Spirit Cat

A simple, no thrills app to help users track their finances

Built from Plaid's quickstart repo.

You will need a plaid development account to run this app in local development: https://dashboard.plaid.com/signin/

Spirit Cat App - Local Development

1. Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:robertdavidwest/spirit-cat.git
cd spirit-cat

2. Set up your environment variables

cp .env.example .env

Copy .env.example to a new file called .env and fill out the environment variables inside.

• Server Environment Variables:

  • DATABASE_URL only needed in production. In Local dev will default to: DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost:5432/spirit_cat
  • JWT - A secret key for JWT token generation for authentication

• Local Dev only Environment Variables:

  • SEED - If SEED=true then node/scripts/seed.js will run on app startup.
  • SAMPLE_SANDBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN - A Plaid Sandbox Access token (You can generate this by using the app in local dev)
  • SAMPLE_SANDBOX_ITEM_ID - A Plaid Sandbox Access token (You can generate this by using the app in local dev)

  Do not set any of these variables in production!

• Plaid Environment variables:

  • At minimum PLAID_CLIENT_ID and PLAID_SECRET must be filled out. Get your Client ID and secrets from the dashboard: https://dashboard.plaid.com/developers/keys
  • Only use the Sandbox credentials in local development, most banks will only work in production after being requested

NOTE: .env files are a convenient local development tool. Never run a production application using an environment file with secrets in it.

3. Pre-requisites

• npm
• node >= 14,
• Your environment variables populated in .env
• postgresql local server

4. Create the database

On your local postgresql database server create the database spirit_cat:

postgres=# CREATE DATABASE spirit_cat;

4. Running the Api Server

Once started the api will be running on http://localhost:8000.

$ cd ./node
$ npm install
$ ./start.sh

The database will automatically be created from the sequelize schema and seeded by script/seed.js community-supported implementation of the Plaid Quickstart using the Going.Plaid client library can be found at PlaidQuickstartBlazor. Note that Plaid does not provide first-party support for .NET client libraries and that this Quickstart and client library are not created, reviewed, or supported by Plaid.

5. Running the frontend

$ cd ./frontend
$ npm ci
$ npm start

The frontend which will run on http://localhost:3000.

Logging in with Test credentials

In Sandbox, you can log in to any supported institution (except Capital One) using user_good as the username and pass_good as the password. If prompted to enter a 2-factor authentication code, enter 1234.

In Production, use real-life credentials.

Spirit Cat Telegram Bot

You will need to create a telegram bot, find instructions online.

Your users must manually opt in by messaging your bot on telegram

Define the env var TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in your .env

Python Jobs /python_jobs

Local dev

You can create a python virtual environment for local dev, then install the requirements found in python_jobs/requirements.txt. Run any of the jobs locally using sandbox plaid data.

Scheduling

You will need to decide for yourself what platform you want to use to deploy and schedule these jobs. (https://pythonanywhere.com has a nice simple free scheduling service, and https://www.render.com/ allows you to create free cron jobs.

1. Schedule the job get_telegram_chat_ids.py to run at least once a day. When new users sign up, they will need to manually message your bot in Telegram (this prevents spam). Once they have done so, this script will pick up the chat id, then going forward you will be able to message the user from the telegram API.

2. Schedule the job send_all_user_balances.py. Users will receive balance statements for all linked accounts (if they have messaged your bot and the script in step 1 has been run after.