better-friend

Simple relationship tracking app to help you be a better friend.

Features

• Receive scheduled reminders to reconnect with friends or colleagues you haven't talked to in awhile
• Help remember upcoming events or life updates like birthdays, new jobs, or new family members with detailed note-taking
• Customize and prioritize the most important relationships to keep them healthy no matter the distance

Stack

• Built on Python Quart (async Flask) API framework
• Hosted with Google Cloud Platform Firestore NoSQL document storage

Routes

Simple CRUD operations (POST, GET, PATCH, DELETE) supported on all resources.

/users

App users, with first and last name and email

/users/:userId/persons

All relationships saved by a specific user, with a customizable reminder frequency and organization by relationship type.

/users/:userId/persons/:personId/connections

Discrete connections made with a certain friend/family member/colleague, stamped by datetime and supporting customizable notes to remember important news or life updates.

Install

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• docker CLI

Create virtualenv

python3 -m venv .venv

Activate it before installing dependencies

source .venv/bin/activate

Install all dependencies

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Create .env file

To run locally, you will need access to a Google Cloud Platform Project with a Firestore database, and have the project's service credentials .json file locally (these files are not checked into Git of course).

• See /.env.example for the expected environment variables.
• Further assistance available in GCP documentation for setting up project authentication

Future enhancement: docker-compose container to spin up Firestore instance locally for easier testing.

Run

quart run

Project Structure

/docs

Exported Insomnia/Postman collection which has all the possible REST routes and the expected arguments for each.

/src

app_wrapper.py

This is the main entry point of the API (after /app.py, which is just a requirement of Quart runtime and instantiates AppWrapper from this file).

AppWrapper imports all runtime configurations from environment variables or a local .env file, then wires up all API routes to their handler Quart "Blueprints"/functions and begins fielding requests.

firestore.py

Firestore class handles Google Cloud Platform Firestore database connections as well as Model classes which codify data structure.

routes

Each subdirectory in this routes directory represents one high-level REST resource and contains all the business logic to do Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD) operations on that resource.

• /users
• /users/:userId/persons
• /users/:userId/persons/:personId/connections

For example, persons/index.py fields the /users/:userId/persons/... route requests and any data operations performed on a Person object.