Cloud Implementation of Smart City Tracker

This project serves as an ITC630 project to disaggregate the original Smart City Tracker into microservices that are cloud-ready. The Smart City Tracker previously existed as a web service that aggregated data from JSON files into a usable display. This project has been restructured into a more scalable system, with data pulled dynamically from MongoD instead of loading statically.

Key Features:

• Frontend: Displays information about smart city implementations in the United States. It runs static content and fetches dynamic data from MongoDB.
• Backend: Syncs data from Zenodo (where the dataset is hosted) to MongoDB, ensuring the system stays updated autonomously with only Zenodo needing to be updated for new data.
• Cloud Ready: This project can be deployed both locally and in Docker containers.

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

1. MongoDB:

   • Get username and password credentials for MongoDB and a database
   • Place this either as an ENV input to the container or in a .env
   • Requires a MONGO_URL and MONGO_DB as input

2. Node.js: Ensure Node.js is installed. You can check your Node version with:

   node -v
   

3. Docker: If running in Docker, ensure Docker is installed on your machine.

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Running Locally

Frontend

1. Install dependencies:

   npm ci
   

2. Start the frontend:

   node frontend.js
   

   The frontend will display smart city data fetched from MongoD.

Backend

1. Start the backend:

   node backend.js
   

   The backend will sync data from Zenodo to MongoD periodically.

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Running with Docker

Frontend

To run the frontend in a Docker container:

1. Pull the Docker image:

   docker pull ghcr.io/meyersa/cloudsct-frontend
   

2. Run the frontend container, mapping port 3000 for the UI and providing the auth.json file:

   docker run -p 3000:3000 -v ./auth.json:/auth.json ghcr.io/meyersa/cloudsct-frontend
   

Backend

To run the backend in a Docker container:

1. Pull the Docker image:

   docker pull ghcr.io/meyersa/cloudsct-backend
   

2. Run the backend container, providing the auth.json file:

   docker run -v ./auth.json:/auth.json ghcr.io/meyersa/cloudsct-backend
   

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Configuration (ENVs)

You can configure the application using environment variables. The following variables are optional but available for customization:

Frontend

• MONGO_DB: Database to connect to
• MONGO_URL: Mongo connection string to use

Backend

• MONGO_DB: Database to connect to
• MONGO_URL: Mongo connection string to use
• INTERVAL: Time (in milliseconds) to sync Zenodo to Firebase. Default is 86400000 (24 hours).
• zenodoRecordId: Record ID to sync with Firebase. Default is 7670784 (SmartCityTracker).

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Disaggregation Overview

This project represents a disaggregation of the original Smart City Tracker. Instead of loading all the data statically, the frontend now dynamically pulls data from MongoD. The frontend only serves static content and APIs, while the backend is responsible for syncing data from Zenodo to MongoD. This design allows the system to run autonomously with Zenodo updates driving new data syncs, resulting in better performance and scalability.

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Original

Cai, Meng. (2023). Smart City Tracker: A living archive of smart city prevalence (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7670784

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For more information, please refer to the original Smart City Tracker GitHub repository.