Book me a Cookie [BMAC]

Book me a Cookie [BMAC] is a Vatsim booking system created in Laravel. It's initial purpose was to be used for one event (The Holland - America Line), however, this system is already ready to be used for more events.

Features

• Uses Vatsim Connect as default authentication provider
• A different OAuth2 provider can also be used
• Supports the following event types:
  • One-way / Groupflight
  • Citypair
  • Fly-in
  • Multiflights (limited to 2 flights per booking)
• E-mail templates included
• Bootstrap / Bootswatch colors are editable
• Slots can be imported or added manually.
• Airports and Events can have links for charts, briefing, scenery or something else. They are visible after pilots book a flight.

Tech Stack

• Laravel
• Bootstrap 4
• Bootswatch 4 Flatly theme

Vatsim Connect

In order to use Vatsim Connect as OAuth2 provider, you need to create a organization (or have somebody else do that for you). https://auth.vatsim.net/

Once you have a Organization, Navigate to OAUTH, create NEW SITE and set the Redirect URL to the APP_URL + /login. For example: https://example.org/login.

Save the Client ID and Secret somewhere, you will need this later.

When testing or running this project locally, Vatsim wants your to use their Connect Development Environment. Details can be found here: https://github.com/vatsimnetwork/developer-info/wiki/Connect-Development-Environment

Installation

Before you begin, make sure you have a server with the following installed:

• PHP 8.1 or greater
• PHP extensions:
  • Laravel
    • BCMath PHP Extension
    • Ctype PHP Extension
    • cURL PHP Extension
    • DOM PHP Extension
    • Fileinfo PHP Extension
    • JSON PHP Extension
    • Mbstring PHP Extension
    • OpenSSL PHP Extension
    • PCRE PHP Extension
    • PDO PHP Extension
    • Tokenizer PHP Extension
    • XML PHP Extension
  • Laravel Excel
    • php_zip
    • php_xml
    • php_gd2
    • php_iconv
    • php_simplexml
    • php_xmlreader
    • php_zlib
• NodeJS: I recommend LTS (v18 at time of writing), minimum v16

For local development, I use Laravel Valet, and before that I used Laravel Homestead.

1. Clone the project

     git clone -b main https://github.com/daveroverts/bmac.git

2. Go to the project directory

     cd bmac

3. Copy .env.example to .env

     cp .env.example .env

   Open .env. The following must be changed:

   • APP_ENV
     • Set this to production when running this in a production environment.
     • Set this to local when running this project locally to test things out.
   • APP_URL
     • Be sure to set this to the URL the project will be running. For example: APP_URL=https://example.org
     • If you forget, you will have issues with Vatsim Connect (or any OAuth 2 provider)
   • BUGSNAG_API_KEY:
     • BMAC uses Bugsnag by default for error monitoring.
     • If you have a key, you can put this here.
   • SENTRY_LARAVEL_DSN:
     • If you prefer to use Sentry, you can fill in the DSN here.
   • DB_*
     • As required
     • If you need to share a database with some other application, you can add in a prefix by setting DB_TABLE_PREFIX=bmac_
     • If your database does not support long indexes, set DB_LOWER_STRING_LENGTH=true
   • QUEUE_CONNECTION
     • For local, you can use sync with no issues
     • In a production environment, I recommend you use something else, like database or redis. More info can be found here
       • When you use database, the jobs table is already migrated, no need to do that again.
       • When you use redis, and can't use phpredis PHP extension, predis is already in the composer.json file, no need to require it again. You do need to add REDIS_CLIENT=predis. See this link for more information about Redis and Laravel: https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/redis#introduction
   • MAIL_*
     • As required
     • MAIL_MAILER: For testing, you can use something like Mailtrap (online) or Mailhog (local, included with Laravel Homestead)
     • MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS: This will be used as the From email. Don't forget to set this.
     • MAIL_FROM_NAME: This will be used as the From name
   • OAUTH_*
     • See Vatsim Connect if you're not sure what to do at this point.
   • SITE_*
     • Feel free to edit these. They are used all over the place.
   • BOOTSTRAP_COLOR:
     • By default, BMAC uses Bootswatch Flatly. If you wish to edit some colors, you can do so here.

4. Install dependencies

   Production:

     composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev
     php artisan key:generate # Only needed for first deployment
     php artisan migrate
     php artisan storage:link # Only needed for first deployment
     npm ci
     npm run build

   Development:

     composer install
     php artisan key:generate # Only needed for first deployment
     php artisan migrate
     php artisan storage:link # Only needed for first deployment
     npm ci
     npm run dev

5. Open the website, and login.

6. Open the database, and make yourself admin by setting isAdmin to 1.

7. Setup Task schedule. You need to add a cronjob to run php artisan schedule:run every minute. Example can be found below:

     * * * * * cd /bmac && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

   For local development, you can run php artisan schedule:work in a separate terminal.

   More info can be found here: https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/scheduling#running-the-scheduler

8. (Optional) If you want to include all airports in the database, run the following command:

     php artisan import:airports

   The script uses this file as source. If you choose to not include all airports, you're responsible to add the ones you need. If you're planning on importing flights later on, add the airports in first before starting a import.

Queue worker / Laravel Horizon

If you're not using sync as QUEUE_CONNECTION, you need to run a queue worker, or else things like emails aren't being sent. Check Laravel documentation on how to set one up using Supervisor https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/queues#supervisor-configuration

When you're using redis as QUEUE_CONNECTION, Laravel Horizon is already installed and can be used to start a queue worker.