amber

Electronic Data Capture system

About

Amber is an Electronic Data Capture system with a REST API, an administration interface Amber Studio and a user interface Amber Collect.

Functionalities:

• data collection
  • data collection using online questionnaires
  • multiple data types: text, numeric, logical, image, video, file etc.
  • questionnaire builder
  • extensible question types
  • questionnaires grouped by study
  • questions with skip conditions
  • questionnaires with pages
  • self-reported data collection
• participants
  • walk-in patients
• users
  • user roles: administrator, manager, interviewer, guest
  • user/group permissions
  • user signup
  • user management
• multi-lang
• documentation
• themes

Technical features:

• scalable
• offline-first design, with auto sync
• multiple clients: web, mobile, desktop, script
• auth with local credentials
• docker
• mailer
• configurable

Getting Started (developers)

This project uses Feathers. An open source web framework for building modern real-time applications.

1. Make sure you have NodeJS and npm installed.

2. Install your dependencies

   cd path/to/amber
   npm install
   

3. Start your app

   npm start
   # or
   rmp run dev
   

Environment Variables

Amber uses dotenv for environment variables discovery from a .env file.

• CLUSTER_COUNT, node cluster count, defaults to all available CPU cores
• APP_NAME, JWT issuer
• APP_SECRET_KEY, encryption key
• APP_SECRET_IV, secret string for the encryption's initial vector,
• APP_URL, JWT audience
• APP_API_KEYS, the allowed API keys (comma separated values) for triggering backround tasks execution,
• CLIENT_URLS, comma separated client urls, for the CORS policy
• AMBER_STUDIO_URL, Amber Studio app url, to be included in the notification emails
• AMBER_COLLECT_URL, Amber Collect app url, to be included in the notification emails
• AMBER_VISIT_URL, Amber Visit app url, to be included in the notification emails
• MONGODB_URL, the MongoDB connection string
• ENCRYPT_DATA, whether the patient/participant data should be encrypted in the database
• OTP_TIMEOUT, is the number of minutes during which the onetime password (OTP) sent by email is valid. Default is 5; when set to 0, the email-based onetime password is deactivated. This does not apply to the time-based onetime password (TOTP) procedure, which can be activated per user.
• RECAPTCHA_SECRET_KEY, the reCAPTCHA v3 secret key.
• SIGNUP_WHITELIST, the list of email domains that are allowed to signup. Use '*' for wild card. Default is all.
• SIGNUP_BLACKLIST, the list of email domains that are NOT allowed to signup. Use '*' for wild card. Default is none.
• GMAIL, the Gmail user name for the notification service
• GMAIL_PASSWORD, the Gmail user password for the notification service
• SENDINBLUE_API_KEY, the Sendinblue API key for the notification service
• SMTP_HOST, the SMTP server host
• SMTP_PORT, the SMTP server port (defaults to 587 if is secure is false or 465 if true)
• SMTP_NAME, the SMTP server name
• SMTP_SECURE, whether the SMTP connection should use SSL (default is true)
• SMTP_REQUIRE_TLS, whether the SMTP connection should use TLS (when secure is false)
• SMTP_LOGGER, enable SMTP logging
• SMTP_DEBUG, enable SMTP debug by sending log events
• SMTP_USER, the SMTP server user
• SMTP_PASSWORD, the SMTP server user's password
• FROM_EMAIL, the automated sender email address,
• GITHUB_KEY, OAuth key for Github
• GITHUB_SECRET, OAuth secret for Github
• GOOGLE_KEY, OAuth key for Google
• GOOGLE_SECRET, OAuth secret for Google
• ADMINISTRATOR_EMAIL, user seeding when there is no administrator in the database
• ADMINISTRATOR_PWD, user seeding when there is no administrator in the database
• LOG_LEVEL, logger level (error, warn, info, verbose, debug, silly, etc. (see winstonjs)), default is info
• LOG_FILE, file logger path
• LOG_FILE_LEVEL, file logger level when LOG_FILE is specified, default is LOG_LEVEL
• NODE_ENV, name of the config file to be merged with the default one (e.g. production)

Testing

Simply run npm test and all your tests in the test/ directory will be run.

Scaffolding

Feathers has a powerful command line interface. Here are a few things it can do:

$ npm install -g @feathersjs/cli          # Install Feathers CLI

$ feathers generate service               # Generate a new Service
$ feathers generate hook                  # Generate a new Hook
$ feathers help                           # Show all commands

Help

For more information on all the things you can do with Feathers visit docs.feathersjs.com.