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Google Summer Of Code @MIT App Inventor
About My Self
Name: Devarsh Mavani
Country: India
Education: B.E. in Information Technology
College: Vishwakarma Government Engineering College
About My Project at GSoC
Project Name: Implement auto-attach aia file in community
Organisation: MIT App Inventor
Mentor: Jeff Schiller
Project Proposal Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1bXVxdIC5ar839bz1CD5iIf-vXP6ftXAE5EGMfOVZxvA/edit?usp=sharing
Project Pull Request: https://github.com/mit-cml/appinventor-sources/pull/2790
Project Abstract:
While developing apps using MIT App Inventor, students often need help. For this MIT App Inventor has a community where students can reach out for help. While the community is very helpful and makes development easier, it would be even more convenient and time-saving to have a user interface on the App Inventor website itself from which users can directly ask questions in the community and project files can be automatically uploaded on community website along with that (instead of manually downloading and uploading).
How will this help students?
Currently, students need to manually export their project files and then upload them to the app inventor community which is time-consuming and a bit complex. With the help of an auto-publish feature, students can easily ask for help in the community within the app inventor.
Project Goals
Implement Authentication using Discourse connect provider
Create UI in app inventor for asking a question
Auto attach project source files (aia files)
Show already asked questions in real-time
Implementation
Front-end
appengine/war/AskHelp.html: This file contains interface for taking input from user. There are mainly 4 fields, title description, category and attach project file checkbox. It contains javascript that communicates with GWT.
CommunityLogin.html: this file contains a button that triggers authentication flow
SimilarQuestions.html: It displays similar questions. Communicates with GWT => backend for fetching similar questions
GWT
client/TopToolbar.java: This file display toolbar on top. I have added a new menu inside of Help menu. When user clicks on a pop-up dialog will appear. In this user can authenticates himself and write questions and submit it. I have taken advantage of IFrames to display frontend part (made in html/css). I have also written code that will communicate with Backend using Remote Procedure Calls
RPC
shared/rpc/communityhelp/SubmitPostService.java: It defines a RemoteService having 4 methods: submitPost, uploadFile, getDiscourseCategories, getSimilarTopics
shared/rpc/communityhelp/SubmitPostServiceAsync.java: Same as SubmitPostService.java but defines async code as required by gwt
shared/rpc/user/User.java: added 2 new properties and its getters and setters. 1st is communityLogin which shows if user is logged in to community and other is communityLoginUsername, which stores username of discourse
shared/rpc/user/UserInfoService.java: have defined methods related to RPC being made from GWT client. ex: loginToCommunity, logoutFromCommunity, etc.
Server
server/CommunityLoginServlet.java: This servlet handles authentication with discourse using discourse identity provider.
server/SubmitPostServiceImpl.java: Contains implementation for methods defined in SubmitPostService.java
server/UserInfoServiceImpl.java: Contains implementation for methods defined in UserInfoService.java
Weekly work done
Week 1 : Setup discourse (one of the dependency). Discussed about approach for creating user interface (IFrames + HTML vs GWT).
Week 2: Worked on UI and Discussed about authentication approach (password vs Discourse identity provider)
Week 3: Created initial User interface for all screens
Week 4: Started working on authentication
Week 5: Fixed bugs related to authentication
Week 6: Fixed bug in Discourse identity provider (see my version of it github.com/devarsh-mavani-19/discourse )
Week 7: Implemented question posting functionality
Week 8 - 12: Fixing bugs and finalising UI.
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