100 Species Challenge Web App

This 100 Species Challenge web app is designed to facilitate wildlife observation challenges, specifically focused on observing 100 species. These challenges, open to the general public, encourage participants to observe and document 100 different species of plants, fungi, or insects over the course of a year.

The app allows administrators to create and manage multiple challenges, with different species lists and timespans. Users can participate in one or more challenges simultaneously. Participants can enter their name/nickname, location, and observed species with dates. The app tracks progress, showing who has completed the challenge, along with an aggregated list of all observed species. Users can also compare their personal observations against the total species recorded in each challenge.

The app is built using Python/Flask and minimal vanilla Javascript, with MariaDB as the database. It is designed to run on the Rahti 2 OpenShift environment provided by CSC. User authentication is handled through the FinBIF Laji-auth service (Laji.fi). E2E testing is done with Playwright.

The live production app is available at https://100lajia.luomus.fi

The 100 Species Challenge (Sata lajia -haaste) project is funded by Kone Foundation, 2023.

Development setup

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Git
• Access to FinBIF Laji-auth service

Setup

• Clone this repository git clone ...
• Switch to dev branch git checkout dev
• Optionally change development database password to docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_db.sql
• Set up environment variables:
  • Copy .env.example to .env and configure variables
  • Copy playwright.example.env to playwright.env for testing
• Build Docker image docker build -t species-challenge:latest .
• Startup docker compose up; docker compose down;
• Initialize database:
  • Access phpMyAdmin at http://localhost:8080
  • Import ./sql/species_challenge_dev.sql

The application will be visible http://localhost:8081

Running tests

• Run the app
• Login to playwright container with docker exec -ti species-challenge-playwright-1 bash
• Run tests with python -m pytest -v -s. The -s option enables print outputs.

Deploying to Rahti 2

• Run e2e-tests
• Merge changes to main, if deploying production version
• Git push to GitHub
• Check that build is successful at https://github.com/luomus/species-challenge/actions
• Select deployment from https://console-openshift-console.apps.2.rahti.csc.fi/k8s/ns/species-challenge/deployments
• Actions > Restart rollout
• Wait until "0 scaling to 1" disappears
• Check that everything works

OpenShift setup notes

Note that in order to create MariaDB database on Rahti, PHPMyAdmin data dump does not work. You need to create the dump on the command line:

mariadb-dump --user=USERNAME --password --lock-tables --databases DATABASENAME > ./species-challenge.sql

Notes

• Setting up new challenge
  • Provide list of basic taxa to app/data/, e.g. plantae_2024.json or use one of the existing ones.
  • Provide list of all allowed taxa to app/data/ (for backend) and static/taxa/ (for frontend autocomplete), e.g. plantae_2024_all.json. This must contain all taxa that the basic list above contains, icnluding non-species.
• Challenges-table has field for autocomplete-parameters, but these are not currently used. Instead autocomplete uses static file as described above. This is to
  • Make it faster than API calls (nearly instantaneous)
  • Allow more flexibility, e.g. having only few higher taxa in addition to species
• The UI prevents setting dates that are outside the challenge dates, and dates in the future. This relies on min & max attributes on the date field and browser validation and error messages, and has limitations based on browser.
• When challenge is in draft or closed state, editing it still needs to be possible, e.g. to anonymize or trash it. Therefore only editing species list is disabled by setting the date fields disabled, and not enabling Javascript to change them either.

Future: To have a new challenge type, you would need to:

• Define new types to data/challenge_vocabulary.json
• When loading participation edit form, load the challenge data to see the type
  • Router calls a helper, passes this data also to method
• On router, select template based on the type
  • Template includes additional fields (no rendering same field differently, that would create complexity)
• On method, select type-specific validator (using a function that passes the validator) to validate participation data
• This way form template and validator make sure the data is always ok.
• SQL inset & update queries need to be duplicated or automated.
• So data structure need to be defined in four places
  • Database: new fields
  • Form: new fields and UI
  • Validator: field values
  • Database query: fields and values

Todo

Next

• Fix autocomplete-added species min/max dates being 2022-??
• Refactor trashing. Now issues with
  • Should removal be completely different procedure, that only UPDATES trashed = 1, and does not UPDATE anything else?
  • field value can be "1" or true, "0" or false
  • If user removes name and then trashes the participation, saving fails, and some data disappears.
• Trim whitespace from MX codes, both on read and write
• On Safari, scroll date errors in view: https://chat.openai.com/share/cf043643-8b07-4394-b10e-30a383d54479
• On safari, autocomplete shows list bullets

Setup

• Version numbering?
• More robust error handling and restart? Try with triggering syntax error.
• Database sorting/collation settings utf8mb4_swedish_ci?
• Backup monitoring

Features todo

• Test:
  • If some assertions fails, also trashing the participation wil faill, which make all future tests fail as well.
• For 2025:
  • Handling higher taxa (is uses adds rikkavoikukka, don't add voikukat to taxon_count)
  • Accessibility
  • Challenge sort order (int) for the front page - larger number shown on top
• Later / nice:
  • Todo if simple form fullness verification field is not enough: Calculate taxon count on frontend, make backend validate this is same as taxa with dates.
  • Show challenge days also on participation form (in case challenge is open, but challenge period has not yet started)
  • If today is not within date begin and end, don't update taxon datw by clicking taxon name (now updates, but browser validation then prevents saving)
  • Move login_url, api_url, target id yms. konfiguraatiotiedostoon
  • Own data dump download
  • Admin ability to edit any participations
  • My participation species accumulation chart
  • Activity stats, e.g. users active during last 7 days, new participations
  • Maybe: Move observed species list away from challenge main page to separate page, preparing for tables that have >200 observers and species