MAT SECURITY: Appwrite Hashnode Hackathon
A Flutter Application developed for schools and colleges to track daily in out registry of students.
Team Details
MANISH MODAK - @xManish
AMAN MUNJEWAR - @AmanMunjewar
ABHISHEK FADAKE - @fadkeabhi
Description of Project
MAT SECURITY is an easy-to-use mobile app that revolutionizes hostel security management. With its seamless interface, it allows security guards to efficiently track the entry and exit of students. The app enables the creation and management of student profiles, offers comprehensive views of student details, and provides daily logs for monitoring activities. Additionally, MAT SECURITY highlights students who haven't returned, ensuring enhanced safety and accountability in hostel environments. Experience a new level of security with MAT SECURITY.
We are a group of Computer Engineering students pursuing our bachelor's degree. As hostel residents ourselves, we experienced the inefficiencies of manual in-out entry processes in our college hostel, where entries were recorded on paper registers, causing delays and inconvenience. Additionally, security guards faced challenges in identifying students who hadn't returned after 9 pm, requiring manual cross-checking in multiple registers.
To address these issues, we embarked on a project initially aimed at solving this problem as part of our university's PBL project. However, upon discovering the Appwrite hackathon, we decided to enhance and upgrade our solution. We transitioned our entire backend infrastructure from Firebase to Appwrite. While initially a little challenging, the process became enjoyable and straightforward as we delved into the comprehensive documentation provided by Appwrite.
Tech Stack
MAT SECURITY is a professionally developed mobile application built using the Flutter framework and powered by the Appwrite cloud backend. Leveraging the versatility of Flutter, the app offers a seamless and responsive user interface across both iOS and Android platforms. With Appwrite Cloud, the app benefits from secure and scalable backend services, including authentication, database management, real-time updates, and file storage. By combining the power of Flutter and the reliability of Appwrite Cloud, MAT SECURITY delivers a robust and efficient solution for hostel security management.
Flutter
Appwrite Cloud
Authentication
Database
Storage
Cloud Functions - Node.js
In this project almost all of the appwrite services are used.
Authentication : Appwrites Authentication service simplified the user management process. Also, the Teams and Membership features helped to manage the administrators of the application in a simple and easy way.
Database : We used Appwrites database service to store the student's information and daily log.
Storage : Appwrite storage is used in this app to store the photo of a student on the cloud. Also, the old logs are being stored in storage to reduce the database load and boost the overall efficiency of the app.
Cloud Functions : We have also used the cloud functions from the Appwrite to implement some server-side tasks. Currently, we are using two cloud functions. Both are implemented in Node.js. One of the function is used to add a new email as an admin. In this function, email is added to a team called "Admin" which has all the admin privileges. Another function is used to move all old logs from the database to a file in bucket storage. All necessary conditions are checked before file transfer. like checking if all student's entries are complete, etc. This function is set on a cron job.
Challenges We Faced
Database Structure:
As we knew, Appwrite didn't provide a direct subdocument feature, which makes categorizing documents challenging.
Solution: We took advantage of the query feature to filter out the required documents, reducing network load.
Remark: The query feature is valuable as it allows us to fetch specific data without downloading the entire document set.
Manual Creation of Database and Collection:
Unlike Firebase Firestore, where a database is created automatically if referenced, Appwrite requires the manual creation of databases and collections.
Solution: We have modified our database structure to utilize a single database per organization and a single collection for each data set.
Remark: With the query feature, we can avoid the need for multiple collections, simplifying our database structure. Also, this restriction helped us keep all documents well formatted.
Create Team Membership :
From the frontend SDK, it was difficult to add a membership to a team. It is a multi-step process. Also, it involves sending an email to the user about joining.
Solution: To add membership, we decided to shift to the backend. We selected the Appwrite functions to execute the server code. We used the Node.js SDK for the same.
Remark: By leveraging the power of the appwrite function, we also created Node.js code to move all previous log records to a bucket file.
Public Code Repo
https://github.com/ManishModak/Appwrite-Hackathon
APK LINK
https://github.com/ManishModak/Appwrite-Hackathon/releases/tag/v1.0
admin credentials
email: admin@test.test
password: password