Ideas to make the app extendable to other countries

[sifelix]

Here are a few ideas to build a more generic app:

Redefining the product

We should start by analyzing what are the common needs between the different countries to know what we really want to build.

Should we keep Kobo?

Kobo has lot of weaknesses: uncomplete api, poor documentation, not evolving quickly, etc.
We should reassess if we want to build a more complex system based on Kobo.
It's worth investigating and benchmarking the different existing form apps to be sure to make good architecture decisions.

Other question: how many countries use Kobo?

If we keep Kobo

Idea 1:

One can retrieve the forms structure from kobo with :
https://kobo.humanitarianresponse.info/api/v2/assets/<form id>/content

• Check if the structure is easily parsable
• Find out all the possible fields for this form (what are all the possible fields types in Kobo?)
• Based on this schema we could automatically reproduce the form:
  • option 1: we pass it to the frontend to generate the layout
  • option 2: we add it to the repo as a static asset
• list all the degrees of freedom we want

Challenges:

• translation
• manipulating multiple forms
• the groups are the groups of the original form, if they are big, the tables in the frontend will be big too. e.g. do we want to display the form the same way it is displayed in kobo?
• What are the fields we want to display in the Home page? the filters we want to use ? (could come from a config file)
• The typing will be looser
• Changes in the code:
  • Backend:
    • DTO
    • filters (disaster selection etc)
    • the user roles and the access control logic
  • Frontend
    • the common fields
    • the filters
    • the 3 disasters
    • the typing
    • the table config files
    • the queries (we will not have strong type check anymore)

Idea 2

Create a boilerplate based on the current repo