recodex-wiki/Rewritten-docs.md

Introduction

@todo: Describe who we are and what is the nature of the project.

Analysis

@todo: Describe how the idea of ReCodEx originated and how we came up with the stuff we implemented.

Structure of the project

The ReCodEx project is divided into two logical parts – the Backend and the Frontend – which interact which each other and which cover the whole area of code examination. Both of these logical parts are independent of each other in the sense of being installed on separate machines on different locations and that one of the parts can be replaced with different implementation and as long as the communication protocols are preserved, the system will continue to work as expected.

Backend is the part which is responsible solely for the process of evaluation a solution of an exercise. Each evaluation of a solution is referred to as a job. For each job, the system expects a configuration document of the job, supplementary files for the exercise (e.g., test inputs, expected outputs, predefined header files), and the solution of the exercise (typically source codes created by a student). There might be some specific requirements for the job, such as a specific runtime environment, specific version of a compiler or the job must be evaluated on a processor with a specific number of cores. The backend infrastructure decides whether it will accept a job or decline it based on the specified requirements. In case it accepts the job, it will be placed in a queue and processed as soon as possible. The backend publishes the progress of processing of the queued jobs and the results of the evaluations can be queried after the job processing is finished. The backend produces a log of the evaluation and scores the solution based on the job configuration document.

Frontend on the other hand is responsible for the communication with the users and provides them a convenient access to the Backend infrastructure. The Frontend manages user accounts and gathers them into units called groups. There is a database of exercises which can be assigned to the groups and the users of these groups can submit their solutions for these assignments. The Frontend will initiate evaluation of these solutions by the Backend and it will store the results afterwards. The results will be visible to authorized users and the results will be awarded with points according to the score given by the Backend in the evaluation process. The supervisors of the groups can edit the parameters of the assignments, review the solutions and the evaluations in detail and award the solutions with bonus points (both positive and negative) and discuss about the solution with the author of the solution. Some of the users can be entitled to create new exercises and extend the database of exercises which can be assigned to the groups later on.

The Frontend developed as part of this project was created with the needs of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles university in Prague in mind. The users are the students and their teachers, groups correspond to the different courses, the teachers are the supervisors of these groups. We believe that this model is applicable to the needs of other universities, schools, and IT companies, which can use the same system for their needs. It is also possible to develop their own frontend with their own user management system for their specific needs and use the possibilities of the Backend without any changes, as was mentioned in the previous paragraphs.

In the latter parts of the documentation, both of the Backend and Frontend parts will be introduced separately and covered in more detail. The communication protocol between these two logical parts will be described as well.

The Backend

The backend is the part which is hidden to the user and which has only one purpose: evaluate user’s solutions of their assignments.

@todo: describe the configuration inputs of the Backend

@todo: describe the outputs of the Backend

@todo: describe the inner parts of the Backend (and refer to the Wiki for the technical description of the components)

@todo: describe how the backend receives the inputs and how it communicates the results

The Frontend

The frontend is the part which is visible to the user of ReCodEx and which holds the state of the system – the user accounts, their roles in the system, the database of exercises, the assignments of these exercises to groups of users (i.e., students), and the solutions and evaluations of them.

Frontend is split into three parts:

• the server-side REST API (“API”) which holds the business logic and keeps the state of the system consistent

• the relational database (“DB”) which persists the state of the system

• the client side application (“client”) which simplifies access to the API for the common users

The centerpiece of this architecture is the API. This component receives requests from the users and from the Backend, validates them and modifies the state of the system and persists this modified state in the DB.

We have created a web application which can communicate with the API server and present the information received from the server to the user in a convenient way. The client can be though any application, which can send HTTP requests and receive the HTTP responses. Users can use general applications like cURL, Postman, or create their own specific client for ReCodEx API.

Frontend capabilities

@todo: describe what the frontend is capable of and how it really works, what are the limitations and how it can be extended

Terminology

This project was created for the needs of a university and this fact is reflected into the terminology used throughout the Frontend. A list of important terms’ definitions follows to make the meaning unambiguous.

User and user roles

User is a person who uses the application. User is granted access to the application once he or she creates an account directly through the API or the web application. There are several types of user accounts depending on the set of permissions – a so called “role” – they have been granted. Each user receives only the most basic set of permissions after he or she creates an account and this role can be changed only by the administrators of the service:

• Student is the most basic role. Student can become member of a group and submit his solutions to his assignments.

• Supervisor can be entitled to manage a group of students. Supervisor can assign exercises to the students who are members of his groups and review their solutions submitted to these assignments.

• Super-admin is a user with unlimited rights. This user can perform any action in the system.

There are two implicit changes of roles:

• Once a student is added to a group as its supervisor, his role is upgraded to a supervisor role.

• Once a supervisor is removed from the lasts group where he is a supervisor then his role is downgraded to a student role.

