Lab 3: Grade API program

Please try to work through Tasks 0 and 1 ahead of your lab time. Your team and TA can help you during the lab if you have any trouble, so don't worry if you don't get through Task 1 before lab. There will also be some time to do this as your TA helps everyone get into teams.

Task 0: Fork and clone this repo

1. As with the previous lab activities, start by making a fork of this repo and cloning it.

Task 1: Your API Token

In order to use the Grade API, you will need to use an API Token. To obtain your token, we are going to make a simple request to the Grade API.

1. Go to https://hoppscotch.io. This is a tool like Postman, which can be used to quickly interact with APIs.
2. Beside the word GET, replace https://echo.hoppscotch.io/ with https://grade-logging-api.chenpan.ca/signUp.

Next, we need to specify the username which we want to sign up with. To do this, we add a parameter.

3. In the Parameters tab, choose + Add new and set the parameter name to utorid.
4. For its value, choose whatever username you want to use. Make note of the name you choose, as you'll use it during the lab. (Don't worry, you can repeat this process with a new username if you need to later!)
5. Press the Send button to make the request. You may receive an error that the request didn't go through. Scroll down and select proxy as the middleware and press Send again. You should now see the result of the request.
6. If the username had been used before, you will see a response indicating that. Choose a new username and send the request again.

You can also refer to apiDocuments/signUp.md in this repo for the documentation of this API request.

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Alternative to the above: Enter https://grade-logging-api.chenpan.ca/signUp?utorid=USERNAME in any web browser with USERNAME replaced with the username you want to use.

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7. Create a new file called username.txt in the root directory of your project and record your username and API token in that file. This file is indicated in the .gitignore for your project, so its name will appear yellow in IntelliJ to indicate that git will ignore the file (it won't be version controlled). This can be useful to ensure that you don't accidentally share private information (like personal API tokens) or configurations specific to your local environment when working on a team project.

Now that you have your API token, the last step is to get your program to use it. To do so, we are going to set an environment variable in the run configuration.

Note: at this point, you should be able to run the program, but it is possible that the Maven project didn't automatically build. If you have errors that won't let you run the code in the next step, you may need to reload the Maven project. You can do this by right-clicking on the pom.xml file in your project. In the context menu, choose Maven -> reload project. This should resolve any errors.

8. Try running the main application (src/main/java/app/gui/GUI). When you start the program, you will see that it says your API Token is null (since we haven't set it yet). Stop the program and go to Run -> Edit Configurations....

9. Open the Run Configuration for GUI and find the Environment Variables: field.

   • Note: If you don't see this Run Configuration listed:
     • create a new Run Configuration of type Application (use the + in the top left corner of the window).
     • where it says "Main class", type app.gui.GUI.

10. In that field, type API_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN, with YOUR_TOKEN replaced with your actual API Token which you saved in username.txt.

11. Click Apply and then OK.

12. Now, rerun the program and you should see your API token displayed.

13. Enter a valid grade for 207 in the Log a Grade menu. You should see a popup telling you that your grade was successfully entered. You can then check your grade by using the Get a Grade menu and specifying your username and 207 for the course.

You are now ready to use the program! The following task will be completed with your team during the lab. First, make sure everyone has successfully completed the steps above.

Task 2: Forming a team

As a team-building exercise, you will now work together to form a team using this application. Team members in this program are able to view the grades of other team members.

1. Choose a team name. Make it something unique to your team, as other teams will also be picking team names and duplicate names aren't allowed.

2. Have one member of your team complete this form with your group information: https://forms.office.com/r/CmZwheVzG0

3. Each other member of the team should then join the team on Quercus. Make sure you see the popup confirming that you successfully joined the team.

4. Try looking up the grade another team member entered for 207 using the Get a Grade menu.

Now that you are all on the team, there is one coding task for your team to work on today!

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Note: If your team finds it convenient to work on parts of this lab on a common machine, you can create different run configurations (copy an existing one) which each use a different API_TOKEN environment variable. Then you can run multiple instances of the program and enter requests as different users.

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Task 3: Coding a new feature

While this program has some useful core functionality which is provided by the Grade API, there are certain things that the Grade API can't currently do.

1. As a team, brainstorm some potential additional features that this program could have. Aim to come up with one feature per team member.

2. For each feature, think about whether it is possible to implement, given the current functionality provided by the Grade API. If it isn't possible, identify what new capabilities would need to be added. If it is possible, think about what steps would need to be taken to implement the feature in the program.

3. You may have noticed that the functionality for My Team -> Get Average Grade isn't actually implemented yet (see the TODOs in the code). As a team, work to implement this feature and confirm that it works.

Note: Your team can choose how you want to work on this part, but below are our suggestions.

Suggested logistics: One of you should invite the others to collaborate on their fork of the original repo on GitHub. You can do this in your repo on GitHub under Settings -> Collaborators. This will allow you to push branches to a common repo and then use pull requests to contribute your code and review.

Task 4 (If You Have Time)

If your team finishes the above task and has extra time, we encourage you to go through the code base in more detail and think critically about the code structure. What strikes you as being a good design? What feels like it could be improved or restructured to make the code better? How easy would it be to implement new functionality into the program?

In the lecture next week, we will finish our initial tour of Clean Architecture with a full example designed with Clean Architecture in mind. You might find it useful to revisit this code base after to see what parts align with Clean Architecture and which parts do not.