Apache Fineract: A Platform for Microfinance

Fineract is a mature platform with open APIs that provides a reliable, robust, and affordable core banking solution for financial institutions offering services to the world’s 2 billion underbanked and unbanked.

Have a look at the FAQ on our Wiki at apache.org if this README does not answer what you are looking for. Visit our JIRA Dashboard to find issues to work on, see what others are working on, or open new issues.

to start contributing to this project in the online web-based IDE GitPod.io right away! (You may initially have to press F1 to Find Command and run "Java: Start Language Server".) It's of course also possible to contribute with a "traditional" local development environment (see below).

Community

If you are interested in contributing to this project, but perhaps don't quite know how and where to get started, please join our developer mailing list, listen into our conversations, chime into threads, and just send us a "Hello!" introduction email; we're a friendly bunch, and look forward to hearing from you.

Requirements

• Java >= 11 (OpenJDK JVM is tested by our CI on Travis)
• MySQL 5.7

You can run the required version of the database server in a container, instead of having to install it, like this:

docker run --name mysql-5.7 -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mysql -d mysql:5.7

and stop and destroy it like this:

docker rm -f mysql-5.7

Beware that this database container database keeps its state inside the container and not on the host filesystem. It is lost when you destroy (rm) this container. This is typically fine for development. See Caveats: Where to Store Data on the database container documentation re. how to make it persistent instead of ephemeral.

Tomcat v9 is only required if you wish to deploy the Fineract WAR to a separate external servlet container. Note that you do not require to install Tomcat to develop Fineract, or to run it in production if you use the self-contained JAR, which transparently embeds a servlet container using Spring Boot. (Until FINERACT-730, Tomcat 7/8 were also supported, but now Tomcat 9 is required.)

Instructions how to run for local development

Run the following commands:

1. ./gradlew createDB -PdbName=fineract_tenants
2. ./gradlew createDB -PdbName=fineract_default
3. ./gradlew bootRun

Instructions to build the JAR file

1. Clone the repository or download and extract the archive file to your local directory.
2. Run ./gradlew clean bootJar to build a modern cloud native fully self contained JAR file which will be created at build/libs directory.
3. Start it using java -jar build/libs/fineract-provider.jar (does not require external Tomcat)

Instructions to build a WAR file

1. Clone the repository or download and extract the archive file to your local directory.
2. Run ./gradlew clean bootWar to build a traditional WAR file which will be created at build/libs directory.
3. Deploy this WAR to your Tomcat v9 Servlet Container.

We recommend using the JAR instead of the WAR file deployment, because it's much easier.

Instructions to execute Integration Tests

Note that if this is the first time to access MySQL DB, then you may need to reset your password.

Run the following commands, very similarly to how .travis.yml does:

1. ./gradlew createDB -PdbName=fineract_tenants
2. ./gradlew createDB -PdbName=fineract_default
3. ./gradlew clean integrationTest

Instructions to run and debug in Eclipse IDE

It is possible to run Fineract in Eclipse IDE and also to debug Fineract using Eclipse's debugging facilities. To do this, you need to create the Eclipse project files and import the project into an Eclipse workspace:

1. Create Eclipse project files into the Fineract project by running ./gradlew cleanEclipse eclipse
2. Import the fineract-provider project into your Eclipse workspace (File->Import->General->Existing Projects into Workspace, choose root directory fineract/fineract-provider)
3. Do a clean build of the project in Eclipse (Project->Clean...)
4. Run / debug Fineract by right clicking on org.apache.fineract.ServerApplication class and choosing Run As / Debug As -> Java Application. All normal Eclipse debugging features (breakpoints, watchpoints etc) should work as expected.

If you change the project settings (dependencies etc) in Gradle, you should redo step 1 and refresh the project in Eclipse.

You can also use Eclipse Junit support to run tests in Eclipse (Run As->Junit Test)

Finally, modifying source code in Eclipse automatically triggers hot code replace to a running instance, allowing you to immediately test your changes

Instructions to run using Docker and docker-compose

It is possible to do a 'one-touch' installation of Fineract using containers (AKA "Docker"). Fineract now packs the mifos community-app web UI in it's docker deploy. You can now run and test fineract with a GUI directly from the combined docker builds. This includes the database running in a container.

As Prerequisites, you must have docker and docker-compose installed on your machine; see Docker Install and Docker Compose Install.

Alternatively, you can also use Podman (e.g. via dnf install podman-docker), and Podman Compose (e.g. via pip3 install podman-compose) instead of Docker.

Now to run a new Fineract instance you can simply:

1. git clone https://github.com/apache/fineract.git ; cd fineract
2. docker-compose build
3. docker-compose up -d
4. fineract (back-end) is running at https://localhost:8443/fineract-provider/
5. wait for https://localhost:8443/fineract-provider/actuator/health to return {"status":"UP"}
6. you must go to https://localhost:8443 and remember to accept the self-signed SSL certificate of the API once in your browser, otherwise you get a message that is rather misleading from the UI.
7. community-app (UI) is running at http://localhost:9090/?baseApiUrl=https://localhost:8443/fineract-provider&tenantIdentifier=default
8. login using default username mifos and password password

The docker-compose.yml will build the fineract container from the source based on the Dockerfile. You could change that to use the pre-built container image instead of having to re-build it.

https://hub.docker.com/r/apache/fineract has a pre-built container image of this project, built continuously.

You must specify the MySQL tenants database JDBC URL by passing it to the fineract container via environment variables; please consult the docker-compose.yml for exact details how to specify those. (Note that in previous versions, the mysqlserver environment variable used at docker build time instead of at docker run time did something similar; this has changed in FINERACT-773), and the mysqlserver environment variable is now no longer supported.)

Instructions to run on Kubernetes

General Clusters

You can also run Fineract using containers on a Kubernetes cluster. Make sure you set up and connect to your Kubernetes cluster. You can follow this guide to set up a Kubernetes cluster on GKE. Make sure to replace apache-fineract-cn with apache-fineract

Now e.g. from your Google Cloud shell, run the following commands:

1. git clone https://github.com/apache/fineract.git ; cd fineract/kubernetes
2. ./kubectl-startup

To shutdown and reset your Cluster, run:

./kubectl-shutdown

Using Minikube

Alternatively, you can run fineract on a local kubernetes cluster using minikube. As Prerequisites, you must have minikube and kubectl installed on your machine; see Minikube & Kubectl install.

Now to run a new Fineract instance on Minikube you can simply:

1. git clone https://github.com/apache/fineract.git ; cd fineract/kubernetes

2. minikube start

3. ./kubectl-startup.sh

4. minikube service fineract-server --url --https

5. Fineract is now running at the printed URL (note HTTP), which you can check e.g. using:

   http --verify=no --timeout 240 --check-status get $(minikube service fineract-server --url --https)/fineract-provider/actuator/health

To check the status of your containers on your local minikube Kubernetes cluster, run:

minikube dashboard

You can check Fineract logs using:

kubectl logs deployment/fineract-server

To shutdown and reset your cluster, run:

./kubectl-shutdown

We have some open issues in JIRA with Kubernetes related enhancement ideas which you are welcome to contribute to.

Instructions to download Gradle wrapper

The file fineract-provider/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar binary is checked into this projects Git source repository, but won't exist in your copy of the Fineract codebase if you downloaded a released source archive from apache.org. In that case, you need to download it using the commands below:

wget --no-check-certificate -P fineract-provider/gradle/wrapper https://github.com/apache/fineract/raw/develop/fineract-provider/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar

(or)

curl --insecure -L https://github.com/apache/fineract/raw/develop/fineract-provider/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar > fineract-provider/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar

Instructions to run Apache RAT (Release Audit Tool)

1. Extract the archive file to your local directory.
2. Run ./gradlew rat. A report will be generated under build/reports/rat/rat-report.txt

Checkstyle and Spotless

This project enforces its code conventions using checkstyle.xml through Checkstyle and fineract-formatting-preferences.xml through Spotless. They are configured to run automatically during the normal Gradle build, and fail if there are any violations detected. You can run the following command to automatically fix spotless violations:

`./gradlew spotlessApply`

Since some checks are present in both Checkstyle and Spotless, the same command can help you fix some of the Checkstyle violations (but not all, other Checkstyle violations need to fixed manually).

