CREATE-Athena is a full-stack application composed of three main components:
- This is the backend API built with .NET 9. It handles data processing, business logic, and serves endpoints for the Athena Angular application.
- Location:
./AthenaAPI
- This is the frontend application built with Angular. It provides the user interface for interacting with the Athena platform.
- Location:
./AthenaFrontend
- This contains the database schema, structure, and backup files required for the Athena application.
- Location:
./AthenaDatabase
- Download and install an IDE (e.g., Visual Studio Community Edition).
- Open the project in your IDE by loading the solution file.
- Download and install SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
- Launch SSMS and connect to the local development server:
- Server Name:
(LocalDb)\MSSQLLocalDB - Authentication: Windows Authentication
- Server Name:
- If the local development server fails to connect:
- Ensure the MSSQL LocalDB server is installed and running.
The API requires a SQL Server database for local development. Follow these steps to restore the database:
- Open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and connect to the local instance.
- In Object Explorer, right-click on the Databases folder and select Restore Database....
- In the Restore Database dialog:
- Select the Device radio button.
- Click the ... button, then click Add.
- Navigate to the database backup file located at:
./AthenaDatabase/backup/dev/athena.bak
- Click OK to confirm and begin the restore process.
- Once restored:
- Expand the Databases folder in SSMS. You should see the Athena database.
- Expand the Tables folder to view the database tables.
- Verify the database restoration:
- Right-click any table and select Select Top 1000 Rows.
- This should query the table and return sample data.
- Complete steps 2 and 3 above
- Run the API:
- Open the Visual Studio .sln file in Visual Studio to build and run the application
- OR open the AthenaAPI folder in cmd and run the command "dotnet run"
- Run the Frontend
- Open the AthenaFrontend folder in a terminal
- Ensure you have run "npm install" to install dependencies
- Run "ng serve" to start the application
- To view the API, navigate to localhost: in any browser
- To view the CREATE App, navigate to localhost: in any browser
- Ensure that all dependencies for .NET 9 and Angular are installed.
- For Angular, use
npm installin theAthenaFrontenddirectory to set up the required dependencies, after that useng serveto start the front end. - For the API, use the
.NET CLIor Visual Studio to restore dependencies and run the project.
We had four major lines of effort:
- Code Katas
- Daily Standups
- CSS Refactor
- Bug Fixes/Finishing incomplete features
Our team left some notes below for where we left off on each line item.
Main Problem: Major HTML/CSS elements don't react well to screen resizing.
Solution: Incorporate Flexboxes into the CSS code for the specific HTML classes.
Pages in the application where this is mostly complete:
- Mentor Side: Dashboard, Students
- Student Side: Dashboard
Pages where this is incomplete:
- Mentor Side: Modules*, Katas, Settings
- Student Side: Modules*, Katas, Settings
Special Notes:
- The two different sides of the application, Student and Mentor, share most HTML/CSS elements so fixing this problem for one side fixes it for both.
- For some reason the modules page pulls its module cards from a different HTML file than the Dashboard, unless something different is going to be done with the modules page’s cards this is redundant.
Minor Problems:
- Adjusting weird margins, padding, hardcoded values that should be dynamic, text overflow, etc.
- Katas currently functional, but need implementation for the kata examples. The backend is set up to handle getting and adding kata examples, but the project currently lacks any front end implementation for them.
- Another feature currently missing for the kata component is any 'gamification' such as experience and badges.
Main:
- The Daily Standup feature is mainly complete, with a few potential quality of life updates that could be made.
- Mentors are able to view and give feedback to their mentee's daily standups.
- Responsive buttons give easy visuals for students to see if they have completed today's and for mentor's to see if they have added feedback to a student's standup
Potential Improvements:
- Streak tracking currently does not check the day, such as weekends or holidays. A student would have to do the standup these days to keep up their streak.
- Currently, students can only see their three most recent standups as this value is hardcoded. It could be possible to add a paginated view or a page that shows all their previous standups if desired by FBS.
- The standup dialog card does not have the best design, especially if students were to use many html tags that affect text appearance.
Main Problem: There were bugs present in the project, along with unfinished features that were present on the web app
Solution: Find and solve the bugs present in the code, and complete the unfinished features
Completed Bugs and Features:
- A comprehensive list of fixed bugs can be found in the GitHub issues
- Examples include the Logout issue and user profile picture
- For unfinished features, the stats shown on a Mentor’s view of a module were not functional. Using API calls, the stats were calculated in their respective TypeScript file, and are now shown on the module page
- Also, module tabs were axed, as they did not provided a use (further explanation in GitHub Issues). Work done on this was transferred over to having the amount of quests, posted and unposted, shown to a mentor on a module webpage
Incomplete Bus and Issues:
- Again, there is a comprehensive list on the Github Issues for bugs and issues that were not solved.
- Examples include going to the dashboard when refreshing a page and the deciding how to handle unposted quest from a students perspective (cascading issue)
Special Notes: The majority of bugs left are more issues with the current way things are handled than errors or faulty code, such as unposted quests; do you hard delete a students work or do you store it someplace new in the database when a completed quest is unposted? The first steps to solving these issues would be to determine with FBS what they would like or need out of the web app, and then go about implementing a solution the is inline with that vision.