Flow Mobile

Flow Mobile is the native Android and iOS client for the Flow university social network. It uses the same Django REST Framework and Django Channels contracts as the production web client while adapting the experience for mobile navigation, secure local storage, unreliable networks, native media, and realtime communication.

Product surface

• Account registration, activation, login, secure session restoration, access-token refresh, logout, and required profile onboarding.
• Campus feed with publishing, optimistic likes, reposts, reporting, deletion, comments, and replies to comments.
• Student and post discovery, Flow requests, accepted connections, and direct-conversation creation.
• Realtime messaging with JWT-authenticated WebSockets, typing events, unread state, reconnect backoff, active-chat read handling, and REST fallback.
• Realtime in-app notification centre with mark-one and mark-all read actions.
• Profile display/editing, native profile-image selection/upload, password changes, and persisted app preferences.
• Authenticated WebRTC audio/video rooms with configurable TURN credentials.
• Explicit integration states for Events, Groups, and staff moderation until matching backend domains are available.
• Marketplace expansion is intentionally excluded from this release.

Architecture

• Expo SDK 56 + Expo Router for native file-based navigation and deep links.
• TypeScript with strict checking.
• TanStack Query for server state, network-aware retries, optimistic updates, cache invalidation, and selective offline persistence.
• Zustand for authenticated identity, unified UI feedback, and persisted user preferences.
• Expo SecureStore for access/refresh tokens and account identity.
• Axios with a single-flight refresh interceptor and normalized API errors.
• expo-image and expo-video for memory/disk-cached media.
• react-native-webrtc for native audio/video calls.

Messages and notifications are deliberately excluded from the persisted query cache. Secure session data is stored in SecureStore rather than AsyncStorage.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.13+
• Android Studio for local Android builds
• macOS/Xcode or EAS Build for iOS builds
• A development build. Expo Go cannot load react-native-webrtc.
• The backend changes from Leanstix/Flow PRs #1 and #2

Setup

git clone https://github.com/Leanstix/Flow_mobile.git
cd Flow_mobile
cp .env.example .env
npm ci
npx expo prebuild --clean
npm run android

Environment variables:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://your-backend.example.com/api
EXPO_PUBLIC_WS_URL=wss://your-backend.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_TURN_URL=turn:turn.example.com:3478
EXPO_PUBLIC_TURN_USERNAME=flow
EXPO_PUBLIC_TURN_CREDENTIAL=replace-me

For a physical device on a local network, do not use 127.0.0.1. Set EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL and EXPO_PUBLIC_WS_URL to the development machine's LAN address.

Quality checks

npm run lint
npm run typecheck
npm run test:coverage
npx expo install --check
npm audit --omit=dev --audit-level=high

The dependency lock pins Expo-sensitive native packages to their SDK-compatible versions, so clean installations and EAS builds resolve the same native graph. The test suite covers secure session persistence, authentication state, API route contracts, normalized errors, persisted preferences, and unified feedback modal behavior.

Native builds

Initialize the EAS project once:

npx eas-cli init

Then create development clients or store builds:

npx eas-cli build --profile development --platform android
npx eas-cli build --profile development --platform ios
npx eas-cli build --profile production --platform all

Backend deployment requirements

• Redis-backed Channels layer in production.
• The deployed mobile origin/scheme and WebSocket host permitted by backend security settings.
• HTTPS/WSS in production.
• TURN credentials for reliable calls across carrier networks, school Wi-Fi, and restrictive NATs.
• A future push-token endpoint is required before background push notifications can be enabled. Current notifications are realtime while the app is active.