Candidata

A Ruby on Rails 8 application that integrates with Airtable for user authentication and dynamic form management.

Overview

This application allows users to:

• Login using email/password credentials stored in an Airtable base
• View assigned records fetched from Airtable based on the logged-in user's email
• Submit form data that gets pushed back to Airtable via API

Tech Stack

• Ruby on Rails 8
• PostgreSQL - Database
• Tailwind CSS - Styling
• Airtable API - External data source for authentication and records

Setup

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.1+
• PostgreSQL
• Airtable account with API access

Installation

# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Create database
bin/rails db:create db:migrate

# Start the development server
bin/dev

Environment Variables

You'll need to configure the following environment variables for Airtable integration:

AIRTABLE_API_KEY=your_api_key
AIRTABLE_BASE_ID=your_base_id
AIRTABLE_USERS_TABLE=Users
AIRTABLE_RECORDS_TABLE=Records

Airtable Data Import

To import existing candidate data from Airtable:

# Set environment variables
export AIRTABLE_API_KEY='your_api_key'
export AIRTABLE_BASE_ID='your_base_id'

# Test connection
bin/rails import:test_airtable

# List available tables
bin/rails import:list_tables

# Import all data
bin/rails import:airtable

The import service will:

1. Import political parties
2. Import people/candidates
3. Import districts and offices
4. Import ballots and contests
5. Import candidate relationships
6. Import officeholder records

Documentation

• 2026 Candidate Management Plan - Implementation plan for admin/researcher workflow
• Temp Data Analysis Report - Analysis of staging tables with 2024 election data
• Rails 8 Upgrade - Rails 7.2 → 8.0 upgrade process and compatibility changes

Development

# Run the server with Tailwind CSS watching
bin/dev

Project Structure

• app/controllers/home_controller.rb - Handles login and main page
• app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb - Session management (to be added)
• app/services/airtable_service.rb - Airtable API integration (to be added)

Deployment

Heroku

# Create Heroku app
heroku create candidata

# Add PostgreSQL
heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:essential-0

# Set environment variables
heroku config:set AIRTABLE_API_KEY=your_api_key
heroku config:set AIRTABLE_BASE_ID=your_base_id

# Deploy
git push heroku main

# Run migrations
heroku run rails db:migrate

Custom Domain

# Add domain to Heroku
heroku domains:add your-domain.com

# Configure DNS with your registrar:
# CNAME record pointing to your-app.herokuapp.com