DriverVault/API Server

DriverVault — API Server

The central API Server for the DriverVault project. Written in Go (standard library only, module drivervault/apiserver). It is the single gateway between all clients (web app, phone app, Home Assistant plugin, ESP32 device) and the PocketBase database — clients never talk to PocketBase directly. The API Server authenticates to PocketBase as a superuser and all collection access rules are left null, so data is only reachable through this server.

It also serves the superadmin web panel at the server root (/).

Layout

cmd/server/main.go        # entry point
internal/
├── api/                  # HTTP handlers + router (server.go)
│   ├── auth.go           # PocketBase token proxy + role gates
│   ├── users.go          # user management (role/org scoped)
│   ├── orgs.go           # organization management
│   ├── settings.go       # runtime PocketBase connection (pb-config)
│   ├── plugins.go        # plugin management endpoints
│   ├── status.go         # upstream health probes
│   ├── health.go  respond.go  panel.go
│   ├── cars.go  records.go  services.go  parts.go  shares.go  me.go
│   └── dist/             # built panel, embedded via go:embed
├── config/config.go      # env + .env load, .env write-back
├── pb/client.go          # PocketBase superuser client (runtime-retargetable)
└── plugins/              # plugin system — see plugins/README.md
    ├── plugin.go  manager.go  external.go  doc.go
    └── builtin/          # built-in connectors (none yet)
panel/                    # Vue 3 + Tailwind panel source
scripts/                  # Node/Python maintenance scripts
bin/api-server.exe        # prebuilt binary the deployment runs

Auth & access control

Authentication is PocketBase's own. POST /api/auth/login is proxied to the PocketBase users collection and the client keeps the token PocketBase minted; this server does not issue its own JWT. Every protected request re-resolves that token against PocketBase (auth-refresh), so a role change or a deletion takes effect immediately rather than lingering until a token expires.

POST /api/auth/login   { "email": "...", "password": "..." }  -> PocketBase { token, record }
GET  /api/auth/me      (Authorization: <token>)               -> { id, email, name, role }
GET  /api/identity     (Authorization: <token>)               -> + organization

Both Authorization: Bearer <token> and a raw Authorization: <token> are accepted (PocketBase's own SDKs send the latter).

Roles

users.role is user | admin | superadmin (empty is treated as user).

Role	Can
user	their own cars, service records, parts, profile
admin	the above, plus manage users within their own organization
superadmin	everything, across all organizations, plus the PocketBase connection and plugins

Guards worth knowing: an admin cannot create or edit a superadmin, cannot move users between organizations, and nobody can change their own role or delete their own account. An organization cannot be deleted while it still has members.

Organizations

organizations is the tenant collection; users.organization is the membership. A superadmin spans all organizations; an admin is scoped by the server to their own. Users may have no organization at all.

Per-user car ownership + sharing

Cars are not a global list. cars.owner marks ownership and car_shares grants other users read or write access. Every car/service/part handler is gated by requireCarAccess:

• read — view the car, its service records and parts.
• write — edit the car and full service/part CRUD.
• owner only — delete the car and manage its shares.

Data model

Collection	Purpose	Key fields
cars	one per car	name, make, model, year, registration, vin, currentKm, serviceIntervalDays (365), serviceIntervalKm (15000), oilSpec, transmissionOilSpec, differentialOilSpec, brakeFluidSpec, coolantSpec, owner
service_records	the service log	car, date, km, changed_oil, changed_engine_air_filter, changed_cabin_air_filter, notes
parts	per-car parts catalog	car, name, part_number, category
car_shares	grants another user access to a car	car, user, permission (read | write)
organizations	tenants	name (unique)
users	login + profile (built-in auth collection)	name, email, avatar, role (user | admin | superadmin), organization, bio, theme, locale, date_format, font_size, deletion_requested_at

Spreadsheet formulas (from the original Car Service.xlsx), reproduced by the API on read:

Next Service Date = service date + serviceIntervalDays   (Excel: =A+365)
Next Service Km   = service km   + serviceIntervalKm      (Excel: =B+15000)

These come back on each service record as nextServiceDate / nextServiceKm.

