Volunteer Planner

Volunteer Planner is a platform to schedule shifts of volunteers. Volunteers register at the platform and choose shifts. The admin of the website can easily add new organizations, places and shifts. The software has a location based hierarchy (country / region / area / city) and has a hierarchy of organizations (organizations, facilities, tasks and workplaces) - it can be used for a variety of purposes.

Status

This code has been used from 2015 to 2018 and since March 2022 at volunteer-planner.org.

Work in progress

There are some feature requests to be implemented in the future.

If you are interested to contribute, you're invited to send an email to join the developer Slack channel or create a feature or fix pull request directly.

System context

User: The volunteers and administrators just need a (modern) web browser to use the volunteer-planner application.

Developer: Developers need a python development environment (see project setup) and specific versions of external libraries (see ./requirements directory). Development can be done with a sqlite databases, there is no need to run and configure postgres - although it's nevertheless a good idea. If you develop using sqlite you can test postgres compatibility by using docker: a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml file are provided.

Server: For production use you need a Python ready web server, for example uWSGI as web server for the Python WSGI with nginx as proxy server visible to the end user (volunteers and administrators). You also need a PostgreSQL database.

Project setup for development

Note. It is also possible to get moving fast with our Docker installation guide.

0. Prerequisites

If you already have a local setup to work in Django projects, you're (almost) done. If you want to develop using sqlilte, you actually are. If you prefer to develop against productively used postgres, you most probably need to set up a database.

If you're done, skip to Step 1

0.1 Required software

0. Prerequisites

If your machine is set up to work on Django projects, you might skip this step. Otherwise, the most basic required software is

• python
• pip
• virtualenv (any variant)
• git

0.1 Installing required OS packages

Use software management of your choise, whether apt, yum, brew or any other.

Search for python, pip and git.

0.2 Using PostgreSQL locally (optional)

Using PostgreSQL locally for development is optional.

0.2.1 Installing PostgreSQL (optional)

If you are going to use a local PostgreSQL server, additionally make sure, it's installed and test it's running.

0.2.2 Creating a local PostgreSQL database and user (optional)

Open the PostgreSQL shell, by using psql, as superuser (usually postgres but that depends on your installation) and execute following queries to set up the DB

CREATE USER vp WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'volunteer_planner';
ALTER USER vp PASSWORD 'volunteer_planner';
CREATE DATABASE volunteer_planner OWNER vp;

Note: For the local environment, the database username is assumed to be vp and their password is assumed to be volunteer_planner.

1. Fork us on GitHub

Please fork us on GitHub and clone your fork

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_GITHUB_ACCOUNT/volunteer_planner.git

1.1 Creating Pull Requests

Please do Pull Requests against the develop branch.

If you have questions concerning our workflow please read the Development Rules wiki page.

2. Setup your virtual environment

2.1. Create and activate a virtual env

Please refer to the canonical virtualenv guide for installation.

The most basic way is, to create a virtualenv in your project directory:

cd /path/to/volunteer_planner.git/
virtualenv .venv
. ./.venv/bin/activate

.venv will be excluded from git interactions, and you will know where the virtualenv is located, so you can clean up, if something is too broken.

If you preferred to use virtualenvwrapper, you'd do:

mkvirtualenv vp
workon vp

python-guide's first choise is pipenv and it's usage is simple as well:

cd /path/to/volunteer_planner.git/
pipenv shell

2.2 Installing required python packages

All the following steps assume, your shell' / execution environment's current working directory is the project directory.

Optionally update pip

pip install -U pip

For a local sqlite DB install

pip install -r requirements/dev.txt

or, if you intend to use PostgreSQL locally, install

pip install -r requirements/dev_postgres.txt

2.3 Setup your virtualenv postactivate hook (optional)

This step is optional but recommended.

Every time, a virtualenv is activated with virtualenvwrappers' workon command, a postactivate script is executed. This comes in handy to autmatically set up a projects' environment variables and automate some reoccuring tasks. For more details on virtualenvwrapper hooks, see virtualenvwrapper: Per-User Customization.

You might consider using this example postactivate script (located at $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/postactivate)

#!/bin/bash
# This hook is run after this virtualenv is activated.
​
export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE="volunteer_planner.settings.local"
cd /path/to/volunteer_planner.git/
​
git fetch --all
git status

Note: You'll need to re-active your virtual environment after each change to it's postactivate hook to take effect. Just run workon vp again, to make sure your current venv session has executed the postactivate hook.

