Anahita

Anahita is a platform and framework for developing open science and knowledge sharing applications on a social networking foundation.

Code Quality Rank: L3

Programming language: PHP

License: GNU General Public License v3.0 only

Tags: Framework     Platform     Restful     Graph     Nodes     Knowledge     Socialnetwork     Social     Networking     Learning    

Latest version: v4.4.4

README

Anahita

Version: 4.6.0 Embryo Release

Anahita is a platform and framework for developing open science and knowledge sharing applications on a social networking foundation. Use Anahita to build:

1. online learning and knowledge sharing networks
2. information access networks about people, places, and things
3. open science and open data networks
4. online collaboration environments
5. cloud back-end for your mobile apps

Anahita provides a genuine nodes and graphs architecture as well as design patterns for building social networking apps.

Concepts

Nodes

1. actors: people, groups, or build your own custom actor
2. media: notes, topics, todos, photos, articles, or build your own custom media
3. hashtags: all actors, media, and comments are hashtaggable
   
4. locations: all actors and media are geolocatable
5. stories: updates created by actors for their followers

Graphs

1. social graph: people and groups can be followed by other people.
2. hashtags: for actors, media, and comments
3. mentions: tag people in media and comments
4. locations: tag locations in media and actors and search nearby nodes
   
5. notifications: a person receives an email notification whenever a comment is posted on an item they are subscribed to.
6. votes: people can Like/Unlike media and comments

Stories

• story feeds on dashboard and actor profiles
• notifications

RAD Framework

1. MVC rapid app development framework specialized for building social apps
2. fully customizable theme and user interfaces
3. extendable by social apps and components
4. RESTful and JSON APIs (ideal to use Anahita as a back-end for mobile apps)
5. Built using your favourite technologies such as PHP5, MySql, Bootstrap, JQuery, Grunt, Composer, LessCSS

Embryo and Birth releases

The code in the master branch is called the Embryo. It is what we use to power our website Anahita.io and it is constantly changing and evolving. It may contain bugs that are being fixed. Experimental features may be added and removed. Whenever we reach a specific milestone and the codebase is stable, it is packaged as a Birth relase.

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from 4.5.* to 4.6.* you will need a client side applications such as Anahita React as your front end, since Anahita will only provide a RESTful JSON API and no html outputs. If you need time to build a client app, you may point your installation to the legacy branch for the time being.

If you are upgrading from 4.3.* to 4.4.*, in www/configuration.php file, change AnConfig to AnSiteConfig.

If you are using any previous 4.* versions of Anahita, here is how to upgrade

Installation

System Requirements

Before you start please make sure that your server meets the following requirements:

1. Linux or unix server
2. Nginx or Apache 2.0+
3. MySql 5.7
4. php 5.6+ with OPcache and APCU. Use PHP version 7.0.0 to 7.3.* for best results. (PLEASE NOTE: Anahita isn't yet supported on PHP 7.4, because the upgrade list is long and we are still working on it).
5. Composer package management. You can download it following the instructions on http://getcomposer.org/ or just run the following command:

curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Important Notes

If you have the suhosin patch installed on your server you might get an error. Add this line to your php.ini file to fix it: suhosin.executor.include.whitelist = tmpl://, file://

Anahita is installed and managed via command line interface, because this is the most reliable approach especially after you accumulate large amounts of data in your database.

Installing a stable package

Stable packages are called Birth releases. Use the following command to create an Anahita project called myproject. This command automatically downloads all the required files from the Anahita GitHub repository:

composer create-project anahita/project myproject

Now go to the myproject directory:

cd myproject

Continue with Initiating Installation from this point.

Installing from the master branch

The master branch always contains the Embryo release. Using the following command, clone the Anahita repository from the master branch:

git clone [email protected]:anahitasocial/anahita.git myproject

change directory to myproject

cd myproject

Now run the composer command to obtain all the 3rd party libraries that Anahita requires:

composer update

Continue with Initiating Installation from this point.

Initiating Installation

If you type php anahita you get a list of all commands available to manage your Anahita installation. If the command didn't work, perhaps the symlink to the anahita command line tool isn't created. In this case run the following command to create a symlink. Otherwise move to the next step which is initiating the installation process.

ln -s bin/anahita anahita

In order to initiate the installation process run the following command and provide your database information when it is asked from you:

php anahita site:init

The Anahita installation is created in the PATH-TO-YOUR-DIRECTORY/myproject/www directory. You need to configure your server to use this directory as the public directory.

