Boxwise

Boxwise makes it easy for organizations (such as refugee camps) to distribute donated goods to people in need. It consists of:

• A point of sale system for running a shop. Boxwise distributes tokens that people can use to buy the things they need (clothes, food, toiletries, etc). They can choose carefully and try things on instead of just being given something they don’t want. The app registers people, gives them tokens, and manages all transactions in the shop.
• A warehouse management system. Warehouses full of donated goods can quickly turn to chaos. Boxwise makes sure organizations know what they have, where it is, and what they need to restock. There is not even any complicated hardware involved -- only a smartphone is needed.

This is a new version of the original Drop App used by Drop In The Ocean. The original app was limited to just managing a single organization. This is a rewrite to support multiple organizations on a centrally hosted system.

Contributing

We are always looking for help. Working on this project is an opportunity to use your skills to help thousands of refugees. Our contributing guide has more information.

Setting up development environment

1. Install Node.js. You'll also need to install Yarn:

   $ curl -o- -L https://yarnpkg.com/install.sh | bash
   

   (Or brew install yarn.)

2. Install Node dependencies:

   $ yarn
   

   You will need to run this again if the package.json or yarn.lock files are changed by you or somebody else.

3. Set up an app on Firebase to use as your development environment.

   • Go to https://console.firebase.google.com/ and click "Add project";
   • Enter "Boxwise Development" into the name field and click "Create Project";
   • Once that has completed, click "Add Firebase to your web app". Ignore the prompt to copy and paste the entire snippet, and look at the fields in the config object;
   • Create a new local config running yarn setup, filling with the Firebase info. This will create a .env.local file;
   • Click "Database" in the left hand menu, click "Get Started" underneath Cloud Firestore, then click "Enable";
   • Click "Authentication" in the left hand menu, then the "Sign-in method" tab, then click "Email/Password", flip the first "Enable" switch, then click "Save".

4. Log into Firebase, then select the app you created in the previous step. Give it the alias "development".

   $ yarn run firebase login
   $ yarn run firebase use --add
   

5. Deploy database rules to your development app.

   $ yarn run deploy-firestore
   

   You will need to run this again if the firestore.rules file is changed by you or somebody else.

Running the development environment

$ yarn start

The first thing you'll want to do when running a new development environment is set up an organization. The development environment currently has no test data.

Running tests

$ yarn test

Running the database tests

We have some tests that check the Firestore database security rules are set up correctly. They have to run against a real database.

To set it up, click "⚙️" then "Project Settings" in the development app you created above. Click the "Service Accounts" tab, then click "Generate New Private key". Save this file to .service-account-key.json in the root of the project. Take care not to share it or commit it to the repository!

Now, when you run yarn test, the database tests will run automatically.

Community

We have a Slack for discussing development and for users to get support.