GraphQL API

The future of the Open Collective API is our public GraphQL API. You can check the documentation on https://graphql-docs-v2.opencollective.com.

Learn more about it here: https://medium.com/open-collective/open-collective-graphql-api-preview-3b42ed1d55ff

REST API

Our REST API is still supported but we're not working on it anymore.

• Members

  • Get list of members

• Collectives

  • Get collective info

  • Get members

  • Get members per tier

  • Get transactions from collective

PDF Service

The PDF service supports passing either a Personal-Token (for personal tokens) or an Authorization header (for OAuth).

Getting the receipt for a contribution

GET https://pdf.opencollective.com/receipts/transactions/:transactionUUID/receipt.pdf

Getting the PDF for an Invoice Expense

GET https://pdf.opencollective.com/expense/:expenseUUID/invoice.pdf

Getting a bundled receipt for a fiscal host/period

GET https://pdf.opencollective.com/receipts/collectives/:fromCollective/:host/:fromDate/:toDate/receipt.pdf

Open Collective bounty program

Get paid to contribute to Open Source!

The Open Collective engineering team is small, and we're always looking for new contributors to our Open Source codebases. Our Bounty program is an opportunity to solve issues that could be neglected otherwise. Contributors who fix these issues will be rewarded financially.

Principles

With money, but not only about money

Our bounty program is about creating opportunities for our community to contribute to Open Collective, to make it their own. It also gives us an opportunity to get to know developers who we could potentially work with more in the future. We celebrate making open source contributions more sustainable by paying, but money alone shouldn't be the primary motivation for participation.

No compromise on quality

We're not able to accept pull requests that aren't completed to a high standard in a reasonable timeframe. Please only pick up bounties that you are confident you can complete at your current knowledge and skill level. We will not accept pull requests or pay bounties for code that's not up to the standard we need to maintain for the Collectives who rely on this platform.

Our dev team is happy to answer questions and provide some limited support, but we don't have capacity to mentor junior developers through the bounty program.

For general guidelines about what's expected in the code, see more info here.

How it works

For reference, until July 2020, we used the following model:

• $100: minimal or unknown complexity

• $200: simple complexity

• $500: medium complexity

But since then we have moved to a more flexible one. Based on the importance of the issue and its complexity, we attach a bounty between $100 and $1000 to the ticket.

We want to attract quality contributions. The issue will only be considered complete and approved for payment if the Pull Request is merged by an Open Collective Core Developer.

Workflow for Bounty Program Contributors

1. Search for issues with attached bounties:

   • Bounties for all repositories

2. Express interest by commenting on the issue and ask to be assigned

3. Open a Pull Request and ask for feedback and review

4. Incorporate feedback from Core Developers, if applicable

5. PR is reviewed, approved, and merged by a Core Developer

6. Get paid:

   • If you can issue an invoice, submit it as expense to Ofitech.

   • If you can't issue an invoice, ask to be rewarded with an Open Collective Gift Card

See more info about getting paid through Open Collective

Supported payment options

The options supported for paying bounties are the ones supported by Ofitech, namely:

• PayPal

• Bank account transfers (to countries not in the US sanctioned list)

Workflow for Core Contributors

1. Make sure the issue is understandable for newcomers and expectations are clearly set

2. Tag issues with the "bounty" label and amount (e.g. "$100")

3. Add a comment with a basic explanation of the Bounty process and link to BOUNTY.md

   A $100 bounty was attached to this issue. Anyone submitting a Pull Request will be rewarded with $100 when the Pull Request is reviewed, accepted and merged. More info.

4. Make sure the issue is understandable for newcomers and expectations are clearly set

Contributor Ladder

1. First Time Contributors

   • Not part of the Open Collective GitHub organization

   • Fork our projects on GitHub and push changes on their forks

   • Have access to minimal or simple complexity issues

   • Should comment on bounty issues to get assigned (limited to one at a time)

2. Contributors (at least 1 completed issue)

   • Added to the "Contributors" group in the Open Collective GitHub organization

   • Can push branches to the Open Collective repositories

   • Have access to minimal, simple or medium complexity issues

   • Can assign themselves bounty issues (limited to one at a time)

3. Recurring Contributors (3 or more completed issues)

   • Added to the "Recurring Contributors" group in the Open Collective GitHub organization

   • Can assign themselves two bounty issues at a time

4. Confirmed Contributors (3 or more completed issues including at least 2 with medium complexity)

   • Added to the "Confirmed Contributors" group on the Open Collective GitHub organization

   • Become candidates to work on complex issues or projects on a negotiable per-project or hourly rate

We're happy to have you contributing to our codebase! We recommend you go through the following guide.

