CSC/ECE 517 Spring 2024 - E2408. Refactor course.rb and course team.rb models

Team

Members

• Daksh Mehta, (unityID:dmehta4, GitHub:dakshmehta23)
• Soham Patil, (unityID:sspatil6@ncsu.edu, GitHub:ThErOCk07)
• Unnati Bukhariya, (unityID:ubukhar2@ncsu.edu, GitHub:unnzzz)

Mentor

• Ameya Vaichalkar, (unityID:agvaicha, GitHub:ameyagv)

Expertiza Overview

Background

Expertiza is an open-source software written using Ruby on Rails which functions as a learning management software system. It has many different functions and abilities including the ability to create assignments, quizzes, assignment groups, and topics, and also a complete mechanism for providing peer reviews and feedback for other groups and other teammates. It is used in select courses at NC State and by professors at several other colleges and universities.

course.rb and course_team.rb models are objects containing information about the course and their associated teams respectively. CourseTeams are used when an instructor wants to use the same teams for the entire semester. CourseTeam is one subclass of Team ; AssignmentTeam is the other. An AssignmentTeam is a team that is created for students to do a single assignment. It is possible to copy CourseTeams to an assignment, where they become AssignmentTeams, or vice versa.

The Course and CourseTeam models had some code smells/issues that were fixed. There were a few methods in these models that shouldn’t be in those models, and a few methods that are no longer used. Certain method names were refactored in order to better understand their functionality.

Requirements

The following changes were made to the models course.rb and course_team.rb

Changes in course.rb

• Removal of get_participant Method

       The method get_participant was removed.
       A global search revealed it was unused throughout the app.
       Consequently, the method and its respective RSpec test were removed.

• Rename copy_participants Method

       Renamed the method to copy_assignment_participants.
       This new name accurately reflects the method's purpose, which is specific to assignments, enhancing clarity and understanding.

• Error Handling Enhancement

       Refactored add_participant and copy_assignment_participants methods for improved error handling and readability.
       Introduced a new method, handle_errors, to centralize error handling and separate it from main function logic.

• Other Changes

       Utilized find_by instead of where.first for SQL queries to the model.
       Employed errors.any? instead of unless errors.empty? for better readability.
       Added comments throughout the code for improved documentation and understanding.

Changes in course_team.rb

• Removal of add_member Method

       The method add_member was removed.
       As Course_team is a subclass of Team, it inherited the add_member functionality from the superclass. Hence, it was removed for better coherence and modularity.

• Delete assignment_id method in CourseTeam class since it is no longer required.
• Refactor Course.find(id) to Course.find(course_id) for better understandability of the code.
• Refactor the copy method in CourseTeam class to something that better describes its functionality.

Other Changes

• The test corresponding to get_participant Method was removed from course_spec.rb
• The test corresponding to copy_participants Method was renamed to copy_assignment_participants.

Testing

To validate the refactored models, we conducted UI testing. We mapped UI buttons and functionalities to their corresponding models and executed relevant tasks to verify the expected outcomes.

Links

• GitHub Repo: https://github.com/dakshmehta23/expertiza
• Pull Request: https://github.com/expertiza/expertiza/pull/2752
• VCL URL: