CSC/ECE 517/Spring 2023/E2308. Refactor course.rb and course team.rb models

Team Contact

Team Members

Kartik Rawool, (unityID:khrawool, GitHub:kartikrawool)
Ameya Vaichalkar, (unityID:agvaicha, GitHub:ameyagv)
Vikram Pande, (unityID:vspande, GitHub:vikrampande7)

Mentor

Kartiki Bhandakkar, kbhanda3

Overview of Expertiza

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. Part of its functionality is a system containing information about the course and its associated teams respectively. The Course and CourseTeam which are the models primarily addressed in this project are both critical components in providing this functionality.

Description of Project

course model stores information about the instructor and institution and is associated with other models such as User, CourseParticipant, CourseTeam, Assignment, AssignmentParticipant, and Notification. The course model is responsible for completing a variety of tasks, including returning course teams, returning the submission directory for the course, viewing participants enrolled in the course, adding a participant to the course, copying the Assignment Participants to Course Participants, and checking whether a user is part of any CourseTeam. The problem description lists code smells that need to be fixed. We fixed some issues, such as deleting the unused methods and renaming methods to indicate their action. The renaming problem required us to change a few methods calls where the function to be renamed was used. Also, to reduce the cognitive complexity of the copy_assignment_participants method, we created a method to separate the raising error functionality. Comments were added to indicate the action of the methods.

The course_team is a subclass of the team class. CourseTeams are a type of team that an instructor can use throughout an entire semester, providing consistency in team membership over time. The course_team model is responsible for completing various tasks, including returning the course of the team, adding a participant to the CourseTeam, and copying the CourseTeam Participants to AssignmentTeam Participants. There are methods for importing and exporting data to/from CSV files for CourseTeam objects. The problem description lists code smells/issues that need to be fixed. The issues that we fixed were deleting unused methods, renaming methods, and changing method calls, changing rspec expectations, adding meaningful comments. To refactor methods, DRY principles were used. In addition, analogous changes were made in the assignment_team model.

Files Modified

CHANGES IN MODEL FILES

Changes to `app/models/course.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Checked and Removed `get_participant` method	Checked the usage of Method through IDE whether the function is used, the only call was from `course_spec.rb` and not from anywhere else. Hence, removed from `course.rb`	Commit
2	Renamed `copy_participants` method	Renamed `copy_participants` to `copy_assignment_participants` which makes more sense and a clear idea of how method works and what is the purpose of method.	Commit
3	Removed `add_member` method from `course_team` model	Assignment_team and Course_team are subclasses of Team. Both should follow the similar logic of adding members of respective teams. As of for, add_participants, usage is different for course.rb and course_team.rb, hence it should be present in both. However, to make the code more consistent among classes, team, course_team, and assignment_team, the add_member method should only be present in the team class.	Commit
4	Created method `raise_errors`	To reduce Cognitive Complexity of method `copy_participants`	Commit

Changes to `app/models/course_team.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Removed `assignment_id`	CourseTeam and AssignmentTeam inherit from Team class. The teams' table has an attribute `parent_id` that helps determine whether the team is AssigmentTeam or CourseTeam. Thus, there is no need for `assignment_id` in the CourseTeam class and no need for `course_id` in AssignmentTeam class. It will be a bad coding practice to call the assignment_id method on the CourseTeam object, calling the course_id method on the AssignmentTeam object as it would be inappropriate.	Commit
2	Renamed `copy` method as `copy_to_assignment_team`	As this method is copying a CourseTeam to an AssignmentTeam, renamed it as `copy_to_assignment_team`. A suggestion for copy method in AssignmentTeam would be to rename it as `copy_to_course_team`.	Commit
3	Added Import Functionality	Refactored import method, added methods import_options, optional_import_fields, import_options which are being called in the ImportFileController.	Commit

Changes to `app/models/assignment_team.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Renamed `copy` method for AssignmentTeam	Renamed `copy` for copying current AssignmentTeam to CourseTeam as `copy_to_course_team`	Commit
2	Added Import Functionality	Refactored import method, added methods import_options, optional_import_fields, import_options which are being called in the ImportFileController to get required and optional fields from the respective model.	Commit

Changes to `app/models/team.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Added Import Functionality	Refactored import_team_members and added import_helper, that is used for importing CourseTeam and AssignmentTeam objects.	Commit

CHANGES IN RSPEC FILES

Changes to `spec/models/course_spec.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Removed the test case for `get_paprticipant` method test case	Removed the test case for `get_participant` method as the method was not used anywhere else in the code.	Commit
2	Renamed `copy_participants` method test case	Renamed the respective method of `copy_participants` to `copy_assignment_participants`in rspec file as well.	Commit

Changes to `spec/models/course_team_spec.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Renamed `copy` to `copy_to_assignment_team`	Renamed `copy` to `copy_to_assignment_team`in rspec file as well.	Commit

Changes to `spec/models/course_team_spec.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Import functionality changes	Test cases are added to rspec file as well for import functionality changes.	Commit

Changes to `spec/models/assignment_team_spec.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Import functionality changes	Test cases are added to rspec file as well for import functionality changes.	Commit

Changes to `spec/models/team_spec.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Import functionality changes	Test cases are added to rspec file as well for import functionality changes.	Commit

CHANGES IN CONTROLLER FILES

Changes to `app/controllers/teams_controller.rb`

#	Change	Rationale	Commit Link
1	Renamed `copy` to `copy_to_assignment_team`	The change was directly related to changes of copy method in `course_team.rb`.	Commit

Test Plan

Manual Testing

Adding Course Team member
- Adding member student1922 to course CSC540

Importing Course Teams
- Importing Course Teams
- Import Preview

- Import Error: We have refactored the import functionality according to E1923. The ImportFileController calls the import methods of the models course_team, assignment_team, team, etc. To debug this error, we need to change other models, such as assignment_participant, assignment_team, course_participant, metareview_response_map, question, review_response_map, sign_up_sheet, sign_up_topic, and user so that importing of all models would be generalised and would be functional. Some UI changes would be needed accordingly.

Automated Testing All the suggested changes were made to course.rb and course_team.rb, all these models were amended and as a result we need to update the tests. We added or amended tests in their respective .spec files. The methods were tested for edge cases and positive and negative test cases were written. The refactored methods were updated in the test cases.