Technical Requirements

You'll need to have some basic programming experience with the technologies and tools we use.

Tools

• Git & Github - Clone, commit and open a PR using Git with GitHub. Check out the following tutorials:

  • Introduction to git

  • Introduction to GitHub

  • Popular git commands and how to use them

  • Git commands in depth

  • Mastering Markdown

  • Markdown Tutorial

Languages & Frameworks

• JavaScript/Node.js - We recommend having basic experience working with Node, which Open Collective is written in (frontend & backend). Check out these free JavaScript & Node tutorials:

  • Javascript

    • Introduction to basic principles of Javascript

    • Introduction to Javascript - w/ Advanced concepts

    • An interactive Javascript tutorial

  • Node.js

    • Quick introduction to Node.js

    • Introduction to Node.js - w/ quizzes

    • When, how and why to use Node.js

    • Differences between Javascript and Node.js

• GraphQL - Our API uses GraphQL, powered by Sequelize and PostgreSQL. Understanding how this work is important to contributing to or fixing the majority of the issues on our API. To learn more, check out these tutorials & articles:

  • What is GraphQL and how to use it

  • Basic concept of GraphQL

  • Getting GraphQL running

  • Practical GraphQL tutorial

• React & Next.js - You'll need to understand React and Next.js to contribute to issues on the frontend. Check out the following links:

  • React

    • Basic React Concepts

    • The Beginner react roadmap - path to mastering react

    • React Official documentation

  • Next.js

    • Basic introduction to Next.js

    • Next.js Official Documentation

    • Basic concepts in Next.js

    • Introduction to Next.js - w/ Advanced concepts

Project Structure

The project's core repositories are divided into three:

• opencollective/opencollective - Here is where we manage issues and community discussions. Our issues are all labelled with a complexity label. We recommend starting with simple issues ( complexity -> simple).

• opencollective/opencollective-frontend - This repository contains our frontend code. You can find more information in the setup section of this guide.

• opencollective/opencollective-api - This contains our API code. If you enjoy working on the backend, you can set up our API locally. To learn about setting it up, check out the setup section below.

Project Setup

This section explains how you can get Open Collective running locally on your computer.

Frontend

Setting up the frontend is straightforward. We've provided a comprehensive guide in a separate document that explains how to set up the project.

Setup guide

https://github.com/opencollective/opencollective-frontend/blob/main/README.md

NOTE: If you're only contributing frontend code, you don't need to setup the API.

API

The API setup requires more effort than the frontend, as it requires installing the PostgreSQL. You might experience difficulty setting up the API on a Windows environment. We recommend using a Unix environment.

Just like the front end, we have a separate document for the setup.

Setup guide

https://github.com/opencollective/opencollective-api/blob/main/README.md

Others

Design Contribution

Like to contribute to our design? Checkout our design contribution guidelines.

Commit conventions

Before you make your first commit, read through our commit convention, provided in the link below:

https://github.com/opencollective/opencollective-frontend/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

Bounty Program

We recommend you learn more about our bounty program through the link below:

https://docs.opencollective.com/help/developers/bounties

Ask for Help

If you are stuck or have a question, join our Discord #engineering channel through the link below:

discord.opencollective.com

We're trying our best to make our documentation better. We encourage you to give suggestions on how we can improve it.

Collectives

In Open Collective, every entity is a collective and can be accessed publicly via their unique slug https://opencollective.com/:slug. In our public API, Collectives are usually refered to as Accounts. You can think about it like "profiles" that's what we really store in that table.

A Collective can be of type:

• COLLECTIVE e.g. Webpack

• EVENT e.g. BrusselsTogether Meetup 4

• ORGANIZATION e.g. iDoneThis, DigitalOcean, etc.

• USER e.g. xdamman

• PROJECT

• FUND

Members

A Member connects two profiles together. It can have multiple roles (one role per row):

• HOST legal holder of the bank account that holds the money on behalf of the collective

• ADMIN users who can approve expenses for the collective

• MEMBER aka core contributors

• BACKER users who gave money to the collective

Orders

An Order is the intent to give money to an Account. It is created by a UserId on behalf of a collective (which can be their own UserCollective or any other Collective that they are a member of).

Attributes:

Transactions

A Transaction records money moving from one account to another ac. In this example, a collective webpack is giving €100 to Women Who Code Berlin hosted by Women Who Code 501(c)(3).

Note: The Collective currency might be different than the Host Currency (both for the source "From" and the recipient "To"). The fxrate only takes into account the conversion between ToCollectiveCurrency to ToHostId.