Congratulations! You have installed Anahita successfully. Now you need to signup as a Super Administrator.

Signing Up The Super Administrator

The first person that is signing up with Anahita is recognized as the Super Administrator. Use the following command to sign up the first person:

php anahita site:signup

Provide a valid email and username. You can either provide a password or Anahita creates a strong password for you.

Congratulations! You have created the first person and Super Admin account. Point your browser to your Anahita installation and login.

Next, you will configure your installation and install some apps.

Configuring Your Anahita Installation

Now you need to make some configurations before you can use your Anahita for development or production server. To access the site settings:

1. Login to your Anahita installation as a Super Administrator
2. Click on your avatar on the top menubar
3. Click on Site Settings. By default you will go to the Site Settings

Here are the options on the Site Settings view:

1. About: has basic information about your Anahita installation such as creators and software version.
2. System: system settings such as site name, database, and mail configurations happen here.
3. Apps: configure Anahita apps for the entire site.
4. Assignments: configure which actors (People, Groups, etc.) can use what apps (Topics, Photos, etc.)
5. Plugins: configure Anahita plugins for the entire site.
6. Templates: configure Anahita templates. That is only if they are configurable.

Notifications

Anahita emails out a lot of email notifications. In order for the notifications to get sent out, you can setup a cron job on your server to the yourdomain.com/components/com_notifications/process.php file. Make sure to go to Site Settings > Apps > Notifications and set Use Cron to Yes.

There are many articles on the web to show you how to setup a cron job. Depending on your number of users and activity on your site, anywhere from 15 minute to 1 hour intervals will work. You will find the suitable interval after monitoring your Anahita installation for a while.

Installing Social Apps

Now it is time to extend your Anahita installation with some apps and components. Anahita comes with a list of social apps which you can use as they are or use them as blueprints for developing your own custom apps.

To get a list of available apps simply type the following command:

php anahita package:list

Now in order to install an app, for example the Photos app, type the following command:

php anahita package:install photos

You can even provide a list of apps and components in one line. For example to install the Groups, Topics, and Connect apps use the following command:

php anahita package:install groups topics connect

Go to Site Settings > Assignments to define whether an app should optionally or always be available on actor profiles (people, groups, etc.). If an app is optionally available, then on each actor profile the app can be enabled under the Edit Profile > Apps.

Congratulations! You have just installed some apps and extensions on your Anahita installation.

Amazon S3 Storage

Nearly in all cases you wouldn't want to store the uploaded files on your own server. They add up very quickly and that makes it very difficult to maintain or migrate your Anahita installation. Anahita provides a plugin which allows all the uploaded files to be stored in the AWS or Amazon S3 cloud.

Go to Site Settings > Plugins and then from the type list select Storage. Edit and disable the Storage - Local plugin by clicking on it's name. Edit the Amazon S3 plugin using the following settings:

1. Enabled: set to yes
2. The folder to store the data: use assets as the default setting
3. Bucket: enter the name of your Amazon S3 bucket
4. Access Key: enter your AWS access key
5. Secret Key: enter your AWS secret key

Now click Update to store the settings. Try uploading your avatar in the front-end and see if it gets uploaded properly. Check the image src to make sure it is an AWS url.

Join the Anahita Tribe

Anahita has an active and thriving tribe of hackers, entrepreneurs, and hackerpreneurs. They are helpful and friendly. So Join Us

Please Note: we do not answer questions in email. If you have any questions, please join the Anahita tribe and post your questions on the Tribe Support group where others can benefit from the answers too.

Report Bugs or Issues

There are so many ways that you can report us a bug:

• open an issue here on our repository
• start a topic on Anahita Project group
• send us a friendly email and tell us how to reproduce the bug

Contribute to Anahita

Anahita could never be possible without the help of people in our tribe. We need contributors who can help us with testing, finding and fixing bugs, and coding of course. Here is a complete guideline of how you can contribute to Anahita.

Follow us, Like us

Follow us on twitter @anahita_io and like our facebook page Facebook.com/anahita.io

Credits

Anahita is developed and maintained by rmdStudio Inc. a software development company in Vancouver, Canada. We develop web and mobile apps for scientific, healthcare, and industrial sectors.