PlanningAlerts

Find out and have your say about development applications in your area.

This is the code for the web application side of things written using Ruby on Rails. The original code from PlanningAlerts.com, which this app is based on, was written using PHP.

If you're interested in contributing a scraper please give us a shout on the mailing list and we'll point you in the right direction. We're currently in the midst of changing the place that we run scrapers so it's all in a bit of a state of flux.

PlanningAlerts is brought to you by the OpenAustralia Foundation. It was adapted for Australia by Matthew Landauer and Katherine Szuminska, and is based on the UK site PlanningAlerts.com, built by Richard Pope, Mikel Maron, Sam Smith, Duncan Parkes, Tom Hughes and Andy Armstrong.

Development

Install Dependencies

• Install MySql - On OSX download dmg from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
• Install Sphinx - brew install sphinx

Checkout The Project

• Fork the project on Github
• Checkout the project

Install Ruby Dependencies

• Install bundler - gem install bundler
• Install dependencies - bundle install

Setup The Database

• Create your own database config file - cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
• Update the config/database.yml with your root mysql credentials
• If you are on OSX change the socket to /tmp/mysql.sock
• Create the databases - rake db:create
• Load the database schema - rake db:schema:load
• Generate Thinking Sphinx configuration - bundle exec rake thinking_sphinx:configure

Run The Tests

• Run the test suite - rake

Deployment

To use capistrano and the OpenAustralia Foundation's default configuration model, ignore this part of the instructions and carry on. To use mySociety's yaml-based configuration system instead you will need to:

• Copy the settings in config/general.yml-example to config/general.yml
• Copy the settings in config/test.yml-example to config/test.yml

This should cause the Configuration object in app/models/configuration.rb to be overriden by lib/themes/hampshire/configuration.rb which will replace the Configuration object's values with the ones held in the yml files. You can test whether this is working by running rspec lib/themes/hampshire/spec/models/configuration_spec.rb

Please note - customisations which are specific to mySociety's Hampshire theme have settings which exist only in the yml files. Config settings which relate to the main application are duplicated in the Configuration object.

Scraping and sending emails in development

Step 1 - Seed authorities table

• Start the rails server - rails s
• Create an admin user:
  • Run the following in rails console:
  • User.create(email: 'admin@example.com', password: 'password')
• Go to the admin console - http://localhost:3000/admin
• Create the authority Marrickville with the following data
  • FULL NAME Marrickville Council
  • SHORT NAME Marrickville
  • STATE NSW
  • EMAIL council@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
  • POPULATION 2011 81489
  • MORPH NAME planningalerts-scrapers/marrickville
  • DISABLED false

Step 2 - Scrape DAs

• Register on morph.io and get your api key.
• Update MORPH_API_KEY in app/models/configuration.rb
• Run - rake planningalerts:applications:scrape['marrickville']

Step 3 - Setup an Alert

• Start the rails server - rails s
• Start MailCatcher - mailcatcher
• Hit the home page - http://localhost:3000
• Enter an address e.g. 638 King St, Newtown NSW 2042
• Click the "Email me" link and setup an alert
• Open MailCatcher and click the confirm link: http://localhost:1080/

Step 4 - Send email alerts

• Run - rake planningalerts:applications:email
• Check the email in your browser: http://localhost:1080/
• To resend alerts during testing, just set the last_sent attribute of your alert to nil

Contributing

• Fork the project on GitHub.
• Make a topic branch from the master branch.
• Make your changes and write tests.
• Commit the changes without making changes to any files that aren't related to your enhancement or fix.
• Send a pull request against the master branch.

Credits

Our awesome contributors can be found on the PlanningAlerts site.

License

GPLv2, see the LICENSE file for full details.