Aero-offers

This project aims at reviving aero-offers.com - invaluable source of price trends for gliders and other aircrafts, originally developed and maintained by @rthaenert

Development

Project structure (building blocks / deployment units)

• ui - vue.js application. Deployed as Azure Static Web App (for free).
• backend/api - python flask app with few REST endpoints. Deployed as Azure Container App (running 24/7)
• backend/jobs - python scripts triggered periodically. Much more resource-heavy than API, bundled in the same Docker image as api, deployed as Azure Container Job.
  • run_update_offers - scans few portals (e.g. soaring.de) and stores new offers in the database, then assigns manufacturer and model to new (not yet classified) offers stored in the database
  • run_update_fx_rates - updates currency exchange rates from ECB REST api
• db - Azure CosmosDb NoSQL fully managed database (for free; check #135 for decision record).

Deployment

Trunk Based Development and Continuous Deployment is utilized here - all changes pushed/merged to main are automatically deployed to production env. Currently, the project is running in Azure.

TODO

• Scraper: update db offer if price or location (or any other parameter) has changed
• UI: consent banner for GA
• aero-offers.com
• Improve aircraft types structure and introduce 2 levels: glider (e.g Discus 2c 18m) and model (Discus 2cFES 18m) as prices between models sometimes differ significantly
• utilize https://github.com/weglide/GliderList as source of truth for glider types/models
• UI: admin panel for manual (re) classification (or community-based)
• crawler for Facebook Marketplace - do they have an api?
• crawler for https://www.aircraft24.de
• crawler for https://plane-sale.com

Running backend locally without Python

docker compose up --build - starts CosmosDb and Python Flask backend

Prerequisites for local development with hot reloads

• python 3.13+
• docker (compose)
• nodejs

Start CosmosDb emulator in docker (available for debugging via localhost:1234):

docker-compose up cosmosdb

Init python environment

cd backend
./init_dev_env.sh

Start backend api (python app):

cd backend
./start_api.sh

Start UI (vue app):

cd ui
npm run dev

UI has own, detailed README.md file.

Run crawlers/spiders & reclassifier:

cd backend
./run_spiders.sh && ./run_classifier.sh