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This wiki goes over some of the technical details of this web app.
Strapi is a headless content management system. It is designed such that a site administratior can add content to Strapi which is reflected in the deployed website, this allows for modifying the website content without needing to redeploy the site. The Strapi documentation can be found here.
This is the home page of the web app and contains some react card components with static links to voter information. Closer to the bottom it contains Upcoming Election Dates that are populated through a Strapi API endpoint. These cards are generated by entries in the 'Boston Municipal Election Dates' Model. The 'Add to Google Calendar' button brings the user to a pre-filled Google Calendar page, the information filled is mostly generic but takes some information from the election name and election date. The link is located in the electionCard.tsx file within the upcomingElections directory.
This page has input for the users address. They also have the option to select a Remember Address checkbox. If selected, the address will be saved to a web cookie so long as the cookie consent is accepted. This address can be deleted by unchecking remember address and submitting again. The address is sent to the Geocode API which returns latitude and longitude coordinates that are then sent to turf.js. We have two files from Boston Open Data, Precinct_Boundaries_2024.json and Polling_Locations_2022.json. These files come from https://data.boston.gov/ and are located in the express server directory. These files are read by get_precinct.js to find out what ward+precinct a user resides in. This information is then used to get their polling location and the response is sent to the frontend. The response data is cached in a cookie for 1 week so long as the cookie consent is accepted.
This page contains static text information about election information and voting options.
This page pulls candidates and candidate information from a Strapi API endpoint. Candidates are found in the Strapi Candidate model. Candidates are organized into expandable cards and displays information such as party, district, office, bio and questionnaire responses. This page also contains a popup that prompts the user to sign up for a newsletter.
This page contains static links to voting locations, as well as an iframe to an ArcGIS map containing ballot drop-off station locations. The url for the iframe is located in the index.tsx page.
These are two forms, the popup appears only on the Candidate Info page while the Newsletter Form is a persistent footer on every page. Entering an email adds it to the Mailchimp audience collection through next.js serverless functions.
For resolving an address to latitude and longitude coordinates, we use https://geocode.maps.co/ API service. The free plan supports 1 request per second and 5000 requests per day. This can be upgraded if needed to multiple low-cost monthly paid plans.
Mailchimp us used to collect emails from site users. This is to allow a site admin/owner to identify users that are interested in receiving a newsletter. To use this feature, a Mailchimp API key needs to be set up.
This page contains all the Strapi URL links as well as the express server link
