sahinf/ptdatabaseapp

A Peer Teacher manager application to help automate parts of the Peer Teacher scheduling process at Texas A&M

How To Use

The latest production build can be accessed here.

Please use the example template file to play around with the app. Download that file and upload it with "Data Base Upload" button.

The app is hosted on the gh-pages branch. It utilizes Github Actions through our workflow defined by this YAML file. All pushes to origin/master should trigger deployment, basically. If, for some reason, the live build is down (404 Error perhaps), we can always clone this repository and run it manually with the steps below

Development

This app requires the Node Package Manager (npm).

git clone https://github.com/sahinf/PTDatabaseApp.git &&
cd PTDatabaseApp &&
npm i

To run the development build after letting npm install the required packages:

npm run dev

Now Vite's live server should be running and automatically recompiling with each change to the source code.

The original version of this app (forked from Scott Wilkins) used Rollup. It has now been switched to use Vite, which allows an effortless project setup for various frameworks. A project that uses Svelte, tailwind, postcss, can easily be instantiated with

npm create vite@latest

note that npm run <arg> is defined in package.json

Navigate to whichever localhost:PORT/PTDatabaseApp URL Vite chose for the server. The link should be written to STDOUT so keep an eye on your shell after running the command above.

This application uses Svelte, Typescript, Tailwind, and daisyUI.

Svelte

Svelte is a tool for building fast web applications, similar to React, Angular, or Vue.

I highly recommend going through the quick tutorial that Svelte maintainers have prepared.

Typescript

Typescript is a superset of Javascript. It is statically typed (strong typing enforcement like in C or C++) as opposed to the dynamically typed Javascript (what are types?). Typescript is also more object-oriented (supports interfaces for example), while Javascript is a more prototype based language.

Typescript is compiled into Javascript by the TSC compiler. Install Node.js on your system and then use npm to install the compiler

npm install -g typescript

Then you can compile a typescript file as such

tsc app.ts

and then run the compiled js file using node as such

node app.js

Once you become familiar with Typescript, you will never go back to plain Javascript.

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind's utility-first fundamentals favor inline CSS in HTML files over maintaining separate CSS classes for each component. It focuses on building complex components from a constrained set of primitive utilities (the utilities offered by Tailwind through <div class="">). Building designs through Tailwind's utilities

• Saves energy investing class names for everything
• Reduces the overall CSS complexity of a project
• Makes changes feel safer (changing a CSS class might unintentionall affect another component that uses this class)

Although it may feel like basically inline css but with shorter text, Tailwind's utility classes provide advantages over inline styles such as

• Designing with constraints: The predefined design system makes it easier to build visually consistent UI
• Responsive design: @media breakpoints can easily be factored in through the sm, md, lg, xl, and 2xl prefixes
• Hover, focus, and other states: Inline styles cannot target states like hover or focus, while Tailwind's state variants make it easy through prefixes.

In this project, Tailwind directives are located in app.css

daisyUI

daisyUI is a Tailwind CSS component library. There are a million of component libraries to choose from when using Svelte and Tailwind. I chose this because I liked their components.

ptdatabaseapp's Issues

Source Map errors

Since this commit back when this project switched over to Vite, we've had persistent

$: Source map for "/.../node_modules/@material" points to missing source files

result in source map errors when compiling.

Source Maps are used by debuggers to display TS code while running the mapped ts->js code.
Materials Icons did not cause any source map issues before migrating, so it shouldn't now either.

Does not cause issues; however, it is an eyesore when running the application.

Switch to `SvelteAdd`

Based on this issue that I faced when trying to use DaisyUI tables, I may want to migrate the project to use svelteadd.

It's not necessary to do this but it should make future integrations easier if needed. Currently tailwind and postcss integrations have proven to induce massive amounts of frustration and headaches 🥲

Wrong lab time

This lab has the wrong time after being parsed. Fix it.

313 - 501 from Fall 2022 labs