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João Pimentel Ferreira edited this page Dec 8, 2017 · 20 revisions

Purpose

This calculator allows users to find the true cost of owning and running a car as it considers the 12 car costs items, users need to pay to afford running an automobile. It will normally give them a good estimate of what they really need to spend to afford owning and running an automobile. As the motor bills come in at different points over the year, it's often difficult to really appreciate the total spend on cars. The test version is found at https://autocosts.info/XX.

For more than 40 countries

The project is optimized for a web-based version, and for an APP developped in Apache Cordova. It can be forked as well only for one specific country taken from the countries/ folder than has more than 40 languages/countries. The XX stands for the 2-letter ISO country code, and not for the language, since for example United Kingdom and Australia have the same language but different realities concerning the taxes, the terms applied to automobile costs and the units for fuel efficiency. The translations/language files apply therefore only to the selected country.

The project already considers all the units and fuel efficiency cases, different in many countries. The variations for fuel efficiency are l/100km, km/l, mpg(US), mpg(imp) and for distance are km, miles and mil (Nordic mile=10km).

You can see all the available countries and correspondent units here: https://autocosts.info/list

Layout

If you don't need a web-based version of the project or if you simply want its pure clean core version, you'll not need all the accessory HTML divs around the centre div. In the layout/ folder just consider then the applicable files.

Databases

In the current project version we collect anonymously data from the users' input, stored in a database for statistical analysis. We have a second database for visitors statistics. Nevertheless, the databases and their connections to project functions might be simply removed, in a off-line option for example. You can turn off database services using the corresponding boolean variable stored the Object SWITCHES available in the Globals Javascript file. In this case you may also remove if you'd like, though not necessary, database related files such as counter.php and dbService.php.

Output charts

The colourful charts the application outputs are taken from Google Charts, so if you'd like to have them off-line or in other platforms you may use chartsjs JS plugin, like we already use for the APP version. The drawing of the charts are executed in the file charts.js.

Mobile version

The web-based version is already adapted to mobile devices, since CSS file changes the layout configuration according with the window width. We have also already an (Android APP)[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.autocosts], whose files are stored in the app/ folder.