FERN

FERN (Field Expedition Routing and Navigation) is an application designed to solve the Traveling Salesman problem for field data scientists. The Application has two major components: The iPad iOS application itself and a PostgreSQL database backend on a Linux server with Apache and PHP. The iOS App can be found at https://github.com/exnehilo7/fielddata-lite-iOS-app.

This application and backend was originally created for a school project.

Note: As of 12-SEP-2024, the functions in the database schema file are outdated. Updated schema file is pending.

Backend

If you wish to use your own hosted database:

Start as Linux’s root user.

1. Set Up Apache and PHP.

apt-get install apache2
apt-get install php
apt-get install php-pgsql (or: apt-get install php[version]-pgsql)

2. Install PostgreSQL and its extensions.

apt-get install postgresql
apt-get install postgis
apt-get install postgresql-[PostgresSQL'sVersion]-pgrouting

3. Add Git (If necessary).

apt-get install git

4. Start the Services.

apachectl start
service postgresql start

5. Clone the repo.

cd /var/www/html
git clone https://github.com/exnehilo7/fielddata-lite.git

6. Create the database.

• Log into psql as the postgres user.

su postgres
psql

• Change the postgres’ user password to something other than its default value. DO NOT LOSE THE PASSWORD.

\password postgres

• Create and connect to a database named “fielddata_lite”.

create database fielddata_lite;
\c fielddata_lite

• Create a user named “routes”.

create user routes;
alter user routes with password ‘PasswordOfYourChoice’;
alter role routes NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE NOINHERIT LOGIN;

• Enable the extensions in the database.

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pgrouting;

• Add data using a dump file.

\i /var/www/html/fielddata-lite/SQL/dump/dump-fielddata_lite.sql

• Update the rights for routes.

\c
\i /var/www/html/fielddata-lite/SQL/dump/user-rights.sql

7. Move and Update the fielddata.env File

• Exit psql and switch back to the root user

\q
exit

• Move the fielddata.env File and update its values. Be sure that the user name, user password, and database name matches the values that you set up in previous steps.

mv /var/www/html/fielddata-lite/fielddata.env /var/www/.
nano /var/www/fielddata.env

• After the changes are made, Ctrl+S then Ctrl+X.

PHP.INI file

In order to upload images, the upload_max_filesize directive should be increased from the default of 2M (for php 7.4) to 10MB or larger. Find the php.ini file for your php installation and change upload_max_filesize's value.

Creating a New Route

A route can be created by uploading a CSV via the HTML file. Expected columns are currently set to match an export from a different project.