PawPrints 2.0

Student Government President Ashley Carrington and Vice President Tyler Pierce (2014-2015) sought to improve engagement of RIT Students through a Petition site. The site creates a place for the RIT community to converse on important issues.

PawPrints 2.0 is a modernized rebuild of that platform, improving on the original with better feature additions, maintainability, testing, and overall design.

Features

• Create, browse, and sign petitions
• Track petition status through its lifecycle (Active → Charged → Responded / Expired)
• Committee integration and filtering
• Role-based access control and admin management
• Image/media uploads via S3-compatible storage
• SAML 2.0 authentication (RIT Shibboleth)

Architecture

Component	Technology	Default Port
Frontend	Next.js 16 / TypeScript	3000
Backend	FastAPI / Python 3.11+	8000
Database	PostgreSQL	5432
Storage	MinIO (S3-compatible)	9000 / 9001
pgAdmin	pgAdmin 4	8080

For detailed architecture documentation, refer to the project wiki.

Prerequisites

Recommended (Docker): Docker and Docker Compose

Manual setup: Node.js 18+, Python 3.11+, PostgreSQL, MinIO

Environment Setup

Copy the example env files and fill in your values:

cp backend/.env.example backend/.env
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env.local

Key backend variables (backend/.env)

Variable	Description
MODE	DEV or PROD
POSTGRES_DB / POSTGRES_USER / POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Database credentials
POSTGRES_HOST	postgres for Docker, localhost for manual
JWT_SECRET / SECRET_KEY	Secure random strings for token signing
MINIO_ROOT_USER / MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD	MinIO credentials
FRONTEND_URL	URL of the frontend (e.g. http://localhost:3000)
DEV_USERNAME	Username used in DEV mode to bypass SAML auth
ENTRY_POINT / IDP_METADATA_PATH	SAML IdP configuration (production only)

Key frontend variables (frontend/.env.local)

Variable	Description
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL	Backend URL (e.g. http://localhost:8000)
NEXT_PUBLIC_ALWAYS_LOGGED_IN	Set true in dev to skip auth
APP_COOKIE	Cookie name (must match AUTH_COOKIE_NAME in backend)

Running with Docker Compose (Recommended)

cd backend
docker compose up

This starts the backend, frontend, PostgreSQL, MinIO, and pgAdmin together. The frontend will be available at http://localhost:3000.

Running Manually

Backend

cd backend
uv sync --all-groups       # install dependencies
uvicorn pawprints.main:app --reload --port 8001

API docs (DEV mode only): http://localhost:8001/docs

Frontend

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

App available at http://localhost:3000.

Authentication (SAML)

In DEV mode, SAML is bypassed — set DEV_USERNAME in backend/.env to the username you want to log in as, and NEXT_PUBLIC_ALWAYS_LOGGED_IN=true in the frontend env.

For production, SAML certificates and IdP metadata are required. See backend/README.md for certificate generation instructions.

Useful Commands

Backend

make fmt      # format code (ruff + black)
make lint     # lint with ruff
make test     # run test suite
make check    # run all pre-commit checks

Frontend

npm run dev     # development server
npm run build   # production build
npm run lint    # lint