mancala/TODO.md
Halit Aksoy 0903f61455 docs: describe the Java backend
The backend README, how to run and test it, what is easy to get wrong
with the game loop and the shared data formats, and the deployment note.
The web app was played against it in Chrome: a full game with a
spectator, a reload, a restart mid-game, the replay and a game lost on
time.
2026-10-16 11:53:13 +03:00

6.4 KiB

TODO

Auth

Mobile login with Keycloak (phase 5)

The web app logs in with Keycloak; the mobile app still uses the legacy ?userKey= login.

  • Add a mancala-mobile public client to apps/keycloak/realm/mancala-realm.json (PKCE S256, redirect com.mancala_mobile://callback) and to KEYCLOAK_CLIENT_IDS for the backend
  • Add react-native-app-auth with the redirect scheme set up for Android and iOS
  • Log in as a guest on first launch (guest=true), with offline_access; keep tokens in MMKV
  • Connect with rtmt.connectWebSocket(url, getToken) instead of ?userKey= (apps/mobile/src/App.tsx) and call reauthenticate after refreshing the token
  • Log in / sign up / log out in the app, player names on the game screen (getPlayerDisplayName in core)
  • Decide whether guests may skip the browser tab on first launch (would need a custom grant type in the Keycloak extension)
  • Delete the unused copy of the WebSocket client in apps/mobile/src/rtmt
  • Test on a device

Game history on mobile

The web app has game history (see docs/specs/game-history); the mobile app needs Keycloak login first.

  • Ongoing-game banner, live and popular games, recent games on the home screen
  • Move list and looking back during a live game; replay of finished games

After the mobile release

  • Turn off LEGACY_USERKEY_AUTH once old app versions are no longer in use; this also removes /register

Later

  • Let guests turn their guest user into an account without changing identity (Keycloak required action)
  • Statistics for logged in users (wins, losses), now that games are saved
  • Social logins (Keycloak identity providers)
  • Keycloak email theme in the game's look (password reset emails still use Keycloak's)
  • Login pages follow the system color scheme; they could follow the theme chosen in the app instead
  • Restrict the Keycloak admin console in production

Game history

  • A page with all of a user's games (the home page shows the last 3)
  • Show games of deleted accounts differently, once accounts can be deleted
  • Live game state, previews and spectators assume a single backend instance; share them (e.g. Valkey pub/sub) before running more than one
  • If Valkey is unreachable when the backend starts, live games are not restored until the next restart

Game clock

See docs/specs/game-clock.

  • Other time controls or time added per move; a long move animates on the next player's time
  • Clocks in the home page's live game previews and in the ongoing-game banner
  • Try the mobile clocks on a device; only the type check and the bundle were run

Web redesign

See docs/specs/web-redesign.

  • Bring the new design to the mobile app (themes, board, game screen)
  • A rematch button on the game-over card (the design has one; there is no rematch yet)

Deployment

  • Build the backend and frontend images from the repo root in CI: docker build -f apps/backend/Dockerfile . and docker build -f apps/frontend/Dockerfile .
  • Pass --build-arg KEYCLOAK_URL=https://auth.playmancala.app when building the frontend image
  • Deploy Keycloak (apps/.env with KEYCLOAK_DB_PASSWORD, KEYCLOAK_ADMIN_PASSWORD, KEYCLOAK_HOSTNAME=https://auth.playmancala.app) and reload nginx with the new auth.playmancala.app block
  • Deploy the backend before the web app; the new web app needs token auth on the server
  • The backend is now Java (Quarkus, see docs/specs/quarkus-backend); the compose file passes the database as DATABASE_JDBC_URL/DATABASE_USERNAME/DATABASE_PASSWORD built from the same MANCALA_DB_PASSWORD, so apps/.env needs no change. It reads the Node backend's database and live games, so it can replace it (and be rolled back) without ending games
  • Release the mobile update with the game clock before or with the backend: older app versions do not show the clock and do not handle on_game_end, so a game they lose on time does not end for them
  • Back up the Postgres volume (Keycloak and saved games), e.g. a daily pg_dumpall
  • Set MANCALA_DB_PASSWORD and POSTGRES_PASSWORD in apps/.env on the server; the postgres volume replaces keycloak-db, so Keycloak starts with a fresh database there
  • Last step: publish a new mancala.js to npm (it is at 0.0.2-beta.3 from 2022), so the published engine skips the opponent's store when sowing. The apps do not need it; they use packages/mancala.js through link:

Security

  • Move the Android signing passwords out of apps/mobile/release_android.sh (committed in bb1c750) into ~/.gradle/gradle.properties or environment variables, and consider resetting the upload key
  • Add apps/mobile/mancala-upload-key.jks to .gitignore (only android/app/mancala-upload-key.jks is ignored)
  • Validate moves before running them instead of treating every invalid move as a crash: each one writes a file to crashes/ and is broadcast to the players (GameManager.onGameError, kept as it was in the Node backend)

Game rules

  • Decide who gets the remaining stones when a move empties the opponent's side (e.g. a capture takes their last stones). Now the player whose side is empty always gets the other side's stones (GRClearBoardAtEnd), even when the opponent emptied it; some Mangala rules give them only to a player who emptied their own side. Analyse the rule first, then decide

Bugs

  • PitAnimator.dispose removes a newly bound function, so the theme listener is never removed
  • onGameError broadcasts {} instead of the error (the Java backend sends {} on purpose, as the Node backend did)

Maintenance

  • The web and mobile apps duplicate components and stores; move shared code into packages/core
  • Mixed lockfiles: packages/* and apps/mobile have both yarn.lock and package-lock.json
  • Align TypeScript and Jest versions across packages
  • Tests for MatchMaker; PitAnimator is only tested for the first frame of a move
  • CI that runs the tests (the backend's need a JDK 25 and Docker)
  • The rules exist twice, in packages/mancala.js and in the backend's Java port; a parity test keeps them alike, but every rule change has to be made in both
  • Pre-existing type errors: 4 in the frontend, 11 in mobile; the frontend has no tsconfig.json, so nothing type-checks it