These mechanisms do not prevent a single user being a supervisor of one group and student of a different group as supervisors’ permissions are superset of students’ permissions.

Login

Login is a set of user’s credentials he must submit to verify he can be allowed to access the system as a specific user. We distinguish two types of logins: local and external.

• Local login is user’s email address and a password he chooses during registration.

• External login is a mapping of a user profile to an account of some authentication service (e.g., CAS).

Instance

An instance of ReCodEx is in fact just a set of groups and user accounts. An instance should correspond to a real entity as a university, a high-school, an IT company or an HR agency. This approach enables the system to be shared by multiple independent organizations without interfering with each other.

Usage of the system by the users of an instance can be limited by possessing a valid license. It is up to the administrators of the system to determine the conditions under which they will assign licenses to the instances.

Group

Group corresponds to a school class or some other unit which gathers users who will be assigned the same set exercises. Each group can have multiple supervisors who can manage the students and the list of assignments.

Groups can form a tree hierarchy of arbitrary depth. This is inspired by the hierarchy of school classes belonging to the same subject over several school years. For example, there can be a top level group for a programming class that contains subgroups for every school year. These groups can then by divided into actual student groups with respect to lab attendance. Supervisors can create subgroups of their groups and further manage these subgroups.

Exercise

An exercise consists of textual assignment of a task and a definition of how a solution to this exercise should be processed and evaluated in a specific runtime environment (i.e., how to compile a submitted source code and how to test the correctness of the program). It is a template which can be instantiated as an assignment by a supervisor of a group.

Assignment

An assignment is an instance of an exercise assigned to a specific group. An assignment can modify the text of the task assignment and it has some additional information which is specific to the group (e.g., a deadline, the number of points gained for a correct solution, additional hints for the students in the assignment). The text of the assignment can be edited and supervisors can translate the assignment into another language.

Solution

A solution is a set of files which a user submits to a given assignment.

Submission

A submission corresponds to a solution being evaluated by the Backend. A single solution can be submitted repeatedly (e.g., when the Backend encounters an error or when the supervisor changes the assignment).

Evaluation

An evaluation is the processed report received from the Backend after a submission is processed. Evaluation contains points given to the user based on the quality of his solution measured by the Backend and the settings of the assignment. Supervisors can review the evaluation and add bonus points (both positive and negative) if the student deserves some.

Runtime environment

A runtime environment defines the used programming language or tools which are needed to process and evaluate a solution. Examples of a runtime environment can be “Linux + GCC”, “Linux + Mono”, “*Windows

• .NET 4*”, “Bison + Yacc.”

Limits

A correct solution of an assignment has to pass all specified tests (mostly checks that it yields the correct output for various inputs) and typically must also be effective in some sense. The Backend measures the time and memory consumption of the solution while running. This consumption of resources can be limited and the solution will receive fewer points if it exceeds the given limits in some test cases defined by the exercise.

User management

@todo: roles and their rights, adding/removing different users, how the role of a specific user changes

Instances and hierarchy of groups

@todo: What is an instance, how to create one, what are the licenses and how do they work. Why can the groups form hierarchies and what are the benefits – what it means to be an admin of a group, hierarchy of roles in the group hierarchy.

Exercises database

@todo: How the exercises are stored, accessed, who can edit what

Creating a new exercise

@todo Localized assignments, default settings

Runtime environments and hardware groups

@todo read this later and see if it still makes sense

ReCodEx is designed to utilize a rather diverse set of workers -- there can be differences in many aspects, such as the actual hardware running the worker (which impacts the results of measuring) or installed compilers, interpreters and other tools needed for evaluation. To address these two examples in particular, we assign runtime environments and hardware groups to exercises.

The purpose of runtime environments is to specify which tools (and often also operating system) are required to evaluate a solution of the exercise -- for example, a C# programming exercise can be evaluated on a Linux worker running Mono or a Windows worker with the .NET runtime. Such exercise would be assigned two runtime environments, Linux+Mono and Windows+.NET (the environment names are arbitrary strings configured by the administrator).

A hardware group is a set of workers that run on similar hardware (e.g. a particular quad-core processor model and a SSD hard drive). Workers are assigned to these groups by the administrator. If this is done correctly, performance measurements of a submission should yield the same results. Thanks to this fact, we can use the same resource limits on every worker in a hardware group. However, limits can differ between runtime environments -- formally speaking, limits are a function of three arguments: an assignment, a hardware group and a runtime environment.

Reference solutions

@todo: how to add one, how to evaluate it

The task of determining appropriate resource limits for exercises is difficult to do correctly. To aid exercise authors and group supervisors, ReCodEx supports assigning reference solutions to exercises. Those are example programs that should cover the main approaches to the implementation. For example, searching for an integer in an ordered array can be done with a linear search, or better, using a binary search.

