Trailkeep

A simple hiking log app; the companion source code for the "API Design for Mobile Engineers" course. Users log hikes: trail name, distance, date, and notes.

This repo has two halves:

• trailkeep_backend/ — a Dart Shelf + Postgres API
• trailkeep/ — the Flutter client

Each has its own README with setup steps and a table mapping course lessons to the exact files that demonstrate them.

Demo

A look at the app:

List of hikes	Hike detail

Quick start

# 1. Backend
cd trailkeep_backend
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d
psql postgresql://trailkeep:trailkeep@localhost:5432/trailkeep -f lib/db/schema.sql
dart pub get
dart run bin/server.dart

# 2. Frontend (in a separate terminal)
cd trailkeep
flutter pub get
flutter run

What this app is for

Every lesson in the course references Trailkeep as its running example. This code isn't meant to be a production-ready app; a few things are deliberately simplified for teaching clarity:

• Token signing uses HMAC-SHA256 directly rather than a full JWT library.
• The in-memory cache only covers the first page of hikes.
• There's no offline/persisted storage layer (that's flagged in Lesson 7 as a natural next topic, not covered here).
• Here are examples of persisted storage solutions you can use:
  • Persisted storage solutions (YouTube playlist)

If you're following the course, the READMEs in trailkeep_backend/ and trailkeep/ each have a table linking specific files back to the lesson that introduces them.