You can also check for Spotless violations (only; but normally don't have to, because the regular build full already includes this anyway):

`./gradlew spotlessCheck`

We recommend that you configure your favourite Java IDE to match those conventions. For Eclipse, you can go to Window > Java > Code Style and import our config/fineractdev-formatter.xml under formatter section and config/fineractdev-cleanup.xml under Clean up section. The same fineractdev-formatter.xml configuration file (that can be used in Eclipse IDE) is also used by Spotless to both check for violations and autoformat code on the CLI. You could also use Checkstyle directly in your IDE (but you don't neccesarily have to, it may just be more convenient for you). For Eclipse, use https://checkstyle.org/eclipse-cs/ and load our checkstyle.xml into it, for IntelliJ you can use CheckStyle-IDEA.

Code Coverage Reports

The project uses Jacoco to measure unit tests code coverage, to generate a report run the following command:

`./gradlew clean build jacocoTestReport`

Generated reports can be found in build/code-coverage directory.

Versions

The latest stable release can be viewed on the develop branch: Latest Release on Develop.

The progress of this project can be viewed here: View change log

License

This project is licensed under Apache License Version 2.0. See https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract/blob/develop/LICENSE.md for reference.

The Connector/J JDBC Driver client library from MariaDB.org, which is licensed under the LGPL, is used in development when running integration tests that use the Flyway library. That JDBC driver is however not included in and distributed with the Fineract product and is not required to use the product. If you are developer and object to using the LGPL licensed Connector/J JDBC driver, simply do not run the integration tests that use the Flyway library. As discussed in LEGAL-462, this project therefore complies with the Apache Software Foundation third-party license policy.

Apache Fineract Platform API

The API for the Fineract-platform (project named 'Apache Fineract') is documented in the API-docs under Full API Matrix and can be viewed here.

If you have your own Fineract instance running, you can find the same documentation under '(your host:port)/fineract-provider/api-docs/apiLive.htm' under your. The Swagger documentation (work in progress) can be accessed under '(your host:port)/fineract-provider/swagger-ui/index.html'

API clients (Web UIs, Mobile, etc.)

• https://github.com/openMF/community-app/ is the "traditional" Reference Client App Web UI for the API offered by this project
• https://github.com/openMF/web-app is the next generation UI rewrite also using this project's API
• https://github.com/openMF/android-client is an Android Mobile App client for this project's API
• https://github.com/openMF has more related proejcts

Online Demos

• fineract.dev always runs the latest version of this code
• demo.mifos.io A demo account is provided for users to experience the functionality of the Community App. Users can use "mifos" for USERNAME and "password" for PASSWORD (without quotation marks).

Developers

Please see https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Contributor%27s+Zone for the developers wiki page.

Please refer to https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Fineract+101 for the first-time contribution to this project.

Please see https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/How-to+articles for technical details to get started.

Please visit our JIRA Dashboard to find issues to work on, see what others are working on, or open new issues.

Video Demonstration

Apache Fineract / Mifos X Demo (November 2016) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h61g9TptMBo

Governance and Policies

Becoming a Committer documents the process through which you can become a committer in this project.

Error Handling Guidelines

• When catching exceptions, either rethrow them, or log them. Either way, include the root cause by using catch (SomeException e) and then either throw AnotherException("..details..", e) or LOG.error("...context...", e).
• Completely empty catch blocks are VERY suspicous! Are you sure that you want to just "swallow" an exception? Really, 100% totally absolutely sure?? ;-) Such "normal exceptions which just happen sometimes but are actually not really errors" are almost always a bad idea, can be a performance issue, and typically are an indication of another problem - e.g. the use of a wrong API which throws an Exception for an expected condition, when really you would want to use another API that instead returns something empty or optional.
• In tests, you'll typically never catch exceptions, but just propagate them, with @Test void testXYZ() throws SomeException, AnotherException..., so that the test fails if the exception happens. Unless you actually really want to test for the occurence of a problem - in that case, use JUnit's Assert.assertThrows() (but not @Test(expected = SomeException.class)).
• Never catch NullPointerException & Co.

