CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2024 - E2519. Reimplement responses controller

Introduction

Expertiza is an open-source platform that educational institutions use to create, assign, and manage assignments and peer assessments. To modernize and improve the backend code, this group was tasked with reimplementing the Responses Controller

This project focuses on reimplementing the Responses controller with modern best practices, simplifying the actual controller logic, and adopting the idioms and coding style of the reimplemented backend.

Problem Statement

The ResponseController in Expertiza is responsible for handling responses to quizzes, peer reviews, and surveys. However, the current implementation has several design issues, including violations of Rails naming conventions, excessive responsibilities, and redundant logic. The goal of this project is to reimplement (not refactor) a new response_controller.rb as responses_controller.rb. This includes CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete) and the functionality previously found in the old controller, but done in a clean, modern, and conventional way.

Objectives

This project aims to improve the Responses controller in the following ways:

1. Rename response_controller.rb to responses_controller.rb to adhere to Rails naming conventions.

2. Limit the controller to CRUD operations, moving non-CRUD logic to models, helpers, or services.

3. Ensure questions (items) are displayed in the correct sequence when rendering responses.

4. Move the sorting logic from the edit method to the Response model for better organization.

5. Rename sort_questions to sort_items for improved clarity.

6. Use polymorphism to determine if the reviewer is a team, replacing existing if statements.

7. Consolidate redundant parameter-setting methods (assign_action_parameters, set_content) into a single, more efficient method.

8. Refactor questionnaire_from_response_map to simplify logic and support topic-based rubrics.

9. Identify and remove unused (dead) methods to clean up the codebase.

10. Extract email generation logic from the controller and move it to a dedicated helper.

By implementing these changes, the Responses controller will match the desired coding style, operate efficiently, and be more easily adapted and upgraded in the future.

Our Changes

Moving Sorting Logic to the Responses Model

To limit the controller to CRUD operations, the sorting logic that returned the latest review was moved to the Response model

Old code:

   if @prev.present?
     @sorted = @review_scores.sort do |m1, m2|
       if m1.version_num.to_i && m2.version_num.to_i
         m2.version_num.to_i <=> m1.version_num.to_i
       else
         m1.version_num ? -1 : 1
       end
     end
     @largest_version_num = @sorted[0]
   end

New code:

 # Sort responses by version number, descending
 def self.sort_by_version
   review_scores = Response.where(map_id: @map.id).to_a
   return [] if review_scores.empty?
   sorted = review_scores.sort_by { |response| response.version_num.to_i }.reverse
   sorted[0]
 end

Move email generation logic into a dedicated helper

This code previously resided in the controller:

 def send_email
   subject = params['send_email']['subject']
   body = params['send_email']['email_body']
   response = params['response']
   email = params['email']
   respond_to do |format|
     if subject.blank? || body.blank?
       flash[:error] = 'Please fill in the subject and the email content.'
       format.html { redirect_to controller: 'response', action: 'author', response: response, email: email }
       format.json { head :no_content }
     else
       # make a call to method invoking the email process
       MailerHelper.send_mail_to_author_reviewers(subject, body, email)
       flash[:success] = 'Email sent to the author.'
       format.html { redirect_to controller: 'student_task', action: 'list' }
       format.json { head :no_content }
     end
   end
 end

We moved it into a dedicated mailer to create different types of emails:

Opportunities for Additional Future Enhancements

TODO: Opportunities for Additional Future Enhancements

Mentors

• Anish Toorpu

Members

• Dennis Christman (Unity ID: dchrist2)
• Eleanor Maye (Unity ID: edmaye)
• Manbir Guron (Unity ID: msguron)

Links

TODO: Links

References

TODO: References