NearMeDC is a geographic notification platform designed to work with open government data. It allows residents to designate area(s) of a city they are interested in and subscribe to one or more topics. When an event for a desired topic occurs in the subscriber's area of interest, a notification (email, SMS, or webhook) is delivered.
This application is a modification and extension of the Citygram application that is a Code for America project by the Charlotte and Lexington teams for the 2014 fellowship.
We believe that there is an opportunity to help residents better understand what’s going on in their area, when it’s going to happen, and why. By providing timely information to residents in areas that are relevant to them, the city can be proactive instead of reactive, build trust through transparency, and increase civic engagement across the board.
This application has been heavily modifed by Socrata
See the contributors list.
NearMeDC is a web application written in Ruby.
- Web: Sinatra, Grape, Sprockets
- Web server: Unicorn
- Database/models: PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Sequel
- Job Queue: Redis, Sidekiq
- Tests: RSpec, FactoryGirl, Rack::Test
First, follow the instructions to install each of the following:
- Install Ruby
- Install PostgreSQL and PostGIS
- Install Redis -
brew install redison OS X, available from your package manager on Linux or direct download
Then, in the command line, run the following to copy the NearMeDC code locally and install all Ruby package dependencies:
bundle install
Make sure your PostgreSQL server is running, then in the terminal run:
cp .env.sample .env
rake db:create db:migrate
rake db:create db:migrate DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost/citygram_test
Basic things you'll want to do with your NearMeDC server:
To boot up the complete application and run background jobs in development:
bundle exec foreman start
You can then open http://localhost:5000/ in your web browser.
When you can run the application, you're capable of getting some example data.
Before running these commands, ensure foreman is running per the instructions in the previous section!
bundle exec rake publishers:download
bundle exec rake publishers:update
The first command downloads active publishers from NearMeDC. The second command will update those publishers from open data portals across the country.
rake digests:send
For Heroku Scheduler users, there is a task that can be executed multiple times,
but will only deliver mail on the environment's DIGEST_DAYS.
ENV['DIGEST_DAYS'] = 'monday,wednesday,friday'
rake digests:send_if_digest_day
Run all tests in the spec/ directory, by running:
rake