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CodeAbbey - opensource initiative

It is a website with programming exercises - you can quickly deploy it on your own server (even free hosting) - and build something like ProjectEuler or Rosalind.Info. Actually, it is more powerful as problems you create will include data generator / checker code, so that users are every time provided with newly generated, random set of data (and of course, another answer is expected every time).

This project started as https://www.codeabbey.com in September of 2013 and is now (as of summer 2024) moving to opensource, so that everyone can quickly setup similar website for personal coding puzzle collection, or for school, enterprise company needs (e.g. for interviewing, screening candidates).

Quick video-demo: deploy CodeAbbey site at free web-hosting

For proof-testing we also started a couple other site based on these sources:

  • collection of industrial-oriented problems (from interviews etc): Ca4pro.com
  • dedicated to exercises in Physics: Alferov's Peace

Instructions

Here are two parts - one about how it works and another about how to run it. Consult them in any order according to your needs.

How it works

To make studying the project easier it could be done in steps. These steps are represented by certain points (branches) in repository, as more and more functionality are added.

Step 15 - Languages list customization

This is a small but somewhat painful piece :) During the lifetime of CodeAbbey the list of languages (used to mark solutions, primarily) have grown - some languages there are pretty specific to the site (e.g. Asm4004 and SQLite), others may be so rare you won't like to include them in your site.

Now the list lives also in conf.php under the name of $ctx->elems->conf->languages - it is a "key-value" list (or associative array) where values are how the language is named in user interface, while keys - how they are called in the database etc. For many languages these match but sometimes it's preferable that the key doesn't use special characters etc.

There is another use for these languages, almost absent (yet) in opensource version - it is about running the code in the chosen language in user's interface. For most of languages this requires sending the code from browser to server and then either executing them here (e.g. it is a situation with BASIC or RegExp which are actually executed by PHP interpreter), or sending further to "sandbox" server. Some could be instead executed in-browser. Of such the only one is present for now - javascript. As a exercise (somewhat advanced and not 5-minutes work) you may try to attach some python interpreter implemented in javascript (perhaps, brython) - or other more lightweight language - and create here button for it.

Functionality to run sources in sandbox is absent now mainly for the reason that setting up a sandbox server is a separate matter (and unlike main site it couldn't run on free hosting) - but if you inspect code on main CodeAbbey website you'll see how requests are sent to dedicated controller. You can either implement something here yourself or ask me for further guidance about creating sandbox. But I recommend not doing this until you feel the most of main functionality is sturdy enough and your site is steaming well :)

How to run

This is a typical PHP + MySQL application, so you need an http-server with PHP interpreter and MySQL (MariaDB).

There are THREE ways to launch this zoo relatively easily.

Docker

Docker is something resembling virtual-machine (but not exactly) widely used in industry. We describe the content of "containers" we need in a file (or few) and docker prepares everything. You'll need to install docker itself (there could be subtle steps like setting user group in linux but generally it is not much complicated) - this is available in linux, windows and OsX. Then run files docker-build.sh to build an image containing our Apache2 httpd + PHP server with MariaDB in one. then docker-run.sh to launch container from it. If all is fine, the site should be ready at http://localhost:8080/

To initialize database: open http://localhost:8080/sqlexec.php and copy-paste content of the file dbinit.sql into the textarea, then click exec.

Free (Shared) Hosting

Pick some free hosting, for example AwardSpace / AtWebpages and simply copy files there. If you'll get error because RewriteRules exist in .htaccess while the server has no rewrite module enabled, and you can't control it - just comment these lines.

Then you'll get the site running on the web. There could be some limitations about some auxiliary functions (e.g. 3rd party login etc) but that's not much important for you now (such things anyway require efforts to setup).

Setup database: this is done with control-panel of the hosting - generally you are provided with some database name and connection info and create user here via web-interface. So then you need to put corresponding settings into conf.php file and populate database with tables, for which use the content of dbinit.sql except first few lines (no user or db creation) with some query running tool in the web-interface.

LAMPP / XAMPP

With this approach you'll find software package (by the name XAMPP probably) which contains HTTP server, PHP and MySQL inside and set up on your machine. It is not very difficult also and in some respects more handy than with docker. Then copy files there and setup database. For managing database there should be PHPMyAdmin web tool in the LAMPP packet - make use of it and generally follow instructions for shared hosting given above.

Customization

It is natural that after your deploy succeeds and you see the website running with joy, you may want to change its name, title and some general fragments. This is what we call "customization". What makes customization a bit tedious, is that you want to keep compatibility with the original sources, so that when "upstream" repository updates, you can update your site in as simple way as possible.

This means that simply starting tweaking all files carelessly may be not exactly what you want - with the first update you'll inadvertently override half of your changes!

We are trying to simplify this for you and by now this is achieved with the following:

  • you need not modify file conf.php in the root, instead just drop along it the similar file named cust_conf.php and put your real secrets and settings here (feel free to remove all lines that do not differ, these files are loaded one after another); of course you should never commit your file with real secrets to any public repository etc!
  • find settings with project name, webpage general title, site author etc in the conf.php - and update them to your taste and needs (of course, again do it in cust_conf.php).
  • if you want to replace some fragments files, just copy them with some new name (e.g. copy main_bottomnote.html to main_bottomextra.html, then go to configuration file and find array custFrag, put replacement here, e.g. 'main_bottomnote' => 'main_bottomextra', then make any changes in this new fragment file instead; also you can use empty name if you want some fragment to be removed (by default it happens to adblock fragment).