Mobile app setup

The student app is in hostelhive-mobileapp and built with Flutter. It’s where students keep their QR pass, ask for late access, say they’re going home, file complaints and read their inbox. You’ll need Flutter 3.47 or newer on the stable channel (Dart 3.13+), plus Android Studio or Xcode. The app supports Android 10 and later.

1. Clone it and switch to develop.

   git clone https://github.com/Hostel-Hive/hostelhive-mobileapp.git
   cd hostelhive-mobileapp
   git checkout develop

2. Create .env from the example and fill it in.

   cp .env.example .env

   API_BASE_URL=https://YOUR_API_HOST/api/v1
   FIREBASE_API_KEY=your-firebase-web-api-key

   Unlike the web app, this URL includes /api/v1. From the Android emulator, a backend on your own machine is at http://10.0.2.2:18080/api/v1.

3. Run it.

   flutter pub get
   flutter run --dart-define-from-file=.env

Note

Leave both values in .env empty and the app runs on built-in demo data. It’s a quick way to click through the screens without a backend.

Students sign in with the email address they were invited with. The first time, they finish setting up from the link in that email.

Push notifications need Firebase Cloud Messaging configured in the app and FCM_ENABLED=true on the backend. The backend’s push notification guide covers both sides.

Checks

These run in GitHub Actions on every push, and it’s worth running them before you push:

dart format --set-exit-if-changed .
flutter analyze
flutter test --coverage
flutter build apk --debug

The code is organised as lib/core for theme, routing and shared widgets, lib/data for models and repositories, and lib/features with one folder per feature (auth, passes, complaints, inbox, qr, profile, home). Tests are in test/.