DriverVault/Phone App

DriverVault — Phone App (Flutter)

A Flutter client for the DriverVault maintenance tracker. Talks only to the API Server (same contract and auth as the web app — a PocketBase token relayed by the server, not a JWT the server mints). At full feature parity with the web app.

Project name drivervault_phone, package id com.drivervault.phoneapp. Android is the supported target — the older Flutter-web build path is deprecated.

Features

Once signed in, RootShell hosts the app behind a persistent bottom navigation bar — Garage, Charging, Settings, and Users for admins — in an IndexedStack, so each section keeps its state as you switch tabs.

• Login — email/password against /api/auth/login, password show/hide, and a collapsible Server settings section holding the address of the server the form signs into — plus the way back to the others once more than one has been added (see More than one server).

• Biometric / face sign-in + app lock — see the dedicated section below.

• Garage (dashboard) — car list with next-due status badges (date + km, worst-of), a "shared" chip on cars owned by someone else, pull-to-refresh and an Add car FAB. The header carries the server picker (see below), the theme toggle and log out.

• Car detail — all spec fields (incl. VIN and transmission / differential / brake / coolant specs), a share sheet (owner only), quick odometer update, edit car, and delete car (type-to-confirm; cascades). Actions are gated by the caller's access level (read-only vs write vs owner).

  Which tabs a car shows, and in what order, belongs to the car — the same arrangement the web app reads, so everyone it is shared with sees the same page. Edit it under the tune icon: switch tabs, Information rows, Service history columns and the parts a service can change on or off, and drag any of the first three lists by its handle to reorder it. (The parts have no order — they are a checkbox list inside one column, and their position says nothing a tab's or a column's does.) (The web rearranges by dragging the tab bar and the column headings themselves; on a touch screen those gestures belong to the tab bar and the scroll, so every arrangement is made in the picker instead.) Two things cannot be switched off: Information — a page with no tabs left would be a dead end — and the service Date, since a history with the day taken out stops being one. Both can still be moved. The tabs, in their default order:

  • Connected service — everything the manufacturer's own app knows about this car, read live under your account: headline readings (odometer, fuel or battery, range, charging state, position), the vehicle record, and one card per capability the plugin exposes, rendered from the server's flattened key/value pairs so a provider adding a field surfaces it without an app change. Offers to take the provider's odometer when it is ahead of the stored one. A car with no link yet gets a connect card instead, and the tab is hidden entirely for a user with no manufacturer account connected. Because the read runs under your own credentials, a car shared from someone else shows data here only if that vehicle is on your account too — it says so rather than failing.
  • Service history — date/odometer plus which parts were changed, with the next-due date/km derived by the server. The web lays those out as table columns; a phone has no width for a seven-column table, so a card renders the same columns as pieces — consecutive short ones share a wrapping line, and the parts, the notes and the file each take a line of their own. It reads the car's own hidden set and order, so a column switched off on either app is off on both, and the arrangement decides the grouping: move Notes between Km and Next date and the short columns split around it. Every part a service can have changed shares the one parts column — they are a growing list, and a column apiece would widen the web's table without end — and both that column and the form's Changed parts section come from lib/service_parts.dart, the twin of the web's lib/serviceParts.js. Which of them this car records is the car's own choice as well: a part switched off leaves the form's checkboxes and the cards' chips together, and nothing is written to the records, so switching it back on brings the old chips back.
  • Technical check history — the mandatory roadworthiness inspections (przegląd techniczny, MOT, TÜV). Result, cost, station, and the certificate's valid-until, which overrides the car's interval when present. A failed check derives no next date.
  • Maintenance — workshop visits and repairs outside the routine schedule: type/status, workshop, parts used, labour + parts cost, invoice number and a warranty-until badge.
  • Fuel — refills with a summary panel (average / best / worst consumption, cost per km, price per litre). Consumption is measured between full tanks, so partial fills roll into the next full one and a flagged missed fill leaves its window uncomputed rather than reporting a fictional figure.
  • Charging cost — charges with a summary panel (average / best / worst kWh/100km, cost per km, price per kWh). The electric twin of Fuel, and derived the same way: consumption is measured between full charges, so a top-up rolls into the next full one. Distinct from the Charging section in the bottom bar, which is the charger network and OCPP control.
  • Documents — insurance, registration, road tax and the rest, with a renewal badge driven by the server's expiry assessment.
  • Parts catalog — the per-car parts list.
  • Reminders — date- and/or odometer-triggered, one-off or recurring, with a Mark done action. Reminders the server derived from a document or service record are shown read-only.

