Pulling the Plug on Swachalit: Migrating null Event Management Platform

[abhisek]

Background

We started development of swachalit back in 2012 or so. It was built using Rails 3.x then migrated to Rails 4.x. While we planned for Rails 5.x upgrade, it never materialized due to lack of involvement from initial developers. Swachalit code base has reached a stage where it is very difficult to maintain due to legacy Rails and other dependencies. To add to that, we are facing challenges related to unknown cloud account dependencies for email, Google SSO, maps and other services. They were provided by volunteers and known to the rest of the team only when they stop working. A complete rewrite of code base and an organized system administration practice, going beyond an individual, is required to maintain Swachalit with the necessary confidence and SLA to meet the requirements of the null Community which has significantly grown over the years.

EOL for Swachalit

We did try to maintain Swachalit using community support but failed to do so. Primarily we failed to build the dev community backing Swachalit development. At this point we feel we are unable to sustain development and maintenance of Swachalit. Due to this, we will migrate Swachalit i.e. null's Event Management platform from in-house developed custom application to an online hosted service or a self-hosted OSS based application

Migration Process

We will follow a migration process that consist of

1. Identify the user personas and use-cases for Swachalit
2. Identify 3rd party services or OSS apps that can meet the use-cases
3. Announce sunset window and cut-over date
4. Data migration to the new service
5. Phase out existing service

Swachalit Use-cases

Swachalit application has the following user personas

1. Admin
2. Chapter Lead
3. Speaker
4. Attendee

Use-cases

Admin

• Create chapter
• Assign registered users as chapter leads for a given chapter
• Send custom email to a single user or to an entire chapter
• Manage custom pages
• System observability

Chapter Lead

• Create event
• Publish event
• View registrations
• Create venue for event hosting

Speaker

• Update event details for which a user is assigned as a speaker

Attendee

• Register for event
• Delete registration for an event
• Edit profile
• Request for session
• Request for being a volunteer

Other

• Notification to speakers (reminders) to update event detail
• Notification to participants
• Google maps integration
• Twitter announcement integration through IFTTT

Things we need to do

• Survey of solution to migrate to
• Notify the community about this migration
• Set feedback window before finalising solution
• Solution POC / evaluation
• Migration plan
• Announce migration completion date & sunset window
• Finalise early adopters (1-2 chapters)
• Get early adopters run a complete event management workflow on the new solution
• Notify community about POC completion
• Migrate existing data from Swachalit
• Shutdown swachalit servers

[abhisek]

We can look at https://lu.ma/ as a hosted service for our requirements

[abhisek]

@anantshri I have documented the migration plan. Can you please announce it to the community and ask for feedback / suggestion for solutions that we should evaluate?

[sanjay7178]

My suggestion would be building a new OSS stack , based on old swachalit db schema , migrations and oauth

OSS Stack proposal

Frontend:

• framework : NextJS
• UI library : shadcn , material ui

Backend:

• NodeJS/Golang
• Supabase Auth Middleware
• Supabase S3
• Redis cache
• ORM (prisma or gorm)
• Supabase Postgres (old mysql to be migrate to postgres )

Devops :
Gitops : Argocd

[sanjay7178]

for the new platform ui flow and motivation of building it we could look at https://fossunited.org/ , fossunited had made their events platform open source as well https://docs.fossunited.org/

My suggestion would be building a OSS new stack , based on old swachalit db schema , migrations and oauth OSS Stack proposal

Frontend:

• framework : NextJS
• UI library : shadcn , material ui

Backend:

• NodeJS/Golang
• Supabase Auth Middleware
• Supabase S3
• Redis cache
• ORM (prisma or gorm)
• Supabase Postgres (old mysql to be migrate to postgres )

Devops : Gitops : Argocd

[devdua]

It would be great if we could consider meetup.com as an option as well. Owing to the problems with Swachalit, we at null Pune have been using meetup.com for advertising meetups and have 800+ members.

meetup.com has a sizeable user base as well already, as a lot of other communities also publish their events there. Getting people to create yet another account on a community platform is a hurdle as most of them are reluctant (this is actual feedback received from community members). I am of the opinion that hosting the null Community on a platform with an existing user base would be less painful compared to building/deploying another self-hosted platform, maintaining it and keeping maintainers around.

[anantshri]

I have my reservations around meetup. last i checked there was no way to export the user list or people who are part of your events / following your page.

additionally meetup if i remember right recently changed some terms and conditions and was asking for money.

if those are not a concern we can think about meetup.

[sethia]

Sign in with Google isn't working, is it a known issue?

[anantshri]

Sign in with Google isn't working, is it a known issue?

To add to that, we are facing challenges related to unknown cloud account dependencies for email, Google SSO, maps and other services. <- please read initial message. its already listed as an issue.

[abhigyantrips]

My suggestion would be building a OSS new stack , based on old swachalit db schema , migrations and oauth
OSS Stack proposal

Frontend:

• framework : NextJS
• UI library : shadcn , material ui

Backend:

• NodeJS/Golang
• Supabase Auth Middleware
• Supabase S3
• Redis cache
• ORM (prisma or gorm)
• Supabase Postgres (old mysql to be migrate to postgres )

Devops :
Gitops : Argocd

open to this idea and ready to contribute to a platform rewrite. will allow us to maintain data integrity from the previous platform as well.

unless we find a popular platform that meets the aforementioned needs.

Replying as: Abhigyan Tripathi (Chapter Lead, null-OWASP MIT-BLR)

[sanjay7178]

My suggestion would be building a OSS new stack , based on old swachalit db schema , migrations and oauth
OSS Stack proposal
Frontend:

• framework : NextJS
• UI library : shadcn , material ui

Backend:

• NodeJS/Golang
• Supabase Auth Middleware
• Supabase S3
• Redis cache
• ORM (prisma or gorm)
• Supabase Postgres (old mysql to be migrate to postgres )

Devops :
Gitops : Argocd

open to this idea and ready to contribute to a platform rewrite. will allow us to maintain data integrity from the previous platform as well.

unless we find a popular platform that meets the aforementioned needs.

Replying as: Abhigyan Tripathi (Chapter Lead, null-OWASP MIT-BLR)

Great , I would love to contribute as well , I need some inputs and acknowledgement from @abhisek and @anantshri before get starting

[anantshri]

More failures occurring it seems the registration process itself is now not working.

[RogueSMG]

My suggestion would be to rather use some already available solutions like lu.ma, meetup or anything else. And not to go in-house or build everything again. Or down the line, as the community and technology evolves, things might end up being in the same position all over again.