Introduction and queries regarding University Campus Portal (UCP)

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hello,

My name is Sanyam, known as CuriousLearner all over the web. I'm pursuing final year, B.Tech CSE from GGSIPU, Delhi. I've been an FOSS Contributor from quite some time. I like to give talks on FOSS and help others out; to be upstream contributors.

Being a FOSS enthusiast, contributing to a number of projects like mozilla-central, comm-central which are under Mozilla; fossevents, django-materialize, oppia etc.

Apart from these, I like to help local communities like Mozilla MozPacers (Mozilla Delhi) where I've been Technical SIG Lead for almost an year now and PyDelhi (Python Delhi Users Group). Also volunteered for Open Source events such as PyCon India 2015.

A few links to know about me:

Github: www.github.com/CuriousLearner
Website: www.SanyamKhurana.com
Blog: ersanyamkhurana.wordpress.com

I liked what BuildmLearn is doing and specifically the idea of University Campus Portal (UCP) caught my eye.

I've gone through the ideas page, as well as through various threads in the mailing list. I would be starting with designing mock-ups and database design for the UCP.

Few questions:

a) Should we go about using RESTful APIs using DRF and serving them to various clients. This would maintain a centralized Database per university/campus yet students and faculty are not limited to interact only via web app.

b) Please let me know if there is something specific required for the project, and also what are the essential features which *must* be there in this application.

c) Also would like to know the IRC/gitter channel where I can quickly reach out to the developers.

Thanks & Regards
Sanyam Khurana
--
www.SanyamKhurana.com
Github: CuriousLearner

[Avnee]

Hey Sanyam

 

a) Should we go about using RESTful APIs using DRF and serving them to various clients. This would maintain a centralized Database per university/campus yet students and faculty are not limited to interact only via web app.

This is the suggested approach as we may develop mobile apps for UCP in the future.

 

b) Please let me know if there is something specific required for the project, and also what are the essential features which *must* be there in this application.

These are the essential features:

Discussions, News and Events Dashboard,  Recruitment Drives, Upcoming Exams Schedule and Results

 

We do not have an IRC channel.

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Avnee,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll start working on the DB design and preparing some mock-ups for the app.

Thanks & Regards,
Sanyam Khurana

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Avnee,

I was reading all threads about discussion on UCP and making a list of features that are needed. I've a doubt. What should be exactly displayed on the homepage of the web app.

As far as I've concluded from discussion, it should contain a Register/Sign in button and latest news. Any other things that should be there.

Also, let me know if the forums, events, recruitment drive details would be available to the user when s/he's not logged in.

[Avnee]

Hey Sanyam

I was reading all threads about discussion on UCP and making a list of features that are needed. I've a doubt. What should be exactly displayed on the homepage of the web app.
As far as I've concluded from discussion, it should contain a Register/Sign in button and latest news. Any other things that should be there.

I would prefer the Homepage to be like a feed, which includes latest discussions, news and events.

 

Also, let me know if the forums, events, recruitment drive details would be available to the user when s/he's not logged in.

This setting should be configurable by the administrator.

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Avnee,

For the results, we have to provide facility to upload pdf/excel and then store them in db to make retrieval easier and providing searching facility. But for this, we need to define a proper structure of database and that would essentially limit how faculty can form the pdf/excel. Am I on the right track, or wrong somewhere?

Regards
Sanyam Khurana

[Avnee]

Hey Sanyam

We can recommend a format for Universities to upload the results in. However, we should not limit the search to this format. This means that we should provide the search functionality regardless of the format used.

For example, if the university has uploaded the results in an HTML, EXCEL, PDF format. We can also provide fields like Full Name, Roll number for a text search. Basically displaying the occurrence of the search text in the uploaded results. I hope that makes sense.

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Avnee,

So essentially what I was thinking is this flow (needs more research though):

- Faculty uploads the result in supported formats
- A script scans the uploaded result and insert every thing in database.
- We can then query it and support search as per user needs.

Does this sounds good, or there is some conflict? Or are you suggesting something completely different?

Also, I'm in process of designing the database and wanted to ask you about choosing between one of these two approaches:

1. Every company while conducting the campus drive has certain no. of rounds
So, the idea is to provide user number of rounds field, and then provide details of each of these rounds separately.

2. In another approach, which is quite straight forward, we can just give a process_description field in which TPO (Training and Placement Officer) could list the process in detail. So, there would be no separate columns for each round.

Next, I would like to know, since this app would be configurable for any university, would that one time configuration (for putting up no. of courses, streams etc.) would be done from the django-admin API panel or we've to include this in Web app?

For the authentication part, which would suffice, token based authentication or session based authentication?

Thanks!

[Avnee]

Hey Sanyam

 

- Faculty uploads the result in supported formats
- A script scans the uploaded result and insert every thing in database.

Not exactly. The script shouldn't insert everything to the database. What I would prefer is that the uploaded data should be preprocessed to find some patters like name and role number (you may have to use regular expression search) and index these fields. Using this index the relevant part of the uploaded file should be shown to the user.

 

2. In another approach, which is quite straight forward, we can just give a process_description field in which TPO (Training and Placement Officer) could list the process in detail. So, there would be no separate columns for each round.

I would prefer this approach.  

Next, I would like to know, since this app would be configurable for any university, would that one time configuration (for putting up no. of courses, streams etc.) would be done from the django-admin API panel or we've to include this in Web app?

Ideally, from the web app... should be only enabled for the user if he has an administrator role.

For the authentication part, which would suffice, token based authentication or session based authentication?

Token based authentication should suffice.

[Sanyam Khurana]

Hi Avnee,

Thanks for the quick reply.

- Faculty uploads the result in supported formats
- A script scans the uploaded result and insert every thing in database.

Not exactly. The script shouldn't insert everything to the database. What I would prefer is that the uploaded data should be preprocessed to find some patters like name and role number (you may have to use regular expression search) and index these fields. Using this index the relevant part of the uploaded file should be shown to the user.

What do you exactly mean by indexing the files? Can you please elaborate on this a little bit, or give example from any such system or some github link?

Ideally, from the web app... should be only enabled for the user if he has an administrator role.

As far as I've understood, there would be 4 roles to be allocated. Student, Faculty, Moderator and Admin. But once the app is deployed on the university server, it would be probably done by Admin, and thus, it would be the very first account created on the app.

I'm designing the database such that there are options to have set up the Programme and streams offered by the college. (I will update the db schema here in a day or two). This would be one of the initial set-ups which IMHO would be better from the admin panel itself.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

[Avnee]

Hey Sanyam

 

What do you exactly mean by indexing the files? Can you please elaborate on this a little bit, or give example from any such system or some github link?

Indexing the fields* (not files). It would basically involve doing some preprocessing for quicker lookups. You may want to Google more about Creating a search index to get more idea about this.

  

I'm designing the database such that there are options to have set up the Programme and streams offered by the college. (I will update the db schema here in a day or two). This would be one of the initial set-ups which IMHO would be better from the admin panel itself.

 

The admin panel should be available to the 'administrator' user when he logs on to UCP. 

Please do not mix it up with Django admin panel. Ideally, the UCP administrator would not log in to the django admin panel.

Hope this clarifies your doubts.