311 app

We want to build something better than the default Socrata 311 site: http://311explorer.nola.gov/main/category/

Keep useful features and enhance the user experience:

As a user, I want to lookup info about my request (by entering a reference # received from 311). I want to visualize ticket types with bar charts (counts) and pie graphs (percentage). I want to visualize the data on a map around me and filter by ticket type, open/closed, date range. I want to browse curated datasets before exploring the data myself (maybe showing less data that's more recent data will be useful; maybe by sharing my location, I can see more relevant data on a map zoomed to my address).

As a developer, I want to store the 311 data in a database so we can query it more efficiently.

prerequisites

We recommend using Homebrew to install components on the Mac.

Postgres database.
Postgis.

If you do not already have these components installed, ask someone on the project to help you get it installed on your machine.

get the data

# get bulk call data data.nola.gov
wget -O 311-calls.csv 'https://data.nola.gov/api/views/3iz8-nghx/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD'

create the db

brew install postgres ## if not already installed
brew install postgis ## if not already installed
createuser three11
createdb three11 -O three11
psql -d three11 -c "create extension postgis;"

load data into db

# ogr2ogr is a useful tool for working with geospatial data
brew install gdal --with-postgres ## if not already installed
ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL PG:"host='localhost' dbname='three11' user='three11'" 311-calls.csv -nln calls

# add location column
psql -U three11 -c "ALTER TABLE calls ADD COLUMN the_geom geometry(POINT, 4326);"
psql -U three11 -c "UPDATE calls SET the_geom = ST_PointFromText(geom, 4326) WHERE geom != '';"

useful data to know about