Nivapp

Nivapp is a system for managing the resources center at Lev Chash (מרכז המשאבים בלב ח"ש), which is a non-profit organization. Donors donate furniture items, which are collected from their house with a truck and then delivered to the resource center, where the items are listed for sale for affordable prices.

Components

• Firebase database
  • inventory - all items (donations) with address, contanct, item description and status.
  • routes - list of where to stop and when for drivers to collect donations per day.
  • reports - what the drivers reported that they collected for every submitted donation.
• Google sheets interface for editing the inventory of the firebase (test sheets, production sheets).
  • isChecked flag - whether the information (s.t address) was verified by Lev Chash
  • isCollected flag - after the drivers report that they collexted some donation, this turns true.
• Google Forms - form for doners, that automatically adds a dontation to the database.
• Planner Interface - web based interface for the planner that plans daily routes for the driver.
  • Define the times of collection of donations per day.
  • This updates routes in the database.
  • Can only put donation that are checked and are not collected yet.
• Drivers Interface - web based interface for the driver that picks up the donations.
  • View the order of picking up the donations.
  • View information about each donation - phone, address, items description, etc.
  • Report what was actually collected (or not).

caringhearttech@gmail.com is the account connected to all google services. For usernames, passwords and private keys please contanct the team of last year of the yearly software engineering project at the Technion.

Planner & Drivers Interfaces

We used Flutter to develop both interfaces under the same project located in /nivapp directory. First download flutter, then run in /nivapp:

flutter pub get
flutter upgrade  # might not be necessary
flutter pub upgrade  # might not be necessary

To view the interfaces locally run:

flutter run -d chrome

The project should now be opened in a new Chrome window. You should wait for it to load, this might take some time loading for the first time. Then add /#/drivers or /#/planner to the URL in the chrome to open the drivers interface or planners interface respectively.

Deployment

Download Firebase CLI and login. run in /nivapp:

flutter build web
firebase deploy --only hosting

Structure

Partial tree:

nivapp/
|- lib/
    |- driver_interface/
    |- route_planner/
    |- services/  # DB services
    |- widgets/  # UI for both planner & drivers
    |- main.dart  # main app
    |- production_module.dart  # production configuration
    |- offline_mock_module.dart  # test configuration
|- test/

main.dart runs both the drivers and the planner interfaces. It defines the configuration of the project with the injector field, which is used by UI widgets to access services that communicate with the database.

Dependency Injection & State Management

We use Dependency Injection to connect between the database, authenication, and extra configurations to the UI. This way we can our code less interconnected and more testable. The library that is used for that is flutter_simple_dependency_injection. We have two seperate configurations

• production_module.dart - connects to actual firebase firestore database + auth.
• offline_mock_module.dart - Works offline without connection to Firebase. defines dummy data for inventory, routes and reports. There is no auth in that module.

For state management we use provider. For each interface, drivers and planner, we have a corresponding provider that manages the state for the interface.

Testing

Tests are under /test directory. Run tests with:

flutter test

For testing purposes we use mocks that imitate real objects with mockito. The mocks are defined in /lib/mock_definitions.dart. See docs there. We also use fake firebase implementation with fake_cloud_firestore.

Google Sheets ↔ Firebase Sync

The Google Sheets holds only the inventory (see above), and should be the source of truth for the inventory. Google Sheets → Firebase Sync is done with Google AppsScript, and Firebase → Google Sheets is done with Firebase Cloud Functions. The spreadsheet is separated by sheets, one for each month. A new sheet is created every month with a time-driven trigger in the AppsScript enviroment. There are two hidden columns in the spreadsheet. The first is ID, which is the firebase key of the item corresponding to the row in sheets. That way we connect between a row and an item in Firebase.

Google Sheets to Firebase Sync

The code is found under /appscript, and the Code.js is the main file. constants.js holds the google sheets columns order, and more such as required columns. It is deployed to both enviroments, production apps-script (connected to test sheets), and testing apps-script (connected to production sheets). In the enviroments you can see triggers and logs. The Google Form code is also found here.

Deployment to AppsScript

The deployemnt is done with multi-clasp2 which runs clasp push command for both enviroments. After installing clasp and multi-clasp2, run:

multi-clasp push

Firebase Sync to Google Sheets

Code is found under firebase/ directory. constants.js is the same as in the previous section and must be identical.

Deployment to Firebase

Deployment requires the file serviceAccount.json which holds a private key and should be under firebase\functions directory. Ask the previous team members for this one, or create it yourself in the Google Cloud project which is connected to Firebase. After adding serviceAccount.json, run:

flutter deploy --only functions

Google Forms to Firebase

When a form is submitted, a row is added to production sheets in some hidden sheet. Pay attention that changing form questions might result in the change of columns in that sheet. If that happens you need to change FORM_FIELDS field in constants.js. Then the code in appscript\formSubmit.js uploads the data to Firebase (it is connected to the form with a trigger in the AppsScript enviroment).

Multiple declerations of Item (donation) fields

The fields of an item are hard-coded in multiple places, so changing them is hard. The fields are defined in:

• Google Sheets - the columns themselves
• Firebase - we don't have a code for adding / removing fields from existing items.
• Flutter - under nivapp/lib/item_spec.dart.
• AppsScript and Firebase Cloud Functions - in the constants.js file of both.
• AppsScript - the columns of the sheet of the form answers - in constants.js in FORM_FIELDS field, see above for details.