google / ground-platform

Ground hosted components: Web console, Cloud Functions, db config

Ground

Ground is a map-first data collection platform aiming to seamlessly connect the offline world with cloud-based storage and computation. It addresses the needs of non-technical local community members, smallholder farmers, and professionals and researchers working in the areas of climate, sustainability, and humanitarian aid. It consists of a web app for survey management, and an Android app for offline data collection backed by Firebase.

Note: Ground is not an officially supported product; it is being developed and maintained on a best-effort basis.

About this repository

This repo contains Ground's hosted components and related docs:

Directory	Component
docs/	Public documentation, including Ground homepage
firestore/	Firestore config defining Firebase rules and other database settings
functions/	Firebase Cloud Functions, used to sync with Google Sheets and import/export data to/from other data sources
web/	Ground web console used to set up and manage surveys, and to view, edit, and analyze collected data online

Contributing guidelines

Read through our contributing guidelines to learn about our submission process, coding rules and more.

ground-platform's Issues

[Docs] Main page: emphasize support for intermittent connections

vs. "when a stable internet connection isn’t guaranteed" .. specifically, Ground works offline, but requires occasional access to the internet. This allows seamless sync of data w/o any special user knowledge or actions.

Something like "Ground is an open source, map-first data collection platform that enables users to collect, map, and share data. Ground is built from the ground up (pun intended) to provide seamless sync of data over internet connections that are only occasionally available".

[Docs] Emphasize install NVM step in README

Since later steps assume it was installed, might be worth breaking it back out of "Node.js" section or otherwise emphasizing this step.

[Form editor] Big scary warnings when deleting forms, fields, options

"WARNING: Deleting a ** will cause any associated data to be lost. Are you sure?"

In the future we should mark these as "deleted" and purge them only when there is no data associated.

[Form editor] Show icons next to each field type

Text: https://materialdesignicons.com/icon/text-short
Number: https://materialdesignicons.com/icon/numeric
Select one: https://materialdesignicons.com/icon/check-circle
Select many: https://materialdesignicons.com/icon/checkbox-multiple-marked

[Dev workflow] Add hook to run Flow checks before committing

Discussed in facebook/create-react-app/issues/5995

[CSV export] CSV export with raw JSON

Rows would be exported one per feature:
"record_id","latitude","longitude","json"

Where JSON column will contain array of records.

[Project] Sharing dialog

Allow project manager to share with other users via email account, optionally sending an email to notify them. The manager can decide who can "Manage", "Contribute", and "View" the project.

• Manage: Edit all project metadata, including feature types, forms, and ACLs.
• Contribute: Can add features and records or edit their own. Whether they can add/edit features or only records depends on the feature type.
• View: Read-only view of the entire project.

Finer-grained ACLs may be added in the future (e.g. who can edit which feature types.

[Docs] Assets do not load from custom domain

We recently acquired and configured vanity URL groundplatform.org. When setting the custom domain in GitHub Pages Settings, assets are not found because URLs include /ground-platform prefix, which doesn't work from custom domain. I believe to fix this we need to specify a base url in _config.yml and to update the page sources as per:
jekyll/jekyll#332 (comment)

[Dev workflow] Automatically build and test on push and PR

Related: #38 #58

We should choose some continuous integration tool to run tests/checks/deployments/etc.

[Code Health] Set up linting

People who contribute to this project may have differing code style norms. We should add linting rules to enforce consistent norms around code aesthetics. Ideally, these linting checks would be run on presubmit (PR opening) by some continuous integration tool.

eslint-plugin-react looks like a good option: https://github.com/yannickcr/eslint-plugin-react

[Code health] Add support for static type checking

Possibly using Flow?

Main page: Font

Should we investigate using a specific font for the Ground website? As of right now, the site use the default font, 'Open Sans,' provided by the site theme.

Fonts can have a significant impact on readability and an audience's perception of the platform and what its use-value is. We may wind up deciding the current font is a-ok—but should we open up a discussion?

Some font resources:

https://fonts.google.com/
https://design.google/library/choosing-web-fonts-beginners-guide/
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/03/31/science-behind-fonts-make-feel/

Use Node.js 8.11.1 in both web command-line and Cloud Functions

Cloud Functions now support Node.js 8:
https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/concepts/nodejs-8-runtime

We can simplify dev instructions and setup by using the same version for both and moving Node.js install instructions up a level.

[Code health] Add unit tests for all business logic

[Code Health] Remove linting debt

This issue tracks progress toward removing linting debt.

[Feature panel] Add observation

User selects a map feature and clicks the "Add" button in the side panel to start filling out a new empty form.

@hintzemichael Could you kindly paste mocks for this (possibly w/redlines) into this issue?

[Docs] Replace gnd-cloud with ground-platform throughout

In case you have time for this one, otherwise please assign back to me!

[Dev workflow] Add hook to run Flow type checks on npm run build

Described in facebook/create-react-app#5995 (comment)

[KML export] Text fields always truncated to first character

Example:

[Map] Add points to map

[Feature panel] Delete feature

Let's add the "Delete" entry to an overflow menu in the top-right of the feature details in the side panel when the feature is selected. Deleting the feature should also delete all related observations; we should show a BSW (big scary warning) confirmation dialog before doing this, i.e. "Deleting this map feature will delete all associated data, including any collected observations. This cannot be undone. Are you sure?" @sergeydolgov1 fyi/for comment.

[Docs] Add round logo to GitHub Pages home page

The old logo is currently in https://github.com/google/ground-android/tree/master/logo. Sharing the new one offline. Perhaps we should update it and move it in to this project since this is where the shared artifacts and docs live?

UI reflects ACLs

[Docs] Update main page tag line

From "An open source, map-first data collection platform by global contributors and volunteers at Google." to "Map-first data collection platform for everyone" or similar.

[Docs] Add background image to main page header

I'm partial to this one, which appears to be distributed with a permissive license:
https://altphotos.com/photo/forest-and-lake-top-view-2876/

[Form editor] Drag to reorder form fields

Mock:

Redlines:

[Feature panel] Edit observation flow

User selects a map feature and clicks "Edit" in the overflow menu on an existing record in the side panel to allow editing of existing record data.

@hintzemichael Could you please also paste mocks for this one? The design should be mostly identical to #10.

[Import/Export] Implement CSV Export

[Docs] Add link to home page to README.md files

https://google.github.io/ground-platform/

[Map] Move/reposition points

[Feature panel] Delete observation flow

Only record creator and project managers should be allowed to delete records.

@hintzemichael should this be added to the overflow menu on records in the side panel?

[Docs] Replace "free" with "open source" where appropriate

Primarily because, as pointed out by OSI and others, the English word "free" is ambiguous (without cost vs. freedom to do what you want with it), and it carries various connotations due to historical baggage. To remedy this, OSI has come up with a standard definition, and have approved various licenses that meet their standard definition, including Apache 2.0 under which Ground is released.

[Map] Map does not always update when features removed in remote database

Last marker loaded during a session does not disappear from map when removed from database due to prescottprue/redux-firestore#45

[Dev Workflow] Use a standard logging library

We should use a logging library to do things like:

• split log messages into classes such as info/warn/fatal
• append metadata to log statements i.e. timestamp
• pipe logs to places other than stdout should we so chose

I have limited experience with winston (https://www.npmjs.com/package/winston), open to other options.

[Dev Workflow] Add Issue/PR templates

Issue/PR templates can help make Issues/PRs more readable by standardizing the way contributors report problems and describe solutions.

Open source projects such as golang have them: https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/.github

I have used a simplified issue template to more or less talk to myself in personal projects: https://github.com/dhvogel/cryptorides-karl/blob/master/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md

here are some other templates we can chose from: https://github.com/stevemao/github-issue-templates

[Docs] Export and share data model

[Code health] Rename Place(Type) to Feature(Type) throughout

[Form editor] Drag to reorder multiple choice options

Drag handle is visible to left of "option" only on hover.

See latest mocks in #225.

[Map] Show feature details in side panel

Main user journey:

1. Click place marker on map
2. Right-side drawer opens, displacing entire UI (similar to side panel in Gmail or Docs)
3. Heading w/feature type name appears and list of completed forms (Records), each shown as a separate card in reverse chronological order.
4. Click "x" in top-right corner of panel to close.

[Firebase] Estimate and/or document costs

Create a doc describing upper bounds on how Ground data usage will be charged by Firebase

[Layer] Delete layer

Add an option hidden behind an overflow menu on the "Customize Layer" dialog, "Delete layer".

Since this would also delete all associated data, we should show a big scary warning before deleting:

Delete layer?
This will delete all data in this layer. Are you sure you? This change cannot be undone.

Cancel | Delete layer

In the future we'll start marking feature types and data as deleted rather than actually deleting it to allow 'Undo'.

[Form editor] Add custom messages for delete confirmation dialogs

Text TBD.

[Layers] Use default marker color in project config

Markers currently get added to the map here:

ground-platform/web/src/components/gnd-map/index.js

Lines 64 to 70 in d1fa1bb

	markers.push(
	<Marker
	key={featureId}
	position={{lat: pos.latitude, lng: pos.longitude}}
	icon={this.getIcon(project, feature)}
	/>
	);

We can add the default color to a new object, defaultStyles defined inside project.featureTypes. Since we don't have a UI for defining these yet, you can add them manually via the project json editor by clicking <> next to the project title in the web UI, e.g.:

The color can then be read in the above function with something like project.featureTypes[featureId].defaultStyle.color (minding missing/undefined instances).

[Code health] Add type checking throughout

In the process, PropTypes can be replaced with Flow types for consistency:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36065185/react-proptypes-vs-flow

[Docs] On main page, replace "contribution guidelines" with CONTRIBUTING.md

In case viewers not sure where to find them.

[Map] Update URL path on feature click

Split off from and blocking #9

[Form editor] Auto-suggest codes for multi-choice options

[Code health] Add min. necessary code comments

[Docs] Add guideline for Props vs Flow

Do we define Props explicitly React-style, or using Flow, or both?

[Form editor] Allow user to add Number fields

This involves adding a new type to the field type dropdown "Number".

Icon:
https://fonts.google.com/icons?icon.query=number

Field type enum value in remote db:
number

UI will be identical to that for adding text fields.