• Attachments — one optional file per service record, technical check, workshop visit, refill, charge, document and part (PDF or image, up to 10MB). Picked with file_picker, fetched back through the API Server — never a public URL — and opened with the phone's own viewer via open_filex.

• Charging — mirrors the web Charging.vue, split into two tabs. Public is a discovery map with a demo session and nearby stations: presentational placeholders, because there is no public-charging API yet (same as the web). Home is not a placeholder. It lists the chargers you own — imported from a service you connected, the same move the garage makes for a car — and above them four cards about the one you picked: control (start/stop, a current limit, boost or reset depending on the transport), connection (which charger, and either its serial or its address on your network), readings (everything the charger reports over Modbus — per-phase power, its settings, what it is, and any alarm), and information (everything the record holds, with the service's live view of whether it is reachable). Control needs a mode picked under Settings → Integrations — Modbus TCP over the local network, or Own/Proxy CSMS over OCPP — but the information card stands without one. Each card folds away, remembered per device; the tabs and the cards rearrange from the ⇅ button in the app bar, and that arrangement is saved on your profile, so it follows the account the way the garage order does.

• Settings — account (name / email verification / password), appearance (theme + dark mode, language, region, date format, currency, font size), profile (avatar via image_picker, bio), integrations (Toyota, Anker Solix), Security (biometric toggle), Organization (create your own — which makes you its admin — or rename/delete the one you administer), data export/import, and the account-deletion state machine. Export writes the account JSON into the app's own documents directory and offers to open it; import picks a previously exported file and always creates new records, so it asks first, with the number of cars the file actually holds. Auth relays PocketBase's own stateless tokens, so there is no per-device session list to show or revoke.

• Users (admin) — user management tab (list / create / role / reset password / delete), shown only for the admin role. A blocked control says why rather than only greying out: long-press a locked role picker, and the overflow menu carries the reason under the action. Superadmins also choose which organization a new account lands in (or none at all); an admin gets no picker, because the server puts their members in their own organization regardless.

• Android Auto — the garage on the car's own screen, read-only: which car is overdue, and what it has coming. See In the car below.

Sharing/ownership: Car.access drives isOwner / canWrite / isReadOnly getters that gate the UI, mirroring the server's access checks.

Language, region & currency

Language and region are two pickers over the one stored BCP-47 tag (en-US), so the pair can be mixed — English in Poland, say. Currency is display-only: nothing is converted, so changing it reinterprets existing amounts rather than recalculating them. All three lists mirror the API's (validCurrencies and the locale pattern in internal/api/me.go), with two deliberate differences from the web app:

• Luxembourgish (lb) and Romansh (rm) are not offered. intl ships no date/number symbols for them and throws rather than falling back, which would take out every date on screen. The browser has full ICU data behind it and has no such limit, so the web app can list them.
• Labels are hand-kept (endonyms for languages, English for regions and currencies) because Dart has no Intl.DisplayNames.

Because the server only validates a locale's shape (^[a-z]{2}-[A-Z]{2}$), a tag the phone cannot render can still arrive from the web. format.dart resolves through a supported-language check and falls back to en-US instead of throwing; test/models_format_test.dart covers it.

Every screen reads its text from the language files, and flutter test fails if a key exists in English but not in Polish or Danish. See TRANSLATIONS.md.

Biometric / face sign-in & app lock

Fingerprint and face-recognition sign-in via local_auth, with credentials kept in Android Keystore–backed secure storage (flutter_secure_storage).

