Conference Central

This is a web application that enables users to create and customize conferences.

Included files:

• LICENSE
• README
• ConferenceCentral_Complete
  • static
  • templates
  • app.yaml - configuration file for the App Engine app. Contains handler urls and python libraries
  • cron.yaml - configuration file for App Engine cron jobs
  • index.yaml - contains indexes to improve ndb query times
  • conference.py - application server containing endpoints for creating, editing, and deleting conferences, sessions and profiles
  • main.py - contains handlers for task queues called in conference.py
  • models.py - contains the ndb and protorpc models
  • settings.py - contains App Engine WEB_CLIENT_ID
  • utils.py - contains getUserId function
  • LICENSE

Using the Application:

To use the application go to delta-entity-114022.appspot.com. From the homepage you can log in, edit your profile, create conferences, and view and edit conferences.

Task 1: Design Choices Response

New Session and SessionForm classes were created in models.py. The Session class is an ndb model that maps its properties to corresponding properties of Session entities in Datastore. All properties in the Session class are string data types except date and startTime, which are date and time types. This was the simplest solution for storing the data. If necessary, data can then be converted to the correct type for operations in filters after retrieving it from Datastore. SessionForms is a protorpc Messages class that defines the response-parameters for an external call to the application. All fields of SessionForm are string types, which are converted to the correct data types upon the creation of a new Session entity (date and startTime are converted to date and time data types).

The createSession endpoint takes the websafeConferenceKey as a parameter. It passes the websafeConferenceKey to the createSessionObject function. The function copies the data in the request to a dictionary object, converting the date and time fields to date and time data types, and 'puts' the data to Datastore in a new Session entity. The websafeConferenceKey is used to make the conference object the parent of the new session object. Finally, if the session-creator entered a speaker, a push task is created to check if the speaker will become the new featured speaker.

The getConferenceSessions, getConferenceSessionsByType, and getConferenceSessionsBySpeaker endpoints each take the websafeConferenceKey as a parameter, which is used to get the conference object from Datastore. We then query for all sessions with this conference as the ancestor, and apply filters in the cases of getConferenceSessionsByType and getConferenceSessionsBySpeaker.

Task 3: Additional Queries

I added two additional query types: getConferenceSessionsByDuration and getConferenceSessionsByTime. getConferenceSessionsByDuration takes as input a time (in minutes e.g. '120' for 2 hours) and returns all sessions of that duration. getConferenceSessionsByTime takes as input a time of day (24-hour time e.g. '13:00') and returns all sessions at that time.

Task 3: Query Problem

The not-equal (!=) filter is implemented by combining two inequality (>, <) filters joined by an OR operator. In Datastore, an inequality filter can be applied to at most one property per query, so applying "Session.type != workshop" and "Session.startTime < 7pm" wouldn't work. One solution would be to put the results from a query using one filterinto a temporary table and apply the other filter in a query of this new table.