This app is meant to automate the attendance tracking and maintenance process for teachers teaching via online platforms. The only thing required of the teacher is to register the courses and upload the attendance reports available via the platforms. The app takes care of the entire process of date-wise logging and tracking, as well as other filtering features. The teachers can download attendance and defaulter reports in two formats (XLSX, CSV).
All the features of the app can be found under the Help section of the hosted app at http://attendance-aep.herokuapp.com/

RUNNING THE APP:

1. Run via Docker (or go to step 2):
   • Note: This process will take up 1.03 GB of data. Also, use sudo with the docker commands if you are getting a permissions error.
   • Build the image: docker build . -t attendance_image
   • Run the container: docker run -p 5000:5000 attendance_image
2. Run manually:
   • Note: It is recommended that you do the following inside a virtual environment so that the dependencies don't mess up your system. A very easy and simple guide you can follow to set it up.
   • Install dependencies: pip3 install -r requirements.txt
   • Set the environment variable: export FLASK_APP=app.py
   • Run the app: flask run

ASSUMPTIONS:

• The Roll Number field provided in the course details file is the same as the Full Name field in the MS Team report and the Your Roll Number field in the Google Form responses. This is extremely important for the attendance tracking to happen. As a workaround to this, the Roll Number field can be put the same as the Name in the course details file.
• Only XLSX and CSV formats are accepted.
• A course is distinguished by a combination of its ID and Batch. For example, a course CS50 can have multiple entries, distinguished by its batch year (like 2016, 2017 etc)
• A meeting starts and ends on the same calendar day. This means that an uploaded attendance report having multiple dates in the timestamps will provide the user with an error.
• Any and all dates associated will be in the day, month, year format.

FILE INFO:

• Dockerfile - used to containerise this app.

• files - is the standard upload directory configured in the app. It is used as temporary store for all uploaded and created files. It is refreshed every time the index route is visited.

• static - contains all the static assets used in the app (CSS & JS files)

  • bootstrap - contains all the template design code
  • css - has an additional stylesheet style.css
  • js - has an additional script script.js which is imperative to the functionality of the app, not the API

• templates - has all the HTML files used in the app

  • layout.html - contains boilerplate HTML code and links to all the static files.
  • home.html - extends layout.html and is shown when the user is logged in.
  • index.html - extends layout.html and is shown when the user is logged out.
  • help.html* - extends layout.html and shows the complete guide for using the webapp.

• app.py - contains all the routes needed for the app and the API. It has one extra route not used in the app (api_signup) but imperative for the API.

• db_util.py - contains utility functions pertaining to database querying.

• decorators.py - contains decorators created for different kinds of error handling.

• file_util.py - contains utility functions pertaining to file handling. It contains the core logic of this app (parsing the input files and creating reports).

• requirements.txt - states all the dependencies which have to be installed to run this app.

In the test_files directory:

• students.csv - example file showing how course info has to be uploaded to the app. A file of this format has to be attached when adding a course.
• Test.** files - are example reports showing how attendance info has to be uploaded to the app. A file of this format in either XLSX or CSV has to be uploaded when adding attendance.
• One XLSX file showing how the downloaded attendance report looks like. The same can be downloaded in CSV format.
• One CSV file showing the downloaded defaulter report looks like. The same can be downloaded in XLSX format.

Additionally, the complete documentation for the usage of the API has been included as a PDF file. Using these instructions, the API has been independently made use of in another application called testing for AEPWeb.

FUTURE SCOPE:

• Take the defaulter cutoff as input
• Check whether Threshold is less than meeting duration
• Add JS examples for each endpoint in the API documentation
• Tighten up security to further prevent unauthorised access