#Ahead

Allows you to schedule posts to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

##How to Install

###Prerequisite

• Composer - it doesn't have to be installed in the server, though its recommended. If for some reason you can't have composer on the server. Just install it on your computer. Composer is used to install the dependencies of the project.
• SSH access
• Ability to install software on the server - this app depends on beanstalkd, a queue server.

You can install Ahead by clicking on the 'Download Zip' button or using git clone:

git clone git@github.com:anchetaWern/ahead.git

Next use composer to install all the dependencies of the app. The app depends on the following libraries in order to function:

• Carbon
• PHP League Oauth Client
• PhiloNL Laravel Twitter
• Pheanstalk

You can install all the dependencies by navigating to the root of the project directory (where the composer.json file is) and then execute composer install. This may take a while depending on your internet connection.

###App Configuration

Once all the dependencies are installed, configure the project based on your server configuration. Here are some of the files that you need to edit:

• app/config/database.php - database configuration
• app/config/app.php - global application configuration
• app/config/queue.php - queue configuration
• app/config/social.php - facebook and linkedin configuration
• app/config/packages/philo/twitter/config.php - twitter configuration

For the database configuration (database.php), this app is using the mysql database. So you should edit the array item which says 'mysql'. You don't need to worry about everything, all you need to update is the username and the password. Yes the one's in caps, but you don't need to capitalize anything when you update these entries.

        'mysql' => array(
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'database'  => 'ahead',
            'username'  => 'ROOT',
            'password'  => 'SECRET',
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
        ),

Next is the app configuration (app.php). First you need to configure the timezone. This doesn't have to be the same as the timezone in which the server is located. It just have to be the same as the timezone in which most of your users are located. If you plan to use this app for personal use, then you can simply use your timezone. In my case its the following:

'timezone' => 'Asia/Manila',

Next, under your providers, add the following:

'Philo\Twitter\TwitterServiceProvider',

And under the aliases:

'Carbon'          => 'Carbon\Carbon',
'Twitter'         => 'Philo\Twitter\Facades\Twitter',
'Linkedin'        => 'League\OAuth2\Client\Provider\LinkedIn',
'Facebook'        => 'League\OAuth2\Client\Provider\Facebook',

Next configure the queue (queue.php). This project uses beanstalk, so add the configuration under beanstalk. The default one would look something like this:

        'beanstalkd' => array(
            'driver' => 'beanstalkd',
            'host'   => 'localhost',
            'queue'  => 'default',
            'ttr'    => 60,
        ),

Next is the configuration for linkedin and facebook (social.php). You would need to create your own app on developer.facebook.com for facebook and developer.linkedin.com for linkedin to get the values for the clientId and clientSecret. If you're planning to have other users used this app, you also need to submit your facebook app for a review on facebook. As the app publishes posts on the users behalf. Facebook needs to review these kinds of app for the security of their users:

<?php
return array(
    'linkedin' => array(
        'clientId'  =>  '',
        'clientSecret'  =>  '',
        'redirectUri'   =>  url('/linkedin/connect'),
        'scopes' => 'r_basicprofile w_share',
    ),
    'facebook' => array(
        'clientId'  =>  '',
        'clientSecret'  =>  '',
        'redirectUri'   =>  url('/fb/connect'),
        'scopes' => 'publish_actions email user_groups manage_pages',
    ),
);

Lastly, the twitter configuration (packages/philo/twitter/config.php). You also need to create an app on dev.twitter.com to acquire the consumer key and consumer secret:

<?php

return array(
    'CONSUMER_KEY'    => '',
    'CONSUMER_SECRET' => ''
);

Next upload everything into your server except the .git folder.

Next login to your server using ssh. If you're using an Amazon EC2 instance, the command looks something like this:

ssh -i amazon-key.pem ubuntu@your-server.com

Once logged in, install beanstalkd. If you're on ubuntu it would look something like this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install beanstalkd

Next, start it:

sudo service beanstalkd start

In order to continually run Laravel's queue, we also need to install supervisor, you can do that by executing the following command:

sudo apt-get install supervisor

Next create a configuration file for our queue:

sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ahead.conf

Next create a log file that will be used for logging errors or anything that happens while supervisor runs the queue:

touch /home/ubuntu/www/app/storage/logs/ahead_supervisord.log

Then paste in the following:

[program:ahead]
command=php artisan queue:listen --env=your_environment
directory=/home/ubuntu/www
stdout_logfile=/home/ubuntu/www/app/storage/logs/ahead_supervisord.log
redirect_stderr=true

Be sure to replace the value for the directory and the stdout_logfile.

Save the file by pressing ctrl + x and inputting y when asked to save.

Next let supervisor know of the configuration file you just created

sudo supervisorctl
reread
add ahead
start ahead

Now supervisor is running the queue and the app can just push things to it.

##Database

Still on ssh, navigate to the public_html directory and run the migration and seeder:

php artisan migrate
php artisan db:seed

Just input yes if being asked to confirm.

With that, you're now ready to deploy the app. If you have any questions or you're having issues installing the app. Just file an issue to this repository and I'll try to answer.

##Issues

There's one issue I've had with the project after cloning it. It seems that the philo/twitter library configuration no longer works. And what I did was to put the twitter configuration in the app/config/social.php file.

    'twitter' => array(
        'consumer_key' => '',
        'consumer_secret' => ''
    ),

Once you've added the configuration, open the vendor/philo/laravel-twitter/src/Philo/Twitter/Twitter.php file and edit the code inside the constructor:

public function __construct()
    {
        $this->setConsumerKey(Config::get('social.twitter.consumer_key'));
        $this->setConsumerSecret(Config::get('social.twitter.consumer_secret'));
    }