Endpoints

# public
GET    /healthz
GET    /api/health
GET    /api/status                     # health of PocketBase + Web App, probed server-side
POST   /api/auth/login
GET    /api/auth/validate

# identity
GET    /api/auth/me
GET    /api/identity

# current user (profile / appearance / avatar / data / account lifecycle)
GET    /api/me                         PATCH /api/me
POST   /api/me/password
POST   /api/me/avatar   GET /api/me/avatar   DELETE /api/me/avatar
POST   /api/me/verify/request
GET    /api/me/export                  POST /api/me/import
POST   /api/me/delete   POST /api/me/delete/cancel   DELETE /api/me

# users + organizations (admin or superadmin; org writes are superadmin-only)
GET    /api/users                      POST   /api/users
PATCH  /api/users/{id}                 DELETE /api/users/{id}
GET    /api/orgs                       POST   /api/orgs
PATCH  /api/orgs/{id}                  DELETE /api/orgs/{id}

# superadmin
GET    /api/admin/pb-config            PUT    /api/admin/pb-config
POST   /api/admin/pb-config/test
GET    /api/admin/plugins              POST   /api/admin/plugins
GET    /api/admin/plugins/{name}       PUT    /api/admin/plugins/{name}
DELETE /api/admin/plugins/{name}       POST   /api/admin/plugins/{name}/health

# cars + sharing
GET    /api/cars                       POST /api/cars
GET    /api/cars/{id}                  PATCH /api/cars/{id}   DELETE /api/cars/{id}
GET    /api/cars/{id}/service-records
GET    /api/cars/{id}/parts
GET    /api/cars/{id}/shares           POST /api/cars/{id}/shares
DELETE /api/cars/{id}/shares/{userId}

# service records + parts
GET    /api/service-records            POST /api/service-records
GET    /api/service-records/{id}       PATCH /api/service-records/{id}   DELETE /api/service-records/{id}
GET    /api/parts                      POST /api/parts
GET    /api/parts/{id}                 PATCH /api/parts/{id}   DELETE /api/parts/{id}

GET /api/cars returns the caller's owned cars plus any shared with them, each annotated with an access field. GET /api/service-records?car={id} and GET /api/parts?car={id} filter by car.

Gotcha: updateCar rewrites all car columns from the payload, so a PATCH /api/cars/{id} must send the full car object — omitted spec fields get blanked. (The phone's odometer quick-edit sends the whole car for this reason.)

The panel (/)

A Vue 3 + Tailwind app (source in panel/, built into internal/api/dist and embedded at compile time). It is the superadmin console:

• Overview — live health of the API Server, PocketBase and the Web App.
• Users / Organizations — full management, scoped to the caller's role.
• PocketBase — retarget the database connection at runtime; test before saving. Applied immediately and persisted to .env, so it survives a restart. This is the escape hatch when the configured PocketBase is wrong or unreachable — the settings endpoints deliberately do not require a working service account.
• Plugins — enable/disable/configure integrations, run health checks, register external plugins.
• API — the endpoint reference.

Log in with any DriverVault account; the sections you see depend on your role.

cd panel
npm install
npm run dev          # localhost:5174, proxies /api to localhost:8080
npm run build        # -> ../internal/api/dist   (then rebuild the Go binary)

Editing panel source alone does nothing to the served panel — run npm run build and then rebuild the Go binary, since dist is embedded.

Plugins

An extension system for integrating third-party services, managed by a superadmin. Two kinds share one contract: built-in (Go, compiled in) and external (any HTTP service, registered at runtime, no rebuild). State persists to plugins.json.

See internal/plugins/README.md for the full guide. DriverVault ships no built-in connectors yet; the external kind is the place to start.

