Info Depot Web Application

Info Depot is an application that enables students to share and view information that they have found useful pertaining to their classes and projects. See the changelog for detailed information about updates to the website.

Initial Development: Spring Term 2019

Contributors

• Symon Ramos (ramossy@oregonstate.edu)
• Thien Nam (namt@oregonstate.edu)
• Braden Hitchcock (hitchcob@oregonstate.edu)

Development

The following resources provide information about how to develop the website locally and the workflow for pushing changes to the staging area and subsequently deploying them to production.

• Local Development Setup
• Development Workflow

In addition, create a pre-commit hook that will ensure fill permissions are set accordingly before you commit code. To do this, copy the scripts/pre-commit.sh file and save it as pre-commit in your local .git/hooks directory. Also ensure it is executable.

cp scripts/pre-commit.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit
chmod a+x .git/hooks/pre-commit

Structural Overview

• All HTML pages are rendered inside of PHP files in the pages/ folder.

• All database management is handled by database access objects in the lib/classes/DataAccess/ and lib/shared/classes/DataAccess/ directories. Any additional queries required to accomplish site functionality should be included in these DAOs (or in a new DAO in the same namespace/file location).

• All database configuration is located in a private directory outside this repository in a database.ini file.

• Third-party authentication provider IDs and secrets are located outside this repository in a auth.ini file.

• The db/upload.php file handles uploading images to the images/ folder that the user provides.

• All external CSS and JS files are located in the assets/css/ and assets/js/ respectively. An internal CSS file called assets/css/infodepot.css contains customized CSS proporties relevant to this application.

  Please be aware that this CSS file is global and will modify the entire application to adhere to its standards. (EX: modifying the background color of the "body" element will modify all "body" elements of all pages, not just a single one.) Please create new classes whenever applicable.

• The modules/header.php file contains all references to external CSS and JS files. The header.php and footer.php files should be included in all files in the pages/ directory.

• The modules/mailer.php file contains all e-mail handling functions.

• The modules/ folder contains encapsulated code that is shared between multiple files in the pages/ folder. Whenever possible , please consolidate duplicate functionality into a single module or folder.

User Types and Website Workflow Design

**Users have the ability to: **

1. browse items.
2. create items.
3. upvote/downvote and comment on items.

Database Architecture

Authentication data is located in a database.ini file outside this repository. The Tekbots Web Dev Team's shared Google Drive contains documentation on the internal structure of database tables used in this site.

Database Name: eecs_projectsubmission Server Name: engr-db Groups

Login Authentication

Within pages/login.php, the auth_providers/login_with_[authenticator].php script is executed on login button click. Login credentials required to interface with the authenticator are:

• redirect_uri
• client_id
• client_secret

Each authenticator will provide different user info configurations but will have sufficient data needed to create a new user. All new users are defaulted as Students and are re-directed to pages/login.php with a new portal section.

Users must contact an administrator of this application in order to be given the access level of admin.

Admin Interface

Session Variables

Session variables are used to persist user data throughout the course of a user's active session. The instantiation of these variables occur in the following workflow:

1. The user visits the pages/login.php page.
2. The user selects a login authentication type (EX: Google, Microsoft).
3. After successful authentication, the following session variables are instantiated and can be used in PHP throughout the entire application:
   • $_SESSION['userID']: This variable is a string of numbers.
   • $_SESSION['accessLevel']: This variable is a string that can be either:
     • "Student"
     • "Admin"
   • $_SESSION['newUser']: This variable is a boolean (either true or false).

NOTE: Please do NOT reference $_SESSION['userID'] in javascript, as Google Authentication may provide a userID that is longer than the acceptable max character length for javascript. Instead, echo the session varible in a hidden div and reference that text of that div in order to use the userID in JavaScript.

Future Implementation

• See handoff documentation in the docs/ folder.

Troubleshooting and Helpful Notes

Problem

The u_uap_provided_id columns in the database are VARCHAR(256) and because Google Authentication returns an ID that is often times more than 64 bits, the session variable for userID can't be explicitly referenced in Javascript and will be truncated.

Solution

Create a hidden div and echo out the SESSION variable there. Then reference that div in the javascript.