Bloc Party

A cross-platform mobile app that helps neighbors share items and build community — built with Flutter and Firebase.

Overview

Bloc Party lets users within a neighborhood lend and borrow items, schedule events, and communicate with each other in real time. The goal is to reduce waste and strengthen local community by making it easy to share what you have with the people around you.

Features

• Item Sharing — Post items available for lending with photos, descriptions, portability tags, and availability status
• Neighborhood Scoping — Users join a neighborhood (via Google Maps address lookup) and only see items from their neighbors
• Real-Time Messaging — Direct and group chat between neighbors powered by Firebase Firestore
• Event Scheduling — Shared neighborhood calendar for coordinating pickups and community events
• Authentication Flow — Email/password sign-up with email verification, profile creation, and persistent sessions
• Push Notifications — Firebase Cloud Messaging for new messages and item updates
• Dark/Light Theme — Dynamic theme switching loaded from JSON asset files

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Framework	Flutter 3 (Dart)
Backend & Database	Firebase (Firestore, Storage, Auth, Cloud Messaging)
Navigation	GoRouter with Firebase Auth stream guard
State Management	Provider (ChangeNotifier)
Maps & Location	Google Maps Flutter + Places Autocomplete
Calendar	Syncfusion Flutter Calendar

Architecture

The app follows an MVC-like structure with a clear separation between data models, views, and navigation logic.

lib/
├── flutter_backend/    # Firebase init, GoRouter setup
├── model/              # Data models + business logic (one file per feature)
└── view/               # Screens and widgets (one file per screen)
    ├── login_views/
    ├── chat_view/
    ├── navigation/
    └── widgets/

• Models own Firestore serialization and business logic. The Item model supports defensive parsing for all Firestore fields.
• GoRouter listens to FirebaseAuth state via GoRouterRefreshStream to automatically redirect users on login/logout.
• Provider manages theme state globally via ThemeProvider.

Getting Started

Prerequisites: Flutter SDK, Firebase CLI, a Firebase project with Firestore/Auth/Storage enabled.

# Install dependencies
flutter pub get

# Run the app
flutter run

# Run tests
flutter test

# Static analysis
flutter analyze

Testing

Unit tests cover core model logic and business rules. Integration tests cover key user flows.

flutter test                          # all unit tests
flutter test test/item_model_test.dart  # single file
flutter test integration_test/app_test.dart  # integration tests

Team

Built by a team of 5 CS students at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

I owned the home screen and item data layer (Firestore item model, live feed, neighborhood filtering, search, image system), built the JSON-driven theme system with runtime switching via Provider, and implemented the public/private item description views.

Privacy Policy

See PRIVACY_POLICY.md for data collection and usage details. Contact: oiendjack@gmail.com