ourdistrict

Our District is a project that aims to use technology to improve communication from individuals to law makers. Quite a bit of effort has been applied in transparency and top down communication, but we want to enhance the flow in the other direction. This project intends to develop tools that can be easily used by the masses to direct concerns and ideas upward in the political process efficiently and effectively.

Reddit Discussion

Current Implementations

Awbrey Hughlett - Candidate US House TX - 32

Goals and Direction

---

• complete front page voting widget; (privides example of Ranked Pairs voting system)
• complete charts feature by adding recurring data retrieval and more default charts
• rebuild documents feature to make its function more clear and include a way to import proposed bills for community edit
• create email input form for front page to allow newsletter signup

Quick Start

---

Build Prerequisites:

• git
• java
• sbt
• npm
• grunt-cli

To get started, follow the steps below.

1. Clone the project
   • $ git clone https://github.com/EasterTheBunny/ourdistrict.git
   • $ cd ourdistrict
2. Set connection db identifiers
   • file of interest -> ./src/main/resources/props/default.props
   • db.driver (the driver for your database)
   • db.url (the jdbc url for your database)
   • db.user (your db user)
   • db.password (your db password)
   • make these fields blank to use Java's H2 database; in this case, the database will be created automatically
3. Start the sbt console
   • $ ./sbt update ~container:start
4. View site in browser
   • http://127.0.0.1:8080/

Framework Support and Material

---

OurDistrict is built using the Lift Framework. If you have no experience with the Lift framework, Simply Lift is a decent place to start and Lift Cookbook goes into a good bit more detail. If you still have questions, the Lift Mailing List an excellent resource.

If you don't want to learn a new framework and still want to get down to the html/css/js, take a look at /src/main/webapp for templates and other resources. Everything without an underscore prepending the file name in this directory is accessible by name in the url: www.xxx.com/documents -> /src/main/webapp/documents.html

While this isn't a strict rule, it's the general theme if you don't want to dig too deep in the framework.

Scala IDE Support

---

Eclipse

Sbteclipse provides SBT command to create Eclipse project files

• Usage

To create a eclipse project:

	$ ./sbt
	> eclipse

• In eclipse do:

	File ==> Import...
	Select General ==> Existing Project into Workspace 
	Use "Browse" to look up the project root ....

IDEA

sbt-idea provides a gen-idea command to SBT to generate IDEA project files

• Usage

	$ ./sbt
	> gen-idea no-classifiers

• In Intellij / IDEA do:

	File ==> Open...
	Select project root directory

For further information, see both the plugin docs on github and stackoverflow responses:

	https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea
	http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4250318/how-to-create-sbt-project-with-intellij-idea

Properties/Logging

---

Properties

Setting runtime properties for the program is done by either changing settings here:

    $ cd ./src/main/resources/props/default.props

Or by creating your own development or production properties that override the defaults. You can do this by copying the default and naming it with your hostname. Example where my computer's hostname is 'Chilli-Dog.local':

    $ cp ./src/main/resources/props/default.props ./src/main/resources/props/Chilli-Dog.local.props

There are other layers that override this example, but that is the basic style and the .gitignore already ignores these extra files ... usually.

Logging

Logging is handled by logback so reference that documentation for setup rules. As for the setup file, the location is here:

    $ cd ./src/main/resources/logback.xml

The same naming that applied to properties also applies to the logback setup file. Copy the file and name it with your hostname prepending what it currently is.

Full Node

---

What is a 'full node'?

This application provides a few modules that obtain data regarding legislators, bills, votes, and much more. However, to use this feature you must install other scripts not included in this project that scrape the necessary data sources for this information and structures it in a way that this application is designed to consume. If you would like to use this feature, reference the links below first:

Congress Legislators (original)

Congress Legislators (fork)

Congress (original)

Congress (fork)

This application was tested using the forked versions of these tools. To turn this feature on, apply the applicable settings in the properties file.

What if I don't want to run a 'full node'?

Currently the only option is to download these files manually. It's in the plan to make a peer to peer resource network where a full node would serve the scraped data and a client node could consume and serve them. If you know how to do this, feel free to get started.