Cobase is an open source alternative to corporate social media portals such as Yammer and Moovia. It allows staff to exchange information by creating groups and posting new messages to them. No more sending mass email to the whole company, instead direct your messages to the group of people that actually are interested in the content.
Each user can subscribe to those groups that are of his or her interest. For example, a developer can subscribe to a group called 'PHP development news'. When someone posts to that group, he/she will receive the same message on the front page's summary section, showing all posts from the groups the user has subscribed to. This way, people won't get distracted by messages not related to their work or interest.
Cobase has a fully responsive layout that works on smart phones, tablet PCs and computer screen.
Need to have a private Cobase app hosted on your server? You are quite welcome to do so. Just download the source code and follow few easy steps to have it up and running in no time.
#Requirements
- PHP 5.3 or later
- Symfony2
- MySQL
#Current features
- User management with FOSUserBundle: Login, Registration, Confirmation, Password retrieval
- ACL for entities
- Gravatar implementation for using centralized avatars
- Users can create groups
- Users can post to groups
- Users can modify, move or delete their own posts
- Users can subscribe/unsubscribe to groups
- Each user has their own wall with all posts from the groups they have subscribed to
- Nice user interface with clear visual representation of categories
- Like / Unlike posts
- Commenting on posts
- Each group has an RSS feed
- Each group can follow multiple Twitter hash tags at once, all tweets displayed on the group page if tags set
- Option to allow users to browse groups and posts without logging in
- Google Analytics implementation
- Bookmarklet to allow copy main content from any site with just two clicks of a mouse, no more copy/paste
- Vagrant intergation for setting up development environment in a snap
#Upcoming features
You are more than welcome to join us to make Cobase even better. Please refer to the issues list to see what is coming up and if you would be able to pitch in. We also welcome new ideas as they are essential to make Cobase what you need it to be.
Current issue list: https://github.com/CoBase/cobase/issues
#Installation
Fork the project into your Github account and then clone it into your development environment.
$ git clone [email protected]:YOUR_GIT_ACCOUNT_NAME/cobase.git
Now go to your newly created directory.
Copy the distribution file for the parameters to your local file:
$ cp app/config/parameters.yml-dist app/config/parameters.yml
Modify the parameters.yml to reflect your database connections and smtp settings.
Create the following directories inside app folder:
- cache
- logs
Prepare cache, logs and data/avatars folder permissions by running (double check your apache user on the first one):
$ sudo chmod -Rf +a "daemon allow delete,write,append,file_inherit,directory_inherit" app/cache app/logs app/data/avatars
$ sudo chmod -Rf +a "`whoami` allow delete,write,append,file_inherit,directory_inherit" app/cache app/logs app/data/avatars
If you don't have Composer yet, download it following the instructions on http://getcomposer.org/ or just run the following command:
$ curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
Then, use the install command to install all dependancies:
$ php composer.phar install
After all dependancies are installed, make sure your app/cache and app/logs folder have write access. If there is no write access, the web server might output an internal error.
Connect to your database and run these commands:
CREATE USER 'cobase'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secret';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'cobase'@'localhost';
then run the following commands:
$ app/console doctrine:database:create
#Database migrations
This app comes bundled with Doctrine Migrations bundle, which simplifies the process of keeping database structure in sync with multiple developers and production environment.
Migrations bundle checks the structure of your entities and does it's magic based on that information.
First let's create database based on the values in app/config/parameters.yml file.
$ app/console doctrine:database:create
After you have created the database, you need to create schema into it. Since we are using Doctrine migrations, we use the console tool to create the schema from the migrations files.
$ app/console doctrine:migrations:migrate
New migration scripts appear when you pull new code from Github. To see if there are any new migrations required for you to run in your current code version, you need to check the status.
$ app/console doctrine:migrations:status
If you see new migrations available, all you have to do is run the migrations again.
$ app/console doctrine:migrations:migrate
You should now have your database in an updated state with up-to-date structure that corresponds with application's entity classes.
#Initializing database
If you wish to erase data in the database and create a new fresh instance of database with dummy data and three users, run the fixtures command:
$ app/console doctrine:fixtures:load
NOTE: This will erase all data and create new dummy data. However, this process will not recreate the structure of the database. If you wish to update schema before you run fixtures, always run the Doctrine migrations tool.
Loading fixtures as described earlier, three user account are created: demo1, demo2 and demo3. Passwords for these users are the same as the usernames respectively.
#Assets
Cobase uses asset management and thus, you must dump the assets.
$ app/console assetic:dump
During development it might be useful to use this version so that it actively listens for ny changes and builds the assets automatically:
$ app/console assetic:dump --watch (--force)
Each time you use your app in the production environment (and therefore, each time you deploy), you should run the following task:
$ php app/console assetic:dump --env=prod --no-debug
#JavaScript routes:
Available routes needs to be provided for the frontend too:
$ app/console fos:js-routing:dump
#Google Analytics
This application comes bundled with Google Bundle by antimattr/GoogleBundle. You can configure your Google Analytics parameters in app/config/google.yml file. By default, Google Analytics is disabled. You need to enable it by changing enable_google_analytics parameter to true in app/config/parameters.yml file.
For more features of Google Bundle, refer to https://github.com/antimattr/GoogleBundle
Cobase features an elegant way to keep you updated on the group related news by allowing groups to have multiple Twitter hash tags. When particular group is viewed, latest tweets from that group are displayed on screen.
In order to enable Twitter feeds on group pages, Twitter API needs to be enabled in app/config/parameters.yml file by providing your Twitter API key credentials.
#Admin users
When you register yourself a user, its role is as ROLE_USER. In order to create administrators, you need to promote a user with the console:
$ php app/console fos:user:promote [username]
Enter ROLE_ADMIN for the user when console prompts for a role. Now login with that user and access to edit/move/delete options are available for groups and posts.
To remove admin rights from a user, you need to do similar task to demote a user:
$ php app/console fos:user:demote [username]
This time type ROLE_ADMIN to remove that role from this specific username.
#Testing
We strongly encourage you to practice test driven development and write those unit tests for the code you make. As we have multiple developers involved, it is crucial that we make sure the application code is working.
To run a test, go to your project's folder and run following command:
$ phpunit -c app --coverage-text
#Contributing
We welcome any developers with various skills and background. Anyone is free to join the team and develop Cobase.
Current contributors: https://github.com/CoBase/cobase/graphs/contributors
If you want to join the team, please contact me and provide me with your github account ID so that I can add you to the team.
#IRC
We have our own IRC channel created on freenode.net called #cobase, so you are more than welcome to join the discussion if you have any concerns or interest toward the project.
#Using Vagrant
We have a Vagrant development box ready to use. In order to do so, after cloning the repository you need to run:
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
Then you will be able to run vagrant up.
The server will run at 192.168.33.101, and PhpMyAdmin will be available at 192.168.33.101:8000 . For more information on using Vagrant, see our Wiki.
#Welcome
Enjoy and welcome to the project!
Artur Gajewski
Skype: artur.t.gajewski
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