autocosts

Automobile costs calculator

This calculator allows users to find the true cost of owning a car. It will normally give them a good estimate of what they really need to spend on car ownership. As car payments and expenses come due throughout the year, it's often difficult to really get a good understanding of total spending on a car. By default, these values are calculated on a monthly basis.

This calculator is and shall be completely anonymous, as it doesn't request nor permanently store, any name, email, cookies, IP address nor any other personal information.

Website

https://autocosts.info
Playground: https://autocosts.info/XX

The list of available countries

https://autocustos.info/list

The translations are in corresponding json files, namely in the folder src/countries/.
The list of available countries is from the file src/countries/list.json

The registered associated domains

https://autocosts.info/domains

How to install

Clone it, install it and build it
git clone https://github.com/jfoclpf/autocosts.git
cd autocosts/ && npm install

The directory that corresponds to the website public HTML is bin/. This directory is built upon installation. For more information run ./build.sh -h. The directories structure tries to respect the directory structure for JavaScript/Node Projects.

How does it work?

Autocosts uses nodejs, expressjs and handlebars to supply a server application that renders a car costs calculator as a webpage loaded by any common browser.

The project is optimized for a web-based version, and for an APP developped in Apache Cordova. The XX stands for the 2-letter ISO country code, and not for the language, since for example United Kingdom and Australia have the same language but different realities concerning the taxes, the terms applied to automobile costs and the units for fuel efficiency. The translations/language files apply therefore only to the selected country. Additional countries are very welcomed.

The project already considers all the units and fuel efficiency cases, different in many countries. The variations for fuel efficiency are l/100km, km/l, mpg(US), mpg(imp) and for distance are km, miles and mil (Nordic mile=10km). More information can be found in the directory src/countries/.

For more information regarding how the costs are calculated, you can check the src/client/core/coreFunctions.js which is based on the 12 items that form the car costs for any given country. Namely they are:

• Standing costs
  • Depreciation
  • Car taxes
  • Insurance
  • Inspection
  • Car finance
• Running costs
  • Fuel
  • Maintenance
  • Repairs and Improvements
  • Parking
  • Tolls
  • Fines
  • Car washes

Aditional services

Autocosts supports the following additional services, which can be turned off or on, in the file commons.js

/*GLOBAL switches, change accordingly*/
const SWITCHES = {
    "uber": true,        /*uses UBER API to give car user comparisions with UBER costs*/
    "social": true,      /*Social media pulgins*/
    "g_charts": true,    /*Google Charts*/
    "g_captcha": true,   /*Google Captcha to avoid spam-bots*/
    "g_analytics": true, /*Google Analytics*/
    "data_base": true,   /*Inserts user input data into a DataBase*/
    "print": true,       /*Print result option, at the end*/
    "pdf": true          /*Download PDF report option*/
};    

Database

Autocosts also supports code such that the user inputs might be stored into a mysql database. The credentials for said databse should be stored in keys/prod/db_credentials.json or keys/work/db_credentials.json, the latter being the test version.

This file db_credentials.json should look like:

{
    "host"      : "*****",
    "user"      : "*****",
    "password"  : "*****",
    "database"  : "*****",
    "db_tables" : {
        "country_specs"    : "country_specs" ,
        "users_insertions" : "users_insertions",
        "monthly_costs_statistics" : "monthly_costs_statistics"
  }
}

With the data from said database, it is also possible to make several statisitcal analysis, namely the average costs for each country, said statistical analysis having outlier removal techniques, such that such outliers do not distort the average.

Uber

Autocosts uses the UBER API, such that at the final repport, the user calculations can be compared with the equivalents costs if the user would use just UBER.

The uber secret token file uber_token.json should be stored in keys/prods/ or keys/work/, the latter being the test version. This file uber_token.json should be like:

{
    "token": "********************************************"
}

Google Charts

Autocosts uses Google Charts to render the final charts, with several analysys. We plan to move to <a href=http://www.chartjs.org/>chartjs.org as it is free, open source and can be used offline.

Google Analytics

You can add your Google Analytics credentials. The file google_analytics.json should be stored in keys/prods/ or keys/work/, the latter being the test version. This file google_analytics.json should be like:

{
    "tracking-id": "UA-*******-*"
}

Google Captcha v2

Autocosts support the Google Captcha v2 API to avoid spam bots from poluting the database. The captcha secret key file recaptcha_key.json should be stored in keys/prods/ or keys/work/, the latter being the test version. This file recaptcha_key.json should be like:

{  
    "secretKey" : "*************************************"
}

PDF

Autocosts also allow the final report to be printed into a PDF report. It makes use of pdfmake npm package.

Android APP

The Android APP can be found in Play Store. It uses Apache Cordova to convert JavaScript built code into APP built files (for example APK files in Android)

Contributions

• Use four spaces for indentations
• Always comment the code in English
• Respect the folders structure

License

GNU GPLv3
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
http://choosealicense.com/licenses/gpl-3.0/