Logging Guidelines

• We use SLF4J as our logging API.
• Never, ever, use System.out and System.err or printStackTrace() anywhere, but always LOG.info() or LOG.error() instead.
• Use placeholder (LOG.error("Could not... details: {}", something, exception)) and never String concatenation (LOG.error("Could not... details: " + something, exception))
• Which Log Level is appropriate?
  • LOG.error() should be used to inform an "operator" running Fineract who supervises error logs of an unexpected condition. This includes technical problems with an external "environment" (e.g. can't reach a database), and situations which are likely bugs which need to be fixed in the code. They do NOT include e.g. validation errors for incoming API requests - that is signaled through the API response - and does (should) not be logged as an error. (Note that there is no FATAL level in SLF4J; a "FATAL" event should just be logged as an ERROR.)
  • LOG.warn() should be using sparingly. Make up your mind if it's an error (above) - or not!
  • LOG.info() can be used notably for one-time actions taken during start-up. It should typically NOT be used to print out "regular" application usage information. The default logging configuration always outputs the application INFO logs, and in production under load, there's really no point to constantly spew out lots of information from frequently traversed paths in the code about what's going on. (Metrics are a better way.) LOG.info() can be used freely in tests though.
  • LOG.debug() can be used anywhere in the code to log things that may be useful during investigations of specific problems. They are not shown in the default logging configuration, but can be enabled for troubleshooting. Developers should typically "turn down" most LOG.info() which they used while writing a new feature to "follow along what happens during local testing" to LOG.debug() for production before we merge their PRs.
  • LOG.trace() is not used in Fineract.

Pull Requests

If your PR is failing to pass our CI build due to a test failure, then:

1. Understand if the failure is due to your PR or an unrelated unstable test.
2. If you suspect it is because of a "flaky" test, and not due to a change in your PR, then please do not simply wait for an active maintainer to come and help you, but instead be a proactive contributor to the project - see next steps. Do understand that we may not review PRs that are not green - it is the contributor's (that's you!) responsability to get a proposed PR to pass the build, not primarily the maintainers.
3. Search for the name of the failed test on https://issues.apache.org/jira/, e.g. for AccountingScenarioIntegrationTest you would find FINERACT-899.
4. If you happen to read in such bugs that tests were just recently fixed, or ignored, then rebase your PR to pick up that change.
5. If you find previous comments "proving" that the same test has arbitrarily failed in at least 3 past PRs, then please do yourself raise a small separate new PR proposing to add an @Disabled // TODO FINERACT-123 to the respective unstable test (e.g. #774) with the commit message mentioning said JIRA, as always. (Please do NOT just @Disabled any existing tests mixed in as part of your larger PR.)
6. If there is no existing JIRA for the test, then first please evaluate whether the failure couldn't be a (perhaps strange) impact of the change you are proposing after all. If it's not, then please raise a new JIRA to document the suspected Flaky Test, and link it to FINERACT-850. This will allow the next person coming along hitting the same test failure to easily find it, and eventually propose to ignore the unstable test.
7. Then (only) Close and Reopen your PR, which will cause a new build, to see if it passes.
8. Of course, we very much appreciate you then jumping onto any such bugs and helping us figure out how to fix all ignored tests!

Pull Request Size Limit documents that we cannot accept huge "code dump" Pull Requests, with some related suggestions.

Guideline for new Feature commits involving Refactoring: If you are submitting PR for a new Feature, and it involves refactoring, try to differentiate "new Feature code" with "Refactored" by placing them in different commits. This helps review to review your code faster.

We have an automated Bot which marks pull requests as "stale" after a while, and ultimately automatically closes them.

Dependency Upgrades

This project uses a number of 3rd-party libraries, and this section provides some guidance for their updates. We have set-up Renovate's bot to automatically raise Pull Requests for our review when new dependencies are available FINERACT-962.

Upgrades sometimes require package name changes. Changed code should ideally have test coverage.

Our ClasspathHellDuplicatesCheckRuleTest detects classes that appear in more than 1 JAR. If a version bump in build.gradle causes changes in transitives dependencies, then you may have to add related exclude to our dependencies.gradle. Running ./gradlew dependencies helps to understand what is required.

Releasing

How to Release Apache Fineract documents the process how we make the source code that is available here in this Git repository into a binary release ZIP available on http://fineract.apache.org.

More Information

More details of the project can be found at https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT.