Nautilus Tracker - Backend

The Nautilus Tracker Backend API is a server-side solution designed to provide easy access to GPS tracking data stored in a MySQL database. Built using PHP, it exposes endpoints to retrieve GPS data, query available years, and upload new data via CSV.

Endpoints

All endpoints live under /api/.

GET /api/test

Health-check endpoint. No authentication required.

Response:

{ "message": "Hello, Nautilus!" }

---

GET /api/track

Returns GPS track data for a given date range as a GeoJSON Feature. Requires an API key.

Query parameters:

Parameter	Required	Description
start	yes	Start datetime (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)
end	yes	End datetime (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS)

Example request:

GET /api/track?start=2023-09-01+00:00:00&end=2023-09-30+23:59:59

Example response:

{
    "type": "Feature",
    "properties": {},
    "geometry": {
        "type": "LineString",
        "coordinates": [
            [52.666, -2.474],
            [52.667, -2.475]
        ]
    }
}

---

GET /api/years

Returns a list of all years present in the database. Requires an API key.

Example response:

{ "years": [2022, 2023, 2024] }

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POST /api/upload

Uploads a CSV file and stores its rows in the database. A browser form is served on GET.

Request: multipart/form-data with a csv_file field containing a .csv file.

CSV format: each row must have at least three fields — datetime, latitude, longitude:

DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS, latitude, longitude
01/09/2023 00:35:55, 52.66646, -2.4749416

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Authentication

The track and years endpoints require an API_KEY header. The key is configured via the API_KEY environment variable (see Configuration below).

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Installation

Prerequisites

• PHP 8 or higher
• Composer 2.8 or higher
• Docker 28 or higher

Local setup

composer install
docker-compose up -d

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Configuration & Deployment

The .env file is generated automatically by the GitHub Actions deployment workflow on every push to master. It is not committed to the repository — the local .env is a sample only.

The workflow reads the following GitHub Actions secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions) and writes them into a fresh .env before uploading to the remote server via FTP:

Secret name	.env key	Purpose
DB_HOST	DB_HOST	Database server IP / hostname
DB_USERNAME	DB_USERNAME	Database username
DB_PASSWORD	DB_PASSWORD	Database password
DB_NAME	DB_NAME	Database name
DB_TABLE	DB_TABLE	Table name
API_KEY	API_KEY	API authentication key
FTP_SERVER_DEV	(FTP host)	Remote server for deployment
FTP_USER	(FTP user)	FTP username
FTP_PASSWORD	(FTP password)	FTP password
FTP_FOLDER	(FTP remote path)	Remote directory to deploy into

Important: any manual edits to the .env on the remote server will be overwritten on the next push to master. To make a permanent change, update the corresponding GitHub secret and push.