iWitness

iWitness is a web-based software tool that enables individuals and news organizations to explore social media content by time and place. If you know when and where something happened, iWitness will show you first-person photos, videos and messages from people who were there, integrating diverse media types in a unified interface.

iWitness was originally created by Adaptive Path and EdgeCase with funding from the Knight News Challenge. It is free to use and community-driven. You are also free to fork this project and deploy it with your own modifications. See the LICENSE file for details.

The application is a pure client-side web application with no backend. It is written using the Ember.js JavaScript framework, and is one of the largest open source Ember applications.

Browser and service support

The initial release of iWitness only runs in Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. Pull requests that expand browser support are welcomed and encouraged.

The initial release of iWitness supports two services:

1. Twitter
2. Flickr

In addition, iWitness will pull in media linked from Twitter. The following media types and sources are currently supported:

Photos:

1. Twitter
2. Instagram
3. Twitpic
4. Twitgoo
5. Lockerz

Video:

1. YouTube
2. Twitvid
3. Vimeo

Running it locally

iWitness uses Ruby to run its development server and build process. To develop on iWitness, you must have the following on your system:

• Ruby 1.9.x (not tested on Ruby 1.8)
• Bundler
• Rake
• PhantomJS (for running tests)

Once you've cloned the repository, the following will install all remaining dependencies.

bundle
git submodule init
git submodule update

To run the application, you'll need to specify API keys for Google Maps, Flickr, and Google Analytics (optional). cp config.yml.example config.yml and fill in the blanks in config.yml.

bundle exec rackup

This will start your development server. Navigate to http://localhost:9292 to run the app.

Deploying to your own server

rake compile

This will run the build process and place the static assets in /assets. Copy these files to your web server.

Deploying to Github Pages

If you've forked this repository to your own Github account or organization, you can easily deploy the app to Github Pages.

rake publish

This does a few things:

1. creates a git repo in /assets pointing to your own repositories gh-pages branch
2. syncs with the remote gh-pages branch
3. runs the build process and places the static assets in /assets
4. commits and pushes to the gh-pages branch

note: make sure you've created a remote gh-pages branch first

If you choose to use a custom CNAME for your Github Pages deployment, you must specify the cname option in the config.yml file. This will create the CNAME file in the gh-pages branch for you.

Contributing and reporting bugs

iWitness relies on community contributions to evolve, add new features, and fix bugs. We love to receive pull requests for new features or bug fixes. When appropriate, please include tests (more info on running tests below).

If you lack the technical expertise to fix a bug yourself, please create an issue for it. Be as descriptive in your issue as possible. Include screenshots and links to reproduce the issue. There is no guarantee that your issue will be addressed, but it's much more likely if you're clear and thorough in your description.

Running the tests

We have a suite of JavaScript specs written using Jasmine. The specs can be run in two ways:

1. with the development server running, navigate to http://localhost:9292/specs
2. run headless with rake test (requires PhantomJS)

Understanding the code

Basic understanding of Ember is necessary to follow most of the JavaScript code. Check out the Ember.js homepage for an excellent overview of the framework.

The build process for the app uses Sprockets. The best docs we've found for Sprockets is in the Rails Guides for the Rails Asset Pipeline (which is powered by Sprockets).

The application is a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and Less/CSS. The directory structure is as follows:

app/
  controllers/   -> ember controllers
  ext/           -> extensions to plugins or native types
  fonts/         -> fonts used by the stylesheets
  images/        -> images used by stylesheets and markup
  json/          -> static data used by timezone logic
  mixins/        -> custom ember mixins
  models/        -> ember models
  services/      -> wrappers for all external services
  stylesheets/   -> stylesheets written using less
  templates/     -> handlebars templates
  views/         -> ember views
  application.js -> manifest of all JavaScript required by the app
  base.js        -> sets up the ember app
  helpers.js     -> provides custom handlebars helpers
  index.html.erb -> main HTML page
  routes.js      -> handles everything related to URL routing
doc/             -> random notes captured during development (could use some clean up)
spec/            -> tests
vendor/          -> third-party JavaScript and widget libraries

Extending for new services and media sources

Adding a service

Adding a new service requires creating a search object and adding it to the application configuration.

Let's way we want to integrate with a service called Banana. The first thing we'll do is add 'banana' to the services configuration in app/base.js. This tells iWitness to look for a BananaSearch object. This object should be placed in app/services/.

The BananaSearch object is expected to have at least the following three methods defined: fetch(target), stop(), hasMorePages(). See the FlickrSearch class for an example.

Adding a Twitter media source

Twitter media sources are determined based on the expanded URL in the tweet content. You can see the current media sources defined at the bottom of app/services/media.js. Adding a new media source requires defining the serviceType, regex, and replacementPattern.

The regex will determine whether the URL in the tweet is a match for this media source. A media source will only be used if the URL in the tweet matches the regex.

The replacementPattern tells the TwitterLinkedMedia class how to generate a new URL from the original URL. The tweet content URL typically points to an HTML page for the content rather than the media content itself. We need a direct link to the image or video. The replacementPattern uses matching components of the original URL to construct a URL that links directly to the media content.

Getting help

If you'd like to contribute to iWitness and need some assistance, the best way is to open an issue or pull request and ask for help. If you are clear and direct regarding what you need help with, chances are someone will jump in and offer their assistance.

If you require technical support running the app, please remember that this is open source. There is no technical support included. Your best bet is to open an issue and be patient.

License

Code is under the GPL v3 license, the full text of which can be found in LICENSE.

Visual assets are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.