LAN Party planning application
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Since our last post, we’ve added several additions to pLANer. We added validation for all of the user-entered fields on the registration page using regex. We validate emails according to a shortened version of the RFC 2822 standard, and check that phone numbers have a valid set of 10 digits with or without the usual delimiters. We may decide to validate emails or phones by sending a validation email or text in the future.
One issue with pLANer that we’re working to fix is our database. It doesn’t pass the ACID test; specifically, the atomicity aspect of the ACID test. Through bug testing, we found that when multiple users were updating the database from different clients that are talking to the same server, they had the chance to overwrite each other’s changes. Our initial research indicated that how the server was implemented was the main cause for this issue. While we have been making changes to the database code, we still want to look into how the client talks with the server to make sure other issues concerning client to server communication won’t spring up from there.
We’ve implemented admin and user roles, so only admins can create LAN parties and tournaments. This role currently is set when the user registers with the server. We plan to implement a more robust system of modifying user roles in our next feature push. This is a big design goal of ours, giving moderators a lot of tools to effectively moderate pLANer.
We also added a notification system to alert users when an upcoming event is approaching. This is done through the SMTP protocol. In this regard, we can also email phone providers to be able to send text messages to pLANer users. We are working on creating a variety of options for users to choose how and when they want to be alerted.
First Post of the Spring Semester
We wanted to kick-start the first post of the new semester for Planer with some back story on where our group stands.
Some of our group members had issues with their laptops, and were waiting on replacements from Lenovo. This issue has been recently solved. Everyone has had their build environment checked to push code correctly and to work with the Twisted implementation for the database to client connection. We made sure this was in order off the bat as there have been headaches that would pop up in the past if we didn't "do our homework" here.
From our first presentation we gave to RCOS not too long ago (with working DEMO!) we wanted to post the slides. They can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/ashbyb/rcos-planer-2312-ashbyb
Currently we are focusing on adding some very important functionality including an alert system for users and Admin accounts to moderate the LAN Party. The later is our main focus because there are obvious role differences between users and admins. we have been spending a lot of time discussing exactly what privileges admins and users should have.
It is also important to us to make it clear as to whom is working on the pLANer project within RCOS, as there has been some recent confusion on group attendance due to people not being properly recognized. The members are Brendan Ashby, Michael Casper, and John Skurka. Andrew Bradley is listed as a group member in a "legacy" sense due to his work on the project in the past. Also, we would like to formally thank Alex Hunt for his contributions to the project. While he is not officially tied to the project, we felt he deserved some recognition.
On a side note we are considering changing from the built in blogging platform with Dashboard to something more flexible but nothing has been decided yet.
Finally, we wanted to of course thank Moorthy for his continued support and guidance.
Please, continue to follow and read our blog posts as we make progress this semester! :)
Thanks for your time, The pLANer team
pLANer
This is our first blog post of the semester and so far we have made a lot of progress. For starters we scrapped last semester's pLANer code (for multiple reasons) and decided to start with a clean slate. The new client/server code is up and running. The client successfully logs in and authenticates itself with the server. We also have a working GUI and code to generate tournament brackets!
Next on our list of things to do is to hook the GUI into our twisted networking code and to allow the client to securely update its settings and save it to the server database. I will also be looking into sending tournament alert messages to the user's email and SMS.
