walkies

A web-based application for an animal shelter to manage volunteer scheduling, time off, check-in/check-out, and notifications.

Requirements

• Go 1.21+
• Node.js 18+
• Task (brew install go-task or see install docs)
• Docker (optional, for containerised deployment)

Development

Run task to list all available tasks.

Quick start (two terminals)

Terminal 1 — backend:

task web:build    # build frontend once so the Go server has static files
task go:run       # starts API server on :8080

Terminal 2 — frontend dev server:

task web:dev      # hot-reload dev server on :3000, proxies /api/v1 → :8080

Then open http://localhost:3000.

With live backend reload

Install air for hot-reloading the Go server:

go install github.com/air-verse/air@latest
task web:build
task dev:backend

Common tasks

Task	Description
task build	Build frontend and Go binary
task go:test	Run Go tests
task web:test	Run frontend tests
task go:lint	Run go vet
task tidy	Tidy Go modules
task clean	Remove build artifacts

Docker

task docker:up     # build image and start container
task docker:logs   # tail logs
task docker:down   # stop

Configuration

The server is configured via environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	8080	HTTP listen port
DATABASE_DSN	walkies.db	SQLite file path
JWT_SECRET	change-me-in-production	HMAC signing key — change this
STATIC_DIR	./web/build	Path to compiled React app

Copy .env.example to .env to set these locally (the server reads environment variables directly; use a process manager or Docker to inject them).