CityBook

Make a searchable address book from a contact spreadsheet.
http://codeforamerica.github.io/citybook

CityBook aims to make it easier for administrative staff who maintain contact lists to create a searchable, mobile-responsive web app that uses their spreadsheet as a data source.

Based on the CfA 2015 Richmond Fellowship team’s Search-RVAHealth project.

Data Types

CityBook emphasizes simplicity and flexibility over adherence to a data standard. You can add any columns with any title to your CityBook spreadsheet and they will displayed. However, some column names are required or receive special treatment:

Organization Name (Required)

Displayed as an <h1> element. It corresponds to the main title of your entry.

Telephone

Displayed as a button that users can click or tap to launch a call. Cells should contain a single telephone number. Most mobile telephone applications are flexible in how they parse a phone number, so these may use any common telephone format (e.g. 123-456-7890, (123)456-7890, 1234567890, etc.).

Address

Displayed as a button that launches Google Maps directions to the location in the cell. It’s a good idea to test the addresses you enter by searching for them in Google Maps. If your address is incomplete or does not return a result, the user may have difficulty finding the right location.

Other Data Types

All other data types are displayed in the “Show Details” section. The column header will appear as bold text with a colon (i.e. a Key-Value format).

Setup

git clone https://github.com/codeforamerica/citybook.git
cd citybook
npm install

Create a PostgreSQL databse named citybook, or edit the development block of config/config.js to the name of your database. Consider using http://postgresapp.com/.

psql
CREATE DATABASE citybook;
\q
node_modules/.bin/sequelize db:migrate

Development

Running in development mode enables WebpackDevServer hot-module-reloading on port 3000. Use port 8080 for testing back-end functionality.

npm run dev

Bundling for Production

Bundles everything into bundle.js.

npm install -g webpack
webpack
npm start
git remote add production https://git.heroku.com/citybook.git

(Open an issue to be added as a collaborator on heroku)

Database Migration

Make your changes, then run:

node_modules/.bin/sequelize db:migrate

What is this built with?

This project uses Tabletop.js for the spreadsheet access, Handlebars for some templating, List.js for the searchable list, and Bootstrap for the styles.

The instruction page template was generated by using the Cayman theme by Jason Long.