• After a successful password login the app offers to enable biometric login; the entered (known-good) credentials are stored securely.
• The login screen then shows "Sign in with face recognition / fingerprint" buttons (labels reflect the enrolled biometric kinds) and auto-prompts once. On success the stored credentials are replayed against the normal login API, so each biometric sign-in mints a fresh session. Stale credentials (e.g. after a password change) auto-disable biometric login.
• App lock — the token persists, so a valid session normally restores silently. When biometric login is enabled the app instead starts locked (and re-locks when backgrounded) and shows a lock screen requiring a biometric unlock. A 30-second grace period means quick app-switches don't re-lock; a full app close (process kill) always locks on next launch. "Use password instead" on the lock screen logs out and returns to the login form.
• Manage it under Settings → Security (enabling re-confirms the password).

Android host requirements (already configured, don't revert): MainActivity extends FlutterFragmentActivity (required by local_auth), and AndroidManifest.xml declares android.permission.USE_BIOMETRIC.

More than one server

Two sites, two full DriverVault stacks — and one app. The server picker is the first button in the Garage header: it names the server you are reading right now, and switches between them in a tap. With only one server known there is nothing to pick between, so it goes straight to adding the second.

• The home server is the address this build ships with (kDefaultApiBase, overridable per-device from the login screen's Server settings). It is always in the list and can't be removed.
• Any other server is added by address — https://garage.example.com; the /api is appended for you if you leave the path off — and has to be reachable from wherever the phone is.
• A session per server. Each server is its own PocketBase with its own users, so a token can't be carried across: you sign into each one once, and after that switching needs no password. Sessions live in SharedPreferences under cc_session_<id>, the list under cc_servers, the active one under cc_active_server.
• Switching rebuilds the shell, because record ids belong to the server that issued them — the garage, the charging page and the settings all re-read from the one now active, and its owner's appearance prefs come with it.
• An expiring remote session doesn't sign you out of the app: that server's token is dropped, the app falls back to the home server, and the entry stays in the list to sign into again. Only Log out clears every server at once.

Upgrading from a single-server build carries what was there onto the home entry — the saved session (cc_token / cc_user) and the address it was pointed at (cc_server_url) — so nobody is signed out by the update.

In the car — Android Auto

The same APK is an Android Auto app. Plug the phone in and DriverVault is on the head unit: a garage list, one row per car with its due badge under the name, and a tap opens what that car has coming — the odometer, the next service, and the reminders the server holds for it, stored and auto-derived alike.

There is no Flutter engine on a head unit. The car screens are Car App Library templates the host draws itself, written in Kotlin under android/app/src/main/kotlin/com/drivervault/phoneapp/car/, and they take three things from the phone app rather than growing their own:

• The session. VaultStore reads what the phone has already signed in with — the active server's base URL and its token — out of shared_preferences' own store, which both halves of the app share. Switch server on the phone and the car reads the new one; there is nothing to keep in step. A head unit is the last place to type a password, so if nothing is signed in the car says so and points at the phone. The one key added for this is cc_active_base, the resolved base URL: an untouched home entry carries no address of its own, its base being kDefaultApiBase — a compile-time define nothing outside Dart can read.
• The words. CarStrings reads the same assets/i18n/{lang}.json files, by the same dot-path keys, in the language the account chose. A due badge on the head unit is the string lib/format.dart puts on the phone, not a second translation of it. Only four keys are the car's own (carApp.*): what to say when nobody is signed in, when the token has been refused, when the server can't be reached, and the Refresh button.
• The figures. CarFormat is the twin of lib/format.dart: same date format and number grouping from the account's settings, same worst-of-date-and-km service badge, same wording for a reminder's status.

Two things are deliberately unlike the phone:

• It only reads. No car is edited, no odometer updated, no reminder marked done. A screen you cannot type into is a poor place to edit a car and a driver is a poor person to ask, so VaultApi has no write in it to reach for by accident.
• Worst first. The host shows only the first few rows of any list, so the garage is sorted by badge rather than kept in the phone's order — the car this list exists to mention is the overdue one, not whichever was added first.

One thing to know before turning it on: the app lock does not reach the head unit. Biometric login keeps the phone's own UI behind a fingerprint (see above), but that flag lives in memory and the credentials behind it in encrypted storage, neither of which the car service can read — and a head unit has no fingerprint reader to satisfy it with anyway. So a phone that is paired to a car shows the garage there, read-only, whether or not the phone itself is locked. Everything on those screens is maintenance data, and the phone still has to be the one plugged in, but it is the one place the lock stops short.

