if-tools / briefings

A website that allows you to create flight briefings for quick and organized flight planning.

Briefings

A website that allows you to create flight briefings for quick and organized flight planning.

Features

• Create flight briefings that contain the minimum info needed for an Infinite Flight flight. Share them with other people for easier group flying, or plan your future flights by keeping a list of your briefings.
• Attach any images to your briefings. These can be aeronautical charts, screenshots or any other pictures needed for your flight.
• Include airport METARs in your briefings. They are fetched each time you load a briefing, so they are always up-to-date.
• Edit your briefings. Add any additional info after creating a briefing in case you've missed it during creation, or edit the flight info to keep the briefing up-to-date.
• Search created briefings. Find your next destination by searching briefings created by other users.
• Make your briefings private and hide them from search, or keep them public for other users to see.
• See your last viewed and created briefings on the main page.

Please open an issue if you'd like to see more features added!

Building

IF-Tools Briefings is built with ASP.NET Core 8.0 and Blazor. It uses MongoDB as the database provider and S3 for attachment storage. Follow these steps to build and run a local copy of the app:

1. Clone this repository using git clone.
2. Go to the project folder (IF-Tools Briefings).
3. Create a .env file based on the provided .env.example according to your MongoDB and S3 configurations.

If you want to use MongoDB Atlas, you only need to specify your connection string in MONGO_DB_CONN_STRING, other fields can be left blank.

Docker

Instructions:

1. Build the image and run the app using

   $ docker-compose up --build

2. IF-Tools Briefings will now be accessible at localhost:6080. If MONGO_DB_CONN_STRING is not set, it will use a local MongoDB instance provided by the mongodb container.

Native

Requirements:

• .NET 8.0

Instructions:

1. Build and run the app using

   $ dotnet run

2. (Optional) Run the local MongoDB environment using

   $ docker-compose up -d mongodb

   MongoDB will now be running at localhost:27017, user: admin, password: admin, database: briefings.

Note: For the Get Flight Plan from IF feature to work, you must have IF-Tools running on the address specified by the IF_TOOLS_ADDRESS env var (default: http://localhost:5001).

Contributing

Fork the develop branch of this repo to get started, follow the above instructions to build the app, and then open a new Pull Request when you've made your desired changes (don't forget to describe them). Thanks for your help!

Credits

IF-Tools Briefings uses FilePond for file uploads and MagnificPopup for image galleries.

briefings's Issues

[Feature] Better input format validation/correction for some fields

Add additional input formatting for the following fields:

• Flight Level: Maintain a three-number format for consistency. (i.e. 50 -> 050)
• Cruise Speed: Divide any number above 4 by 100 in the Mach mode (i.e. 5 -> 0.05, 30 -> 0.30, 152 -> 1.52). With that logic, it would also be necessary to deny any numbers above 400.

[Feature] Add cruise speed Mach/TAS modes switch

Add a UI switch (button, select etc.) near the Cruise Speed field to let the user decide what type of cruise speed their briefing should specify. This would also require a new column in the Briefings table.

Edit: Actually, on a second thought, the new column can be avoided. The speed value can be checked on the View Briefing page and, if it’s higher than 4, display it in TAS rather than in Mach.

[Feature] Display the dates of creation and the last edit on the briefing page

That one's pretty self-explanatory.

[Feature] Add help tooltips for the input fields (where applicable)

Add a help icon with a tooltip near the input fields that need a concise description.

[Feature] Make the Enter key submit an open form

Implement the onkeypress event for input boxes located in smaller input modals (e.g. the authentication modal, the Get FPL from IF modal) for better keyboard interaction.