Public Lab Research note


GSOC - Upgrade Plot to Rails 4 and Email Notification Overhaul

by aayushgupta1 | March 26, 2017 10:24 26 Mar 10:24 | #14060 | #14060

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About me

My name is Aayush Gupta. I am a programmer and a web developer. I code in Ruby. I am a third year computer science student in Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal. I have been working with this code for 4-5 months now and quite know it well now.

Affiliation Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal

Location: Manipal, India

Project description

I plan on upgrading the plots code from Rails 3 to Rails 4.2 and upgrade email notifications for new features such as reply by email, per user notification preference, scheduled email jobs, etc.

Abstract/summary (<20 words):

In my project I plan to upgrade the plots code from Raills 3 to Rails 4/5 and Upgrade email notifications for new features such as reply by email, per user notification preference, scheduled email jobs, etc.

Problem

The plots code uses Rails 3.2.20 which is an old and outdated version. It lacks many features that the new Rails 4 provides. Advanced email features greatly improve usability and user-friendliness.

Timeline/milestones

May 8 - May 22 (3 Weeks)

Community Bonding Period: Setup a slack communcation to stay in contact with my mentor. Go through the code thoroughly again. Give a proper idea of the process that will be followed to go about the process to the mentor. Proper a flow diagram of the working of the plots2 codebase and how I will go about it .

May 30 - June 26 (4 weeks)

This period is what I will use to fully have Plots2 upgraded to Rails 4.

Week 1:

Upgrade by patch versions to monitor deprecation warnings. Currently we're on Rails 3.2.20. Reaching 3.2.22 version and fixing all the deprecation errors that occur during the upgrade will be the main task of the first week after which we can look to jumping to Rails 4.0.

Week 2:

While upgrading from Rails 3 to Rails 4, we can use rake task (rake app:update) which is inbuilt in it.It shoots up an interactive session to help with the upgrade. It indicates what all changes should be done and what all are being done. After bumping our Rails version to Rails 4. This task will be run to help us. All errors will be fixed in this week and the making sure all gems work with Ruby 2.0 as is the preferred Ruby version for Rails 4.

Week 3 & 4:

The last two weeks before the Rails 4 milestone achievement will be to upgrade the code to the syntax changes made in the current version of ruby and upgrading the gems. In this period we will also correct and implement several changes that have been introduced in Rails 4 that concern Active Record, Active Model, Action Pack and Active Support.

June 26 - June 30 (1 week)

Phase 1 evaluations.

July 3 - July 24 (3 weeks)

Implementation of Email Notification Overhaul

Week 1:

Keep a track locally of what the user is intrested in and then query that from the server as a normal user request. This is done so that the user doesn't feel that they are being spied on. This data won't be saved on the server.

Week 2:

Work on subscribing the users to a specific Tag that the user is interested in. Email them of any updates on the article that they are following, any specific tag they have subscribed to or any new article relevant to that. Improve tag subscriptions when tags are added late to reduce delay in sending emails.

Week 3:

Working on the reply to the comments using emails. Use the email to recognise the person, retrieve his username and then post it as them.

July 24 - July 30 (1 week)

Phase 2 evaluations.

July 31 -- August 7 (1 week)

Week 4:

Write and run test cases to check if all the work done in the email notification part is working and is working. In case there is an error, correct it and check it again.

August 8 - August 25 (4 weeks)

Attempt to upgrade from Rails 4 to Rails 5. In this period I will also clean my code, do proper documentation if anyone in future is working on it. Wrap up any work that remains. Work on some bugs that, if any time is left.

August 25 - August 29 (1 week)

Submission of all deliverables: Upgraded applicatication, Implementation of Email Notification and updates(all tested, up and running)

August 29 - September 5 (1 week)

Final evaluation from mentor.

Needs

_No seperate resources would be needed as such. I would just need some guidance from my mentor._

Setup

_Have you forked the relevant codebases?

Yes, I have forked it and keep on updating from the master on a regular basis.

Link: https://github.com/aayushgupta1/plots2

I installed and run the server locally on my laptop.

I also have it set up on https://ide.c9.io/aayushgupta1/aayush_gsoc._


Experience

_I learned coding in my high school and got an interest in it since then. Since then I am in to coding. Started on C++ to Python and currently on Ruby.

Have you looked over our welcome page and are you familiar with how to make your first contribution? Have you already?_

_Yes, I have my first contribution. Rather, I have made some significant contributions to the plots code in the past._


Teamwork:

_I have done an internship in L&T in the automation department (closed source) where I worked in a team of 10 people. Did some automation for some processes using python and some tools that they use within the company. I liked working with the team as they were eager to help and taught me a lot.

I have worked on github for several of my projects that I did for my college and school as a developer.

I am driven by a eagerness to learn and implement whatever I learn. I like to implement my knowledge in the real world and make a change._


Passion

_I like to use my knowledge in the real world and make a change. _So, I don't leave an opportunity to make a change. As you are making the world a better place to be in, I would like to make a my contribution to it. I like the work you do and would help you do it._

Commitment:

As I am a student, I am free during the summer for 3 months. I will dedicate my time for this and do whatever it takes to complete this project. I would take it as a full time job.


5 Comments

@jywarren Please go over the proposal and give suggestions.

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Hi, I'm traveling at the moment and hope to check in on his tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

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Okay @warren. Do let me know if you have any suggestions.

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Hi, @aayushgupta1 - have you looked at some of the ways to accomplish the tasks in the proposal? For example, scheduled jobs using ActiveJob (i think it's called) and some of my suggestions from this comment: https://publiclab.org/notes/Khamba/03-13-2017/gsoc-proposal-email-notifications-overhaul#c16409

I think it's important to start thinking about how to break this up into self-contained, testable modules that do separate things, which you could implement once per week (for example). Seeing a little more research into how to do things like run scheduled actions and collect all subscriptions and run through them to send emails, would be a helpful addition. Thanks!

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@jywarren This has been updated. Kindly check.

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