mancala/TODO.md

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

Game bot

See docs/specs/game-bot.

• Play against the bot without a connection (a bot in the TypeScript engine on the device)
• Keep bot games apart once there are statistics or ratings
• Hints or move analysis for players, with the same search
• Rebuild MancalaGame on Position, or use Position to check moves before running them (see Security)
• Tune the levels from real games (games.bot holds each game's level, strength and seed)
• Try the bot on a mobile device; only the type check and the bundle were run

Tutorial

See docs/specs/tutorial.

• Lessons and hints in the mobile app, once it has the new design (it has the rules screen)
• Hints that look ahead, e.g. a warning when a move lets the opponent capture (the bot's search could do it)
• Strategy lessons beyond the rules
• Tutorial progress per account instead of per device
• If the end-of-game rule changes (Game rules below), update RuleEndOfGameText2 in en.ts and tr.ts

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: 1 in the frontend (react-dom/client), 11 in mobile; the frontend has no tsconfig.json, so nothing type-checks it