So a few days back the GSoC 2014 came to an end. After the midterm evaluation, I had the following tasks to be completed:
- A Navigation bar
- Search by Trait
- User rights management
- Validations
- Update usability
- Status flag (whether the value is approved)
- Admin privileges
- Data import
- Data export
Navigation Bar: A decent adorable Navigation bar may be seen at the top making it easier to use the features of the extension.
Navigation bar
Search by Trait: A user can search for the values of traits by selecting any one of the traits from the drop-down. The drop-downs are enhanced throughout the extension as it avoids user-mistakes (typo mistakes).
Search by Trait
User Rights Management: There are a certain features like delete material, delete trait etc. which should be accessible only to people having special privileges like sysops and bureaucrats so that the data / content is preserved from the tampering of malicious users.
Validations: It is again an essential part of the application as the data to be entered should be valid and consistent. In order to keep a check on this, HTML5 is brought into action to serve for proper validations.
Update: This was also an inevitable and desired feature which lets the user edit / update an attribute or a value which may require rectification or updation later on.
Status: This flag indicates whether a particular value is approved by BRL-CAD admins or not. Digit “1” denotes “approval” whereas “0” denotes “pending”.
Admin privileges: The super privileges of admin include delete material, delete trait and approve the values.
Admin privileges
Data import: Right now the data can be imported in one format ie JSON. This feature would be extended soon to import data in some other formats.
Data export: The data can be exported in JSON, XML and CSV.
The extension already supported the following features by the midterm :
- Sign up / Sign in using the MediaWiki modules.
- Add Material
- Add Trait
- Delete Material
- Delete Trait
- Search by Material
- View all Materials
- Keeping track of when a material/trait was added using timestamp.
- Keeping track of the user who added material/trait.
So far this was one of my best experiences with working on live projects and that too of international stratum. I am lucky to have contributed to BRL-CAD which is the epitome of its field. I can apparently observe in myself qualities recently evolved like time management, focus, grappling-ability with deadlines and above all confidence. Talking to international developers was like unprecedented opportunity for me. All in all, GSoC 2014 taught me a plethora of things which I would not have learnt by resting in my own isolated well. I would also like to extend my latent thanks to my latent benefactors. 🙂
I am now looking forward to improve the Materials Database Extension so that it can be used more effectively.
CoderAlbert 