schezfaz/core

Course Refiner (CoRe) v1.0

https://courserefiner.tech

Introduction

CoRe (or Course Refiner) is a webapp that sources the cheapest courses from major learning platforms, like Udemy and Udacity, and displays them in a comparative fashion. Alongside this, CoRe also displays similar free resources such as YouTube playlists that cover the same CS content.

Description

Accessibility to education, especially CS education, comes at a price. Quite literally. There are a vast number of resources and courses available on the internet, however for somebody who is trying to self-learn, it is difficult to find quality resources at a low cost. One of the biggest hindrances to availing a CS education/resources is the cost of these courses that one has to bear. With CoRe, finding free or low-cost CS content is a few keystrokes away.

Technologies/OS Projects

The frontend is a React app that uses Stylex.

The backend is a Node.JS/Express app that uses third-party APIs (i.e. YouTube's) to collect and aggregate course information.

How to run

If you'd like to run your own instance of the app, here's how

1. In your terminal of choice, build the frontend: Optionally run the following in a node virtual environment.

$ cd frontend
$ yarn
$ yarn install
$ yarn build

2. In another terminal window, run the backend:

$ npm install
$ npm start

3. Visit the website at localhost:3000!

core's Issues

Implement course catalog endpoint from EdX

This resource can be utilized in order to fetch catalog information remotely https://courses.edx.org/api-docs/.

Build on the frontend with the help of Stylex

Plain CSS/JS/HTML to be used in building the frontend with the integration with Stylex

Implement Udacity course API

Since edX implementation is looking less likely, @schezfaz suggested looking for other sources for coursework. I will start with Udacity's API

Explore the Coursera API from the network tab in browser developer tools

As Karan Sheth remarked, the API endpoints would be visible from the network tab in the browser's developer tools and that would not be needing any API keys to make it function.

This would need some investigating before actually getting down to its implementation.

Implement YouTube API for free courses and their comparison

There is a plethora of free courses on YouTube which should be included in the comparison.

Investigate ASCIIDoctor for ANTORA Integration in the frontend

The assignee has to have an interaction with ASCIIDoctor

Register a .tech domain

Register a domain for CourseRefiner (CoRe)

Setting up an end-to-end boilerplate for the project

This would help form the foundation of the project

Fetch information about course catalog from Coursera

This resource can be utilized in order to fetch catalog information remotely https://course-catalog-api-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro_edx_apis.html and https://build.coursera.org/app-platform/catalog/#:~:text=The%20Catalog%20APIs%20expose%20the,without%20authentication%20over%20the%20internet

Writing a backend to fetch information from the public API

The backend would be built in Node.JS.

Add gitignore and License

Add an opensource license and a gitignore file.