A fresh and modern Google Contacts manager that integrates with GitHub and Twitter.

Flokk

A fresh and modern Google Contacts manager that integrates with GitHub and Twitter.

Demo Builds

• Web: https://flokk.app
• Linux: https://snapcraft.io/flokk-contacts
• macOS: https://flokk.app/macos/Flokk_Contacts_v1.0.1.dmg
• Windows: https://flokk.app/windows/flokk-v1.0.1-signed.zip

Contributing

You are invited to improve Flokk Contacts! Submitting pull requests, answering and asking questions in the Issues page, and updating documentation are all ways you can contribute to the app.

Please note that although we are monitoring GitHub issues, we aren’t actively maintaining the codebase, so community involvement and contributions are really appreciated going forward. We’re aiming to review pull requests on a weekly basis.

Getting Set Up

1. Flutter

• Follow the install instructions here: https://flutter.dev/docs/get-started/install
  • Desktop-specific info: https://flutter.dev/desktop, https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Desktop-shells
• Flokk was built on the bleeding edge of Flutter, so make sure to use the master branch in their git repo and checkout commit 9c3f0faa6d for Web, Linux, and macOS builds, or 78929661fb for Windows builds.
  • We’re aiming to upgrade to an official Flutter version soon to make this easier.

2. Add Required API Keys

Google Sign In is required in order to run the app (unless running with cached data). The app uses the Google People API, and you will need to provide your own Google OAuth 2 client credentials in the /lib/api_keys.dart file.

Follow the instructions here to enable the People API and create credentials:

• https://developers.google.com/people/v1/getting-started
• https://developers.google.com/people/v1/how-tos/authorizing In your Google API Console, ensure you add the People API scope, “https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts". Please see below for details:
• https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/scopes#people

To optionally fetch social data for your contacts, add your own API keys for those as well:

• Twitter: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/getting-started
• GitHub: https://developer.github.com/v3/guides/basics-of-authentication/

Although the Twitter and GitHub keys are optional, they are recommended. Otherwise the app will not be able to fetch tweets and GitHub calls will be subject to a rate limit (https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting).

Web Builds

If you’re building for web:

• Edit /web/index.html to include your web credentials (web client Id) <meta name="google-signin-client_id" content="YOUR_GOOGLE_SIGN_IN_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID.apps.googleusercontent.com">.
• This is needed for Google Sign In to work on web builds. For more details, see https://pub.dev/packages/google_sign_in_web

CORS Proxy

For Twitter support to work on web builds, it is necessary to use a CORS proxy. You can set up a proxy on your own domain, or else run a localhost instance with proxy/app.js.

If setting up on your domain, ensure you have enabled https (https://letsencrypt.org/). Once you have the security certificate, edit proxy/app.js and insert your cert and key. This is not necessary if running a localhost instance.

After the proxy is set up, edit services/twitter_rest_service.dart to point to your running proxy instance (e.g. “https://my-proxy.com”, “http://localhost”, etc.)

For more information, see https://github.com/Rob--W/cors-anywhere

Running With Cached Data

If you simply want to see the app running, it is possible to run the app using cached data:

• Run the app at least once, to create your data folders
• Extract the contents of /sample_data.zip to the newly created data folder on your machine:
  • Windows: \Users\[USER]\AppData\Roaming\flokk
  • Linux: $HOME/.local/share/flokk-contacts
  • macOS: /Users/[USER]/Library/Containers/app.flokk/Data/Library/Application Support/app.flokk
• Overwrite any files that are there
• Launch the app again, it should now sign in, and load with existing data.
• If you sign out, your saved data will be wiped and you will need to repeat the process.

Note: This is meant as a ‘read-only’ mode so you can quickly explore all the widgets and features of the app. Updates, deletes, etc are not expected to work.

Test & Build

Debug Builds

• Use flutter run -d DEVICE_ID to deploy a test build
• To get a list of available DEVICE_ID, use flutter run
• Typical values are: windows, linux, macos, chrome
• Add --release to deploy an optimized build

Release Builds

• Use flutter build PACKAGE_TYPE to build a release package
• To get a list of available PACKAGE_TYPE, use flutter build
• Typical values are windows, linux, apk, ios
• In order to build the snap package one must first run lxd init on your system if you haven’t already. ** Then execute snapcraft --use-lxd to create the snap from the flutter build

Force Log In

• The app uses a kForceWebLogin flag to force release builds to skip the oauth screen.
• Add --dart-define=flokk.forceWebLogin=true to your build command to enable
• E.g. flutter build web --dart-define=flokk.forceWebLogin=true

Desktop Runners

The /linux and /windows folders contain modifications and should not be upgraded to upstream without first verifying that each plugin works correctly with the new upstream code and any modifications are made.

Since the desktop runners for this project may contain modifications, upgrades should not be made without first verifying that every plugin and embedder can be upgraded and that they remain compatible after an upgrade. Hopefully this will not be as much of an issue once Flutter’s desktop support becomes more mature.

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Happy Flokking!