#Payir EB Data Management ##Desktop app

A desktop app built using AngularJS and Node-Webkit (NW.js) meant for use by people who perform electricity board (EB) online payments as a service. The app stores information about Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (EB) customers and tracks their online payments. Check out the accompanying Chrome extension

This app was built in collaboration with the data entry team at the rural empowerment NGO, Payir, in Thenur village, Tamil Nadu. To find out more or donate, visit payir.org

##Installation

This app is based on nodejs and npm, so please make sure you have them installed. Check out this article for help on Linux distributions.

Download this repository and open it up in a terminal

cd /path/to/eb_project_desktop/

This app uses the Bower package manager. To install the external dependencies of this project, run

bower install

Subsequently, run this

npm install

To run this app, you need nw. You can install this globally using

npm install -g nw

You're all set up. Now you can run the app like so

nw /path/to/eb_project_desktop/app/

##Additional Configuration

###MySQL

This app expects a MySQL server running on localhost. This can be installed on Ubuntu based systems as follows

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Further, the app expects a MySQL account specific to the app with the following credentials

Username: payir_eb

Password: payir_eb

To create the user, use the command line or use MySQL workbench

Alternatively, you can also modify the hard-coded MySQL credentials in scripts/services/dbservice.js, particularly the openConnection function

###Server

This app runs an HTTP server on localhost (port 5555) to allow the Chrome extension to capture and submit bill payments. In case of a port conflict (already in use by an existing app), modify the port number in app.js of this app as well the Chrome extension

##Creating Windows and Linux builds

To create a Windows executable, open a terminal in the eb_project_desktop directory and run

grunt dist-win

For Linux, run

grunt dist-linux

The executables will be available in dist

##Credits

Janani, Sekar, Selvarani and Vanaja from the IT team at Payir

##Known quirks

To build the final packaged app for different platforms, it is necessary to create a node_modules directory in app/ and copy the mysql module into it. This is to prevent "module not found" errors in the app.

##Licence

Copyright 2015 Vinay Gopinath

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (version 3) as published by the Free Software Foundation