tailfin

Tailfin is a digital flight logbook designed to be hosted on a personal server, computer, or cloud solution. This is the API segment and can be run independently. It is meant to be a base for future applications, both web and mobile.

I created this because I was disappointed with the options available for digital logbooks. The one provided by ForeFlight is likely most commonly used, but my proclivity towards self-hosting drove me to seek out another solution. Since I could not find any ready-made self-hosted logbooks, I decided to make my own.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

python 3.11+
mongodb 7.0.4

Installation

Clone the repo

$ git clone https://git.github.com/azpsen/tailfin-api.git
$ cd tailfin-api

(Optional) Create and activate virtual environment

$ python -m venv tailfin-env
$ source tailfin-env/bin/activate

Install python requirements

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Configure the database connection

The default configuration assumes a running instance of MongoDB on localhost:27017, secured with username and password tailfin-api and tailfin-api-password. This can (and should!) be changed by modifying .env, as detailed in Configuration. Note that the MongoDB instance must be set up with proper authentication before starting the server. I hope to eventually release a docker image that will simplify this whole process.

Start the server

$ python app.py

Configuration

To configure Tailfin, modify the .env file. Some of these options should be changed before running the server. All available options are detailed below:

DB_URI: Address of MongoDB instance. Default: localhost
DB_PORT: Port of MongoDB instance. Default: 27017
DB_NAME: Name of the database to be used by Tailfin. Default: tailfin

DB_USER: Username for MongoDB authentication. Default: tailfin-api
DB_PWD: Password for MongoDB authentication. Default: tailfin-api-password

REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES: Duration in minutes to keep refresh token active before invalidating it. Default: 10080 (7 days)
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES: Duration in minutes to keep access token active before invalidating it. Default: 30

JWT_ALGORITHM: Encryption algorithm to use for access and refresh tokens. Default: HS256
JWT_SECRET_KEY: Secret key used to encrypt and decrypt access tokens. Default: please-change-me
JWT_REFRESH_SECRET_KEY: Secret key used to encrypt and decrypt refresh tokens. Default: change-me-i-beg-of-you

TAILFIN_ADMIN_USERNAME: Username of the default admin user that is created on startup if no admin users exist. Default: admin
TAILFIN_ADMIN_PASSWORD: Password of the default admin user that is created on startup if no admin users exist. Default: change-me-now

TAILFIN_PORT: Port to run the local Tailfin API server on. Default: 8081

Usage

Once the server is running, full API documentation is available at localhost:8081/docs

Roadmap

Multi-user authentication
Basic flight logging CRUD endpoints
Implement JWT refresh tokens
Attach photos to log entries
PDF Export
Import from other log applications
Integrate database of airports and waypoints that can be queried to find nearest
GPS track recording

README.md

Tailfin