E2409 Refactor sign up sheet controller.rb

This wiki page is for the information regarding the changes made for the E2409 OSS assignment for Spring 2024, CSC/ECE 517.

Introduction

Expertiza is an open source project developed on Ruby on Rails. This web application is maintained by the student and faculty at NC State. This application gives complete control to the instructor to maintain the assignments in their class. With multiple functionalities such as adding topics, creating groups, and peer reviews, Expertiza is a well-developed application that can handle all types of assignments. To learn more about the full functionality Expertiza has to offer, visit the Expertiza wiki.

About Controller

The sign up sheet controller comprises all functions related to the management of the signup sheet for an assignment.

• Instructors can add and remove topics from assignments, as well as alter their attributes.
• Allows an instructor to assign and remove students to subjects.
• Allows a student to view a list of available subjects on which they can bid for an OSS assignment.

Issues/Problem Statement

• Naming is inconsistent. When used as a verb, “sign up” is two words. When an adjective or a noun, it should be one word, e.g., “signup_sheet_controller.” Cf. “sign_up_as_instructor”. Please make the naming consistent. Of course, this will result in changes in calling methods as well. [Mostly fixed by previous version of project.]
• Update method has a plethora of instance variables defined before updating. These might not be necessary (e.g., look at update method of bookmarks_controller). Decide whether so many instance variables are really needed. Refactor the variables not needed out. [This may have already been fixed, but save_topic_deadline also has these problems.]
• Add_signup_topics_staggered does not do anything different from add_signup_topics. Separate functions are needed, because add_signup_topics_staggered needs to make sure that the deadlines are set. [Assignment 1042 has staggered deadlines]
• Several method names can be improved (including: load_add_signup_topics, list, ad_info etc.)
• What are differences between signup_as_instructor and signup_as_instructor_action methods? Investigate if they are needed and improve the method names if both are needed. Provide comments as to what each method does.
• The list method is too long and is sparsely commented. Provide comments and identify if the method can be split or made cleaner by moving code to models or helper methods.
• Refactor participants variable in load_add_signup_topics [In retrospect, the meaning of this is not clear. The @participants variable is used in a way that is very obscure, with code spread across several views, and no comments saying what it is doing. It used to be that participants (individual students) signed up for topics. Now, only teams can sign up for topics. So @participants do not make sense.
• Signup_as_instructor_action has an if-else ladder. It can be made more elegant. [If it is worth keeping this method at all.]
• Delete_signup and delete_signup_as_instructor have much in common and violate the DRY principle. Refactor.
• Also see Code Climate issues. To reduce the size of the file, you could move some methods to sign_up_sheet_helper.rb [We are trying to fix how you access Code Climate, but haven’t fixed it yet.]

Solutions

• The previous version of the project fixed the naming discrepancy issue. We have validated it and found no other changes.

• signup_as_instructor and signup_as_instructor_action methods functionalities breakdown

signup_as_instructor: This function appears to be an empty function that doesn't perform any action. It is not called anywhere in the provided code. Hence, it seems unnecessary and can be removed.

signup_as_instructor_action: This function is used to process the instructor's request to sign up a student for a particular topic for an assignment. It handles the form submission and performs the necessary actions based on the submitted data.

• Refactored delete_signup and delete_signup_as_instructor

By centralizing the shared functionality, delete_signup_common, a new method, lessens redundancy and enhances maintainability. A single function can handle both scenarios thanks to the refactored code, which uses the who_user parameter to identify the type of user doing the delete operation.

The error handling logic has been enhanced to provide more descriptive error messages and to log errors appropriately using the ExpertizaLogger. Logging has been improved to include more detailed information about the errors and actions being performed. Comments have been added to describe each section of the code and explain the purpose of the methods and conditional blocks.

Team

Mentor

• Anvitha Reddy Gutha (agutha)

Team Members

• Mitul Patel (mpatel27)
• Harshil Sanghavi (hsangha)
• Sagar Dama (sudama)