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README
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License: Simplified BSD, an OSI Approved open source license
Copyright (c) 2011, Michelle Koeth, Karen Rustad, Alan Palazzolo, Talin Salway
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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FreeXchange - Bridging the digital divide for Freecycle communities. This app provides a multi-faceted txt message
interface for getting listings and following up on listings posted to Freecycle. Users of Freecycle no
longer will need to sit by a computer 24x7 to be a first responder to a Freecycle listing. Instead, the FreeXchange
system will push a TXT message to a user when a listing meeting a user's criteria appears, and can even automatically
respond to the listor via TXT message. In this way, people without computers
can engage with Freecycle and also be able to receive needed items. Many of the neediest users of Freecycle do not
have a computer or easy internet access. With FreeXchange, you can be sure that those folks most neediest for free
items have EQUAL access to the Freecycle system.
FreeXchange is built using Ruby on Rails with a SQLite database in development. In production, it is hosted by Heroku
at http://freexchange.heroku.com which uses a Postgreql database.
A rake command which is scheduled using a cron job, runs periodically to check Freecycle for all of the searches
that users have entered into the system. You run the rake command using the following:
heroku run rake update_saved_searches
For further information about the app or how to use it, please see our Wiki. We even will have some nice videos linked there :-)
Current Dev Team: Karla (Design Lead), Michelle (Project Lead/Developer/Documenter), Talin (Development Lead)
Supporters/Advisors: James
----- TO INSTALL -----
The app uses the Flocky gem to communicate with Tropo, our telephony platform. Flocky will not send out text messages
in a development environment, and requires that certain environmental variables be set with various Tropo account
information. Therefore, you need to set up a Tropo account (http://www.tropo.com) and then, set the appropriate
environmental variables (the variables are set forth in the config/environments/production.rb file).
Further, Freexchange has two environmental variables of its own that you need to set:
FCUSER - the username registered on Freecycle that the system uses for access
FEX - the password for FCUSER
APP_NUMBER - the phone number you have registered on Tropo for the app
Other than setting up the environmental vars and your Tropo account, the app should work given you've ran all the
database migrations.
----------------------
Technical specifications about Freexchange
Freexchange includes Rails Admin. This is to make configuring the application easier. There is
a table and model called fcgroups for entering in new freecycle groups. Because each Freecycle group works
differently in terms of validating new users, and what permissions it grants to users without validation or
without logging in, and also some freecycle groups are actually just Yahoo groups, and not native Freecycle groups.
Therefore, the system can keep track of all these nuances between the groups in the fcgroups table which you
can edit using Rails Admin.
The app uses a lot of model functions for storing searches and listings, and uses a library module called
Freecycle.rb to do the data calls against Freecycle. We use the mechanize gem to interact with the Freecycle
site, and Nokogiri for HTML parsing.
Searches are periodically conducted using a cron job which is a rake task called update_saved_searches
There are some hard coded defaults and operating presumptions in our app at the moment. But rather than having a
zillion env variables, we'd like to make these defaults configurable through a config table which would be
updated/edited through Rails Admin - eventually.
So, some of the hard coded stuff/ operating presumptions are:
1) Time span in which to search backwards for a particular search word. For example, if you do a search on "Couch"
the system is hard coded to search back only two weeks from the present date.
2) The system only expects to work with Native freecycle groups (that is, non Yahoo Group freecycle groups). This
could be updated and unhard coded, but the algorithm for the URL formation for the Yahoo Group based freecycle groups
would have to be figured out, and then the system would need to look at the boolean set in the fcgroups table to
determine whether it needs to use the Yahoo format or the Native format in performing a search/reply.
3) The system currently does not support any SMTP mail service for connecting a user to a listor via email. We figure that if you can use email,
you probably aren't a key constituent user of Freexchange. Our aim is to improve the ability for people who do not
have ready access to email to be able to use their phone and SMS capabilities only to negotiate an acceptance of a
Freecycle offer.
4) The system does not offer a way for users to reset their passwords via email.
5) The system only allows people to configure searches and set up accounts through the website. The thought is that
this interaction with the website should be minimal (and in the case of setting up the account - only one time). To
provide a means of allowing a user to set up an account and searches is not out of the scope for future development
but, we were up against some real hurdles in trying to offer maximum txt based funcitonality while still keeping
overall messaging low. This was how we decided to address this issue for now.
6) The system only allows you to be registered to one Freecycle group at a time. However, you can have a set of
saved searches that run against different Freecycle groups. The difference is that when you create or edit a search,
it defaults to whatever Freecycle group you are currently affliated with. We figured that people only are interested
in one group at a time, but this feature could be expanded.
-------------------
Future Development Wish List
-- PEople can enter a neighborhood for a search, but the search actually doesn't limit the returned results to
the neighborhood entered.
-- Internationalization - Spanish
-- Basic Response to Listing via Phone. The user can call, recieve their current listings via voice command, and reply to a listing via voice also.
-- Freecycle registration feature? Allow users to sign up for a Freecycle of their choosing via TXT or voice?
-- Ability to set up searches via voice
Data Models: Fcgroup, Search, User, Listing - See schema for model specs
---------------------
Infrastructure Specs:
Heroku Instance: http://freexchange.heroku.com/
Rails github repo: https://github.com/jerseycoder/FreeXChange
Phone number: 1-510-606-8706
License: Simplified BSD (2-Clause BSD)