Penn Labs Server Challenge

Remember to document your work in this README.md file! Feel free to delete these installation instructions in your fork of this repository.

Installation

Fork + clone this repository.
cd into the cloned repository.
Install pipenv

brew install pipenv if you're on a Mac.
pip install --user --upgrade pipenv for most other machines.

Install packages using pipenv install.

Developing

Use pipenv run python index.py to run the project.
Follow the instructions here.
Document your work in the README.md file.

Submitting

Submit a link to your git repository to this form by 11:59pm on Monday, September 23rd.

Installing Additional Packages

To install additional packages run pipenv install <package_name> within the cloned repository.

API

api/clubs

Here, with a GET request you will get to see all registered clubs, their descriptions, and their associated tags. With a POST request you will be able to create a new club if you specify the parameters

name: club name
description: club description

You can also do this through the front-end.

api/login

Here you can log into an existing user account. Provided the account already exists, you need only specify the following parameters. If the account does not exist, you will be direct to /register to create an account.

username: username
password: password

fairly straightforward ;)

api/register

Here you can create a new user account. You only need to specify

username: username
password: password

I'm gonna expose myself and point out that because Sqlite3 is weird with INSERT IGNORE statements. SQL Alchemy didn't actually let me write any INSERT IGNORE statements, so if you create duplicate users you will likely get an error because username is the primary key in the table.

api/logout

By far my favorite API call in the entire program. Takes no parameters and simply logs a user out of the session variable if there is a user in there.

api/current_user

This call returns info about the current user provided there is a current user. If no user is logged in in this session then it just returns nothing.

api/user/:username

This API call returns user data for the user specified in the route parameter. If no such user exists, then API will tell you so. Otherwise, it will give you the users favorited clubs as well as their user name. Not their salt or hash though as that would obviously be a security breach!

api/favorite

Creates a new favorite relationship between a user and a club. If you provide

username: username
clubID: clubID

the API call will insert a new row into favorite.

Added Features

Front-end

The project has a fairly extensive front-end that could definitely benefit from a design rework! To name a few key features though -- you can add clubs, register users, log into users, favorite clubs, unfavorite clubs, view clubs, and search for clubs all through the front-end.

Database

I'm not sure if Sqlite3 was necessarily the best idea, and certainly would not be the best move if we were going to scale the app, but at least for the initial POC it works well -- the SQL Alchemy code could also easily be ported over to MySQL or any other SQL client. In the sql.py file you can view a lot of the database functionality. Here's a TL;DR of the database schema (not a full ERD though!)

CREATE TABLE clubs (
	clubID INTEGER NOT NULL,
	name VARCHAR,
	description VARCHAR,
	PRIMARY KEY ("clubID")
);
CREATE TABLE tags (
	tagID INTEGER NOT NULL,
	value VARCHAR,
	PRIMARY KEY ("tagID")
);
CREATE TABLE users (
	username VARCHAR NOT NULL,
	salt VARCHAR,
	hash VARCHAR,
	PRIMARY KEY (username)
);
CREATE TABLE clubWithTag (
	tagID INTEGER,
	clubID INTEGER,
	FOREIGN KEY("tagID") REFERENCES tags ("tagID"),
	FOREIGN KEY("clubID") REFERENCES clubs ("clubID")
);
CREATE TABLE favorite (
	username VARCHAR,
	clubID INTEGER,
	FOREIGN KEY(username) REFERENCES users (username),
	FOREIGN KEY("clubID") REFERENCES clubs ("clubID")
);

All of the functionality for interacting with the database in implemented in sql.py through the Database class. Check out the instance functions for Database -- this is the only place in the program that we ever interact with the database! So you know where to look if you have questions.

Users

The app requires the creation of user accounts to access the API. To create a user you can use the front-end or the API. The Flask app will store your username in the session variable. While signed in, you can favorite clubs which are then favorited specifically to your account. Also, you can create clubs. You stay signed in until the session dies or until you manually log out.

Note that the user jen has still been inserted directly into the database, she has been given the password LennPabs. Sign in to her account if you want!

Areas for Improvement (left incomplete because of the time constraint)

General bug testing would be wonderful -- I'm positive there are issues.
End-to-end API testing suite. A test program that creates a new user, logs them in, creates a new club, checks that the club exists, check that the user exists, favorites a new club, etc. Then, also automates the checking front-end process to back sure both the back-end API and front-end are in sync.
Efficiency across the board. The program was developed for functionality but not necessarily performance. There are definitely areas that do not exercise best practice in maximizing efficiency.
Editing clubs once created -- also associated clubs with users who created the club so that only users who created a club could modify that given club.
Refactoring -- lots of code is repeated. Namely, there is a lot of code in index.py that should probably be moved to sql.py to avoid repetition.

cphalen/challengepy