natrank

Project status

The project has been retired in its alpha stage.

What is it?

Natrank was a national football team ranking web application using a modified version of the Elo rating system. The goal of the project was to create software which would power a website serving the same purpose as World Football Elo Ratings, but with more data to explore and much improved user experience.

Screenshots

• Full world ranking
• Team profile
• Abridged ranking for an arbitrary date
• Match results
• Admin panel

Modules

Backend

Provides access to match and ranking data through REST-like endpoints. The Admin module makes it possible for the administrator to, among other tasks, import match data using a web interface.

Some of the technologies and tools used: Java 8, Spring Boot, Spring Web MVC, Jackson, Spring Security, MySQL, Hibernate 5, Spring Data JPA, JSP, JSTL, Bootstrap 3, Maven.

Frontend

A single-page application that accesses the data provided by the backend module via AJAX requests and presents a web interface for the user to browse the data.

Some of the technologies and tools used: TypeScript, React, MobX, Sass, yarn, webpack, Highcharts. In the old iteration (frontend-old): JavaScript (ES5), AngularJS, Less, Bootstrap 3, Bower, npm, Grunt, Yeoman, generator-cg-angular, Highcharts.

Running

Backend

The database Docker container is so set up that the database is prepopulated with match data up to the 1950 World Cup.

a) Run both the database and the server within Docker containers

1. cd natrank/backend
2. docker-compose up

b) Only run the database within a Docker container

1. cd natrank/backend
2. docker build --tag natrank-db db
3. docker run -d -p 3306:3306 --rm natrank-db
4. DB_HOST=localhost:3306 ./mvnw spring-boot:run (remember to use Java 8)

c) Run both the database and the server without Docker

1. cd natrank/backend
2. Start MySQL
3. mysql -h localhost:3306 -u <USER> -p <PASSWORD> < db/schema.sql
4. Configure DB username and password in src/main/resources/application.yml
5. DB_HOST=localhost:3306 ./mvnw spring-boot:run (remember to use Java 8)

Frontend

1. cd natrank/frontend
2. yarn && yarn start

Unfinished tasks

• Split backend into core api and admin modules
• Ranking algorithm refinements (switch to Glicko-2?)
• More of fun historical charts/graphs/listings etc.
• Improved tooling for data importing and maintenance
• Automatic match database and ranking updates
• Regional rankings
• Performance investigation and potential improvements
• ...

Licensing

See the COPYING.md file.