Running it on your own car:

• The service is declared under androidx.car.app.category.IOT. It is the closest of the categories the library defines — DriverVault is a garage, not a map, a media player or a parking service — and a Play Store submission would be reviewed against it. This build is sideloaded, so what matters instead is the next line.
• Android Auto refuses apps it did not get from the Play Store until you tell it otherwise: in the Android Auto settings on the phone, tap the version ten times to unlock Developer settings, then turn on Unknown sources.
• To try it without a car, run Google's Desktop Head Unit. A debug build accepts any host so the DHU can connect; a release build only accepts the signed hosts the library ships an allowlist for.

Configure the API endpoint

The app talks to kDefaultApiBase (see lib/config.dart), default http://localhost:8080/api. Override at build time with --dart-define, or at runtime from the login screen's Server settings, which edits the address of the active server — on a fresh install, the home one (persisted in cc_servers).

Run & build

flutter pub get

# run on a connected device against a LAN server
flutter run -d <device> --dart-define=API_BASE=http://10.2.1.101:8080/api

# build a debug APK for a real phone on the LAN
flutter build apk --debug --dart-define=API_BASE=http://10.2.1.101:8080/api
adb install -r build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/app-debug.apk
adb shell monkey -p com.drivervault.phoneapp -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1

Notes:

• android/gradle.properties sets kotlin.incremental=false — required because the project lives on drive E: while Gradle/Kotlin caches are on C: (the incremental compiler can't compute cross-root relative paths on Windows).
• AndroidManifest.xml sets android:usesCleartextTraffic="true" because the API base is a plain-HTTP LAN URL.
• The API Server must be running and reachable at the configured URL.

Structure

lib/
├── config.dart        # default API base URL (kDefaultApiBase)
├── models.dart        # Car (+ access getters), the record types, integrations, profile
├── api.dart           # ApiClient — the only thing that calls the API Server
├── auth.dart          # AuthService — the active server's session, app-lock flag
├── servers.dart       # ServerRegistry — the servers, their sessions, the active one
├── biometric.dart     # BiometricAuth — local_auth + secure storage; biometricAuth singleton
├── app_settings.dart  # AppSettings (theme/locale/date/font), persisted; drives MaterialApp
├── i18n.dart          # translation lookup — t("key"); en/pl/da with en fallback
├── theme.dart         # shared colours/tones (status badges, charging tiles)
├── format.dart        # date/km formatting + next-service status (worst-of date/km)
├── service_parts.dart # the parts a service can change, in one list
├── main.dart          # app root; routes Login / Lock / RootShell; lifecycle re-lock
├── widgets/
│   └── attachment_field.dart   # pick / view / clear a record's attached file
└── screens/
    ├── root_shell.dart         # bottom-nav shell: Garage, Charging, Settings, Users
    ├── login_screen.dart       lock_screen.dart        dashboard_screen.dart
    ├── car_detail_screen.dart  car_form_sheet.dart     record_form_sheets.dart
    ├── car_view_sheet.dart     # which tabs/rows/columns a car shows + the catalogues
    ├── provider_tab.dart       # the connected-service tab (MyToyota)
    ├── servers_sheet.dart      # the server picker + the add / edit / sign-in sheet
    ├── charger_import_sheet.dart  # a charger on a connected service becomes yours
    └── charging_screen.dart    settings_screen.dart    admin_users_screen.dart

The Android Auto half is Kotlin, because the head unit draws its own templates:

android/app/src/main/kotlin/com/drivervault/phoneapp/
├── MainActivity.kt              # the Flutter host (FlutterFragmentActivity, for local_auth)
└── car/
    ├── DriverVaultCarAppService.kt  # what Android Auto binds to; the root screen + host validator
    ├── VaultStore.kt            # the phone's session, read from shared_preferences' own store
    ├── VaultApi.kt              # the reads the car screens make — no writes exist here
    ├── CarStrings.kt            # t("key") over the bundled assets/i18n files
    ├── CarFormat.kt             # dates, km and the due badges — the twin of lib/format.dart
    ├── VaultScreen.kt           # load / loading / failed-with-a-Refresh, shared by both screens
    ├── GarageScreen.kt          # the cars, worst badge first
    └── CarDueScreen.kt          # one car: odometer, next service, reminders