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in. Summary:

Variable	Default	Purpose
API_ADDR	:8080	listen address (bare port accepted)
POCKETBASE_URL	http://10.2.1.10:8027	PocketBase base URL
POCKETBASE_ADMIN_EMAIL / _PASSWORD	—	superuser service account
CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS	*	comma-separated browser origins
WEBAPP_URL	http://localhost:5173	probed by /api/status
AUTH_USERS_COLLECTION	users	PocketBase auth collection
PLUGINS_FILE	plugins.json	plugin state store

PB_URL, PB_ADMIN_EMAIL, PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD, PORT and CORS_ORIGINS are still honoured for older deployments; the modern names win when both are set.

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS only matters for browser clients (the web app). Native mobile apps are not subject to CORS.

The service account is optional at startup: without it the server still runs and a superadmin can log in and configure it from the panel, while management endpoints return 503.

Scripts (scripts/)

node scripts/setup-pocketbase.mjs                    # create/reconcile collections (idempotent)
node scripts/create-user.mjs <email> <pw> "Name"     # create an app login
node scripts/set-role.mjs <email> user|admin|superadmin
node scripts/backfill-car-owners.mjs                 # one-off: assign owner to legacy cars
python scripts/seed_from_excel.py "C:/Users/jania/Desktop/Car Service.xlsx"

The Node scripts read POCKETBASE_URL / POCKETBASE_ADMIN_EMAIL / POCKETBASE_ADMIN_PASSWORD (or the legacy PB_* names) from the environment.

PocketBase note: collections created by the setup script do not get automatic created/updated autodate fields in this PocketBase version — sorting on created fails unless an explicit F.autodate(...) is added. When adding a new car spec field, extend DESIRED.cars in setup-pocketbase.mjs, add it to models.Car + the record mapping in records.go, then rebuild.

First-time setup

1. Create the PocketBase collections (idempotent — safe to re-run on an existing deployment; it adds organizations, users.organization, and grows users.role to include superadmin):

   $env:POCKETBASE_URL="http://10.2.1.10:8027"
   $env:POCKETBASE_ADMIN_EMAIL="you@example.com"
   $env:POCKETBASE_ADMIN_PASSWORD="secret"
   node scripts/setup-pocketbase.mjs
   

2. Mint the first superadmin. The panel's management screens need one, and only a superadmin can promote another — so the first has to come from the script:

   node scripts/create-user.mjs admin@example.com "a-long-password" "Admin"
   node scripts/set-role.mjs admin@example.com superadmin
   

3. Run the server — go run ./cmd/server, or build and run the binary.

4. Open the panel at http://localhost:8080/ and sign in.

5. (Optional) Seed from the spreadsheet with the server running (see scripts).

Build & run

go build -o bin/api-server.exe ./cmd/server

The deployment runs the prebuilt binary bin/api-server.exe (not go run), started detached so it survives the shell:

Start-Process -FilePath ".\bin\api-server.exe" -WorkingDirectory "." `
  -WindowStyle Hidden -RedirectStandardOutput api-server.out.log `
  -RedirectStandardError api-server.err.log

Go's log package writes to stderr, so check api-server.err.log for request logs and errors. After editing any Go source, rebuild and restart the process — editing source alone does nothing until the binary is rebuilt.

Migrating from the JWT build

Earlier builds minted their own HS256 JWT and tracked a sessions collection for "active devices" / remote logout. That is gone — the server now relays PocketBase tokens. Consequences:

• AUTH_SECRET is obsolete and ignored.
• Login returns PocketBase's envelope — {token, record}, not {token, user}.
• GET|DELETE /api/sessions* are gone. PocketBase tokens are stateless, so there is nothing to revoke per-device. To lock every device out of an account, change its password: PocketBase rotates the user's token key, which invalidates every token already issued.
• User management moved from /api/admin/users* to /api/users*, and the separate password-reset endpoint folded into PATCH /api/users/{id} ({"password": "..."}). Responses are enveloped: {users} / {user}.
• Existing tokens are invalid — every client must log in once more.
• The sessions collection is left in PocketBase rather than dropped; delete it by hand if you want it gone.

The Web App and Phone App in this repo are already updated for all of the above.