Add notification table and model for in-system notifications

[samindiii]

Description

This PR contains backend changes from PR:60 by Sahiru. The first five commits are Sahiru's and have already been reviewed in the relevant PR. In his PR, he created the backend for the Staff Grant Extension Feature and additionally created the backend notification system for emails.

This PR contains the backend notification system for in-system notifications. Since we currently do not have a way to persist notifications to display on the onTrack homepage, I created a notifications table and associated model. This table will store notifications for each user along with an associated message. This functionality can be extended in the future to store a boolean read value etc. The model has a relation with the user object so that we can access notifications for a specific user.

In terms of the Staff Grant Extension feature, a notification is created whenever an extension is granted successfully. This means we have a way of persisting the notification so that it doesn't just exist in memory but can be stored until it is read and deleted by the user. Additionally added tests to check that a notification is created when an extension is granted successfully.

Type of change

• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)

How Has This Been Tested?

To test this:

In your terminal, change directory to doubtfire-api - if you are in doubtfire-deploy, simply run the following

cd doubtfire-api

Run the following to apply pending migrations and update your database schema:

rails db:migrate

Run all test files using the following command:

rails test

Run the staff grant extension test using the following command:

rails test test/api/staff_grant_extension_test.rb

Additionally, if you want to test the notifications system integration with the front end, pull the front end code from PR:353 This means you can now view your notifications on the ontrack homepage.

1. Login as student (astudent, password)
2. Open a rails console
3. Create a new notification for user_id: 13 (a_student has a user_id of 13 in my db- it might not be the same for you)
   Notification.create!(user_id: 13, message: "Test notification for student 13")
4. Navigate to your homepage and check that you have a new notification (red number on top of the bell)

Checklist:

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project
• I have performed a self-review of my own code
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation if appropriate
• My changes generate no new warnings
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• I have created or extended unit tests to address my new additions
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes
• Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules

If you have any questions, please contact @macite or @jakerenzella.

[SahiruWithanage]

Hey Samindi !

I've reviewed the pr and it looks solid! The code is concise and follows the project's patterns well. I like how you've structured the database with a clean notification model connected to users and your API endpoints for fetching and deleting notifications are well-implemented.

A few minor suggestions that might be worth considering: adding some basic validations to the Notification model (e.g., presence/length for message), adding tests specifically for the notification API endpoints to ensure complete coverage and implementing pagination for the GET endpoint as notifications could accumulate over time (for an example someone might not click this at all for a long time and decides to click it only to get flooded with notifications).

I ran the Rails tests and no issues came up related to this implementation, which is a good sign but worth considering adding some test cases specific for this feature.

Overall, this provides a good foundation for the in-system notifications that accomplishes the goal of showing extension notifications to students. Great work!!

[JoeMacl]

Tested everything and it’s working great! Code is well structured and easy to follow.

As Sahiru mentioned, it’d be great to add some basic validations to the notification model like presence: true and maybe a character limit for the message. Also, adding pagination to the GET /notifications endpoint would help handle cases where students accumulate a lot of notifications over time.

Overall, great job! :)

[aNebula]

@samindiii LGTM. Please open an upstream pull request against 9.x branch in /doubtfire-lms/doubtfire-api.
Remember to include the description and link frontend PRs (if they are opened, and vice-versa)

[samindiii]

Fixed up the code based on Sahiru and Joe's suggestions. Added a new test for the notifications API
rails test test/api/notifications_api_test.rb