column position_lat numeric(9,6), add column zoom integer;
• reconsider the above step and decide whether to use PostGIS (possible on ghini.desktop-1.1).
  • sudo -u postgres psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION postgis; CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;" <DBNAME>
• move coordinates from PlantNote to Plant.
  • if you have stored plant coordinates in plant notes under any category, eg <coords>, you need copy them to position_lon-position_lat. and you need set the zoom to 18 for monumental trees, 19 other major trees, 20 smallish trees, etc.
• fork, clone and install ghini.web
  • mkdir -p ~/Local/<your-github-account>
  • cd ~/Local/<your-github-account>
  • git clone git@github.com:<your-github-account>/ghini.git
  • cd ghini
  • npm install
• start ghini.web (a web server) on the same database as ghini.desktop.
  • DATABASE_URL='postgresql://<USER>:<PWD>@localhost/<DBNAME>' node web.js
• more to come
  • at the moment ghini.web is hard wired to the Cuchubo garden, in Mompox (in the sense that it starts zooming there and that it offers high resolution tiles for it).
  • if you add plants using ghini.desktop, you need to reload the ghini.web page because at the moment the clients hold a list of all plants and the database will not trigger ghini.web to broadcast database events to the clients.
  • there is no user management in ghini.web, it's just a prototype, everyone can to anything (with plant coordinates).

Copied from original issue: Bauble/bauble.classic#256

[mfrasca]

From @RoDuth on January 6, 2016 12:13

I for one second the idea! :smile:

[mfrasca]

From @tmyersdn on January 7, 2016 3:4

I 3rd it!

[mfrasca]

I"m editing the initial comment so it contains the user guide to have it set up. if you want to get ready and not wait for me to complete this before you can even make a start at the long task of inserting plant location data, you can start adding notes to your plants, of the form: category: <coords> note: {lat: ...; lon: ...; alt: ...}

[mfrasca]

relevant issues in Ghini (mentioning them here so github makes a back-link there.):

• mfrasca/ghini#17 user management
• mfrasca/ghini#16 database to trigger the server
• mfrasca/ghini#15 how can I select a different garden? (tiles management)

[mfrasca]

this is interesting work, but low priority as long as there's no customer. it's quite a lot of work and not only does it need financing, it also needs solving a concrete problem, not just do something nice, so a customer with concrete needs and time to discuss them with a developer. (it's working again on my laptop and it looks fine, but there's so many aspects to it...)