This week, we cleaned up the source code for our user authentication service, including adding additional software tests and making it easier to run locally for others who want to use it.
For previous site improvements, check out all of MuckRock’s release notes, and if you’d like to get a list of site improvements every Tuesday - along with ways to help contribute to the site’s development yourself - subscribe to our developer newsletter here.
Cleaned up user authentication service
Squarelet is the internal name for our new user authentication service. Last week we made it easier to get in running locally and added tests to reduce errors and bugs going forward. Just like all of our other work, Squarelet is open source. Long term, we have a lot of improvements planned, so if you’re interested in using it as a base for your own authentication system — or in letting MuckRock users be able to log in to your journalism-centric service with their existing accounts — get in touch.
Fixed agency upload links
When we submit requests via email, we also generate a link that allows agencies to upload responsive documents directly and update the request status via a web interface. Unfortunately, when we added the new user authentication system, we created a bug that blocked agencies from getting new links (for security reasons, each link is only usable one time). This bug is now fixed.
Come hack on MuckRock
If you’re the kind of person who gets excited about building cool, impactful open source software, you might also be interested in our Tuesday meetups in Cambridge, Massachusetts or our other open source efforts.
There are a number of ways to help us continue to improve the core MuckRock site experience. We have a project and a weekly newsletter, “Release Notes,” that highlights everything we’re working on. Register to get a summary of site updates each week and details on open issues you can help with.
Check out some of our issues labeled “help wanted” for ideas on where’s good to start, or just pop into our Slack’s #Developers channel.
Subscribers to the weekly newsletter get exclusive data sets, FOIA-related scripts, and other transparency hacker tidbits exclusively for subscribers. You can subscribe to the newsletter at the top or bottom of this page.
If you spot a bug or have a feature request, you can also help by opening an issue on GitHub.
If you do, please search open issues first to make sure it hasn’t already been reported. If it has been reported previously, please leave an additional comment letting us know it’s an issue for you, particularly if you can provide more details about when it crops up or what you think is causing the problem.
In addition to the new newsletter, we have a developer channel on the MuckRock Slack.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