2.3.1 ... settings module for using PostgreSQL

When you prefer to use PostgreSQL locally, you'll probably need to use the settings module volunteer_planner.settings.local_postgres instead of volunteer_planner.settings.local.

2.3.2 Setup your local environment (optional)

Also, if you need to use non-default settings values, setting (exporting) the environment variables in your virtualenvs' postactivate hook is a good place if you're not using an IDE to configure your environment variables.

If you're using pipenv, having your environment variable settings in a .env file in your project directory will be sufficient. pipenv shell will load this file.

3. Initialize the database with Django

Activate your env and change dir to your local forks' git repository (if not done yet).

workon vp
cd /path/to/volunteer_planner.git

3.1 Run migrate management command to setup non-existing tables

./manage.py migrate

3.2 Add a superuser

./manage.py createsuperuser

You will be asked for username, email and password (twice). Remember that username and password.

4. Try running the server

./manage.py runserver

Try opening http://localhost:8000/ in your browser.

5. Adding content

To add new organizations and shifts, you have to access the backend at http://localhost:8000/admin. If prompted, login with the username/password of the superuser you created earlier (in case you don't see an error page here).

http://localhost:8000/admin

The Project

Create Dummy Data

Run management command

./manage.py create_dummy_data 5 --flush True

with activated virtualenv to get 5 days of dummy data and delete tables in advance.

The number (5 in the above example) creates 5 days dummy data count from today. If you just use ./manage.py create_dummy_data 5 without --flush it is NOT deleting data before putting new data in.

Running Tests

Feature pull requests should be accompanied by appropriate tests. We have unit and integration tests that are run with py.test, and functional/behave tests that are run with selenium.

To run unit tests, run the following command (with your virtual env activated, see 3.)

$ py.test -v [/path/to/volunteer_planner.git/]

If you want to generate a coverage report as well, run

$ py.test --cov=. --cov-report html --cov-report term-missing --no-cov-on-fail -v

This generates a nice HTML coverage page, to poke around which can be found at /path/to/volunteer_planner.git/htmlcov/index.html.

Note: The directory htmlcov is git-ignored.

To run selenium tests, run

$ behave tests/_behave

Translations

We use Transifex (tx) for managing translations.

General notes

• Please read
  • Django 4.0: Internationalization and localization
  • Django 4.0: Translations
• Please avoid internationalized strings / messages containing HTML markup. This makes the site layout depending on the translators and them getting the markup right; it's error-prone and hardly maintainable when the page's layout changes.
• use trimmed option in blocktrans template tags, if indention is not intended.
• Please provide contextual markers on strings to help translators understanding the usage of the strings better. The shorter an internationalized string is, the more abigious it will be and the more important an contextual hint will be.

Workflow

1. Code your stuff using the gettext_lazy as _ etc. methods to mark internationalized strings
2. Update the po files ./scripts/makemessages.sh -l en The scripts and its options are intended to make the output more git-friendly.
3. Push the updated translations to git. Do not intend to translate in the local .po files, any changes here will be overwritten when translations are pulled from tx.
4. Used to be: Transifex will automatically update the source strings via github once a day and make them available for translation. 4.1. If necessary, translation managers (meaning VP's Transifex project admins) can update the source language manually using the tx client command tx push -s django.
5. Translators will then translate on VP's Transifex project
6. When new translations are available on Transifex tx pull will update the local .po files with translations from TX
7. ./checkmessages.sh will reformat po files in a more readable single-line message string format and compile mo files
8. Test if it looks good and works as intended
9. Commit and push the updated translations to git

Your local installation should be translated then. The .mo file created by compilemessages is gitignored, you'll need to (re-)generate it locally every time the .po file changes.

How to use the Transifex client

We're about to transit to the current transifex client, because the one used at the moment is deprecated. It uses old API, which will be deactivated end of 2022. Until we're finished with transition, the following guide still works.

You first need to make sure that the transiflex client is installed (should be in the requirements/dev.txt file).

pip install transifex-client

• For further installation infos and setup read Transifex: Client setup
• Then, sign up at https://www.transifex.com, search for the project volunteer-planner.org, and join the respective team.
• If you used a