ParkIt

This is an app designed to harness the outdoors for the user by researching parks from anywhere in the world.

Description

ParkIt is an application that searches for and shows the user detailed information on the selected park or outdoor area. ParkIt is utilized with Ruby on Rails and React for the frontend. Some frontend components are built from Bulma. Postgesql is used for the database.

Requirements

• Ruby 2.7.4
• NodeJS (v16), and npm
• Heroku CLI
• Postgresql

Setup

Install the Latest Ruby Version

Verify which version of Ruby you're running by entering this in the terminal:

ruby -v

Make sure that the Ruby version you're running is listed in the supported runtimes by Heroku. At the time of writing, supported versions are 2.6.8, 2.7.4, or 3.0.2. Our recommendation is 2.7.4, but make sure to check the site for the latest supported versions.

If it's not, you can use rvm to install a newer version of Ruby:

rvm install 2.7.4 --default

You should also install the latest versions of bundler and rails:

gem install bundler
gem install rails

Install NodeJS

Verify you are running a recent version of Node with:

node -v

If your Node version is not 16.x.x, install it and set it as the current and default version with:

nvm install 16
nvm use 16
nvm alias default 16

You can also update your npm version with:

npm i -g npm

Install Postgresql

Heroku requires that you use PostgreSQL for your database instead of SQLite. PostgreSQL (or just Postgres for short) is an advanced database management system with more features than SQLite. If you don't already have it installed, you'll need to set it up.

PostgreSQL Installation for WSL

To install Postgres for WSL, run the following commands from your Ubuntu terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev

Then confirm that Postgres was installed successfully:

psql --version

Run this command to start the Postgres service:

sudo service postgresql start

Finally, you'll also need to create a database user so that you are able to connect to the database from Rails. First, check what your operating system username is:

whoami

If your username is "ian", for example, you'd need to create a Postgres user with that same name. To do so, run this command to open the Postgres CLI:

sudo -u postgres -i

From the Postgres CLI, run this command (replacing "ian" with your username):

createuser -sr ian

Then enter control + d or type logout to exit.

This guide has more info on setting up Postgres on WSL if you get stuck.

Postgresql Installation for OSX

To install Postgres for OSX, you can use Homebrew:

brew install postgresql

Once Postgres has been installed, run this command to start the Postgres service:

brew services start postgresql

Troubleshooting

If you ran into any errors along the way, here are some things you can try to troubleshoot:

• If you're on a Mac and got a server connection error when you tried to run rails db:create, one option for solving this problem for Mac users is to install the Postgres app. To do this, first uninstall postgresql by running brew remove postgresql. Next, download the app from the Postgres downloads page and install it. Launch the app and click "Initialize" to create a new server. You should now be able to run rails db:create.

• If you're using WSL and got the following error running rails db:create:

  PG::ConnectionBad: FATAL:  role "yourusername" does not exist

  The issue is that you did not create a role in Postgres for the default user account. Check this video for one possible fix.

• If your app failed to deploy at the build stage, make sure your local environment is set up correctly by following the steps at the beginning of this lesson. Check that you have the latest versions of Ruby and Bundler, and ensure that Postgresql was installed successfully.

• If you deployed successfully, but you ran into issues when you visited the site, make sure you migrated and seeded the database. Also, make sure that your application works locally and try to debug any issues on your local machine before re-deploying. You can also check the logs on the server by running heroku logs.

For additional support, check out these guides on Heroku:

• Deploying a Rails 6 App to Heroku
• Rails Troubleshooting on Heroku

Use

Upon page load, the user should create a username and password or login. This directs the user to the main list of parks. The parks are searchable by name and clicking on the park will provide more detailed information. Only the "admin" username has access to load parks right now. In the future, I plan to implement a feature that allows user generated content.

Credits

Bulma.io Images from pexels.com Seed information from National Park Service API

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) [2022] [Merle Tyson Mills]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.