GhostHouses

Yearly Project (2340311) @ Technion (2026)

Project Overview

GhostHouses is a municipal web system for tracking vacant/rehabilitation buildings. It supports structured data entry, import/export workflows, an audit log, and presentation‑ready building cards. The system is built with a .NET backend, React frontend, and PostgreSQL, and is fully containerized for local development.

Current Capabilities (based on implemented issues)

Buildings

• Create / edit / view building details with categorized fields.
• Mandatory field validation and conditional rules (e.g., Rehab Status only for relevant classification).
• Advanced filters (including date range for last update).
• Table sorting by clicking column headers.
• Building actions: edit, delete (with safeguards), export to Excel, export building card, and open logs.
• Supports 0–1 image per building (used in building card export).

Activity Logs

• Full audit trail with per‑field changes.
• Filters by user/date/fields and sorting by header click.
• Log table shows key fields directly (no dropdown rows).
• Logs are immutable (no delete UI).

Import / Export (Buildings)

• Excel export respects current UI field order and labels.
• Selection‑based export (headers only if nothing selected).
• Export with images as ZIP (Excel + images) or Excel‑only.
• Import with staged validation:
  • Stage 1: fix missing/invalid mandatory fields.
  • Stage 2: resolve conflicts (skip/replace/add‑anyway).
• Duplicate detection (by address and by ID) with explicit resolution.

Streets

• Dedicated Streets page with add/edit/view.
• Import/export with conflict resolution (StreetId uniqueness).
• Selection‑based export (headers only if none selected).
• “No Street Name” is reserved for buildings only (StreetId = -1).

Users & Permissions

• User management (create/edit/view) in popups.
• Role model (Viewer / Editor / Admin).
• OTP reset actions.

Building Cards (PPTX)

• Export single or multiple building cards as PPTX.
• Each selected building becomes a slide in a deck.
• Template‑based with image replacement and aspect‑ratio preservation.

Admin Template Converter

• Converter page to migrate legacy client templates into the current system format.

Open / Planned Items (from open issues)

• Real OTP implementation and stronger 2FA enforcement.
• External municipality system sync (data integration).
• Deployment on client Windows Server environment.
• Update building card template (awaiting client template).

Tech Stack

• Backend: ASP.NET Core (.NET 8, C#)
• Frontend: React (Vite)
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Testing: xUnit (WebServer.Tests) for backend unit tests (run locally).
• Containerization: Docker + Docker Compose
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions (issue guard comment-only workflow)

Installation & Running

git clone https://github.com/bbdaria/GhostHouses.git
cd GhostHouses/project
docker compose up -d --build

Ports & Networking (local Docker)

• Frontend (Nginx): https://localhost:443 (host port 443 -> container 443).
• Backend (ASP.NET Core): internal only, http://backend:8080 (no host port mapping).
• Database (PostgreSQL): internal only, db:5432.
• pgAdmin: https://localhost:8443 (host port 8443 -> container 443).
• Networks: app-net (frontend ↔ backend), db-net (backend ↔ db), admin-net (pgAdmin ↔ db).

Reset & Rebuild

Main command (run from project/):

cd project
docker compose down -v && docker compose up -d --build

Rebuild without wiping data:

docker compose down && docker compose up -d --build

Offline / No‑Internet Setup

If you need to run without internet access, use the pre‑pulled image bundle in: project/offline-images/ghosthouses-images.tar

Commands:

cd project
docker load -i offline-images/ghosthouses-images.tar
docker compose down -v
docker compose up -d --build --pull=never

If the images were already built once, you can just run:

cd project
docker compose up -d

See project/offline-images/OFFLINE_IMAGES_README.docx for details.

Project Structure

• project/web-server/backend – ASP.NET Core backend
• project/web-server/frontend – React frontend
• docs/ – project documentation and submission files
• tests/ – automated tests
• .github/ – GitHub workflows and templates

Documentation note: Stage A submission artifacts (docx + UML) live under docs/Stage A submission/. Internal technical notes live under docs/internal/.

Conventions & Workflow

See docs/CONVENTIONS.md for:

• Branch naming (Issues/#<issue-number>-<slug>)
• Issue → branch mapping
• Required metadata (milestone, labels, parent User Story)
• Status definitions (Backlog / Current Sprint / Doing / Candidate / Done)
• Approval rules and time tracking

CI/CD

GitHub Actions runs the issue‑guard workflow on issue events and daily to comment on missing required metadata. Build/test pipelines are run locally by the team.

Local TLS Certificates

The frontend and pgAdmin use local HTTPS. Self‑signed certs live in project/certs/ (ignored by git).
If missing, generate them locally (see project/certs/README_Certs.docx for the exact command).

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Maintained by the GhostHouses team.