Reference solutions can be evaluated on demand, using a selected hardware group. The evaluation results are stored and can be used later to determine limits. In our example problem, we could configure the limits so that the linear search-based program doesn't finish in time on larger inputs, but a binary search does.

Note that separate reference solutions should be supplied for all supported runtime environments.

Exercise assignments

@todo: Creating instances of an exercise for a specific group of users, capabilities of settings. Editing limits according to the reference solution.

Evaluation process

@todo: How the evaluation process works on the Frontend side.

Uploading files and file storage

@todo: One by one upload endpoint. Explain different types of the Uploaded files.

Automatic detection of the runtime environment

@todo: Users must submit correctly named files – assuming the RTE from the extensions.

REST API implementation

@todo: What is the REST API, what are the basic principles – GET, POST, Headers, JSON.

Authentication and authorization scopes

@todo: How authentication works – signed JWT, headers, expiration, refreshing. Token scopes usage.

HTTP requests handling

@todo: Router and routes with specific HTTP methods, preflight, required headers

HTTP responses format

@todo: Describe the JSON structure convention of success and error responses

Used technologies

@todo: PHP7 – how it is used for typehints, Nette framework – how it is used for routing, Presenters actions endpoints, exceptions and ErrorPresenter, Doctrine 2 – database abstraction, entities and repositories + conventions, Communication over ZMQ – describe the problem with the extension and how we reported it and how to treat it in the future when the bug is solved. Relational database – we use MariaDB, Doctine enables us to switch the engine to a different engine if needed

Data model

@todo: Describe the code-first approach using the Doctrine entities, how the entities map onto the database schema (refer to the attached schemas of entities and relational database models), describe the logical grouping of entities and how they are related:

• user + settings + logins + ACL

• instance + licences + groups + group membership

• exercise + assignments + localized assignments + runtime environments + hardware groups

• submission + solution + reference solution + solution evaluation

• comment threads + comments

API endpoints

@todo: Tell the user about the generated API reference and how the Swagger UI can be used to access the API directly.

Web Application

@todo: What is the purpose of the web application and how it interacts with the REST API.

Used technologies

@todo: Briefly introduce the used technologies like React, Redux and the build process. For further details refer to the GitHub wiki

How to use the application

@todo: Describe the user documentation and the FAQ page.

Backend-Frontend communication protocol

@todo: describe the exact methods and respective commands for the communication

Initiation of a job evaluation

@todo: How does the Frontend initiate the evaluation and how the Backend can accept it or decline it

Job processing progress monitoring

@todo: How does the Backend push the progress of evaluation through the Monitor to the Frontend

Publishing of the results

@todo: How does the Backend publish the results and how it notifies the Frontend; How the Frontend can request the results if the notification does not arrive

User documentation

Web Application

@todo: Describe different scenarios of the usage of the Web App

Terminology

@todo: Describe the terminology: Instance, User, Group, Student, Supervisor, Admin

Web application requirements

@todo: Describe the requirements of running the web application (modern web browser, enabled CSS, JavaScript, Cookies & Local storage)

Scenario #1: Becoming a user of ReCodEx

How to create a user account?

You can create an account if you click on the “Create account” menu item in the left sidebar. You can choose between two types of registration methods – by creating a local account with a specific password, or pairing your new account with an existing CAS UK account.

If you decide a new “local” account using the “Create ReCodEx account” form, you will have to provide your details and choose a password for your account. You will later sign in using your email address as your username and the password you select.

If you decide to use the CAS UK, then we will verify your credentials and access your name and email stored in the system and create your account based on this information. You can change your personal information or email later on the “Settings” page.

When crating your account both ways, you must select an instance your account will belong to by default. The instance you will select will be most likely your university or other organization you are a member of.

How to get into ReCodEx?

To log in, go to the homepage of ReCodEx and in the left sidebar choose the menu item “Sign in”. Then you must enter your credentials into one of the two forms – if you selected a password during registration, then you should sign with your email and password in the first form called “Sign into ReCodEx”. If you registered using the Charles University Authentication Service (CAS), you should put your student’s number and your CAS password into the second form called “Sign into ReCodEx using CAS UK”.

How do I sign out of ReCodEx?

If you don’t use ReCodEx for a whole day, you will be logged out automatically. However, we recommend you sign out of the application after you finished your interaction with it. The logout button is placed in the top section of the left sidebar right under your name. You will have to expand the sidebar with a button next to the “ReCodEx” title (shown in the picture below).

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What to do when you cannot remember your password?

If you can’t remember your password and you don’t use CAS UK authentication, then you can reset your password. You will find a link saying “You cannot remember what your password was? Reset your password.” under the sign in form. After you click on this link, you will be asked to submit your email address. An email with a link containing a special token will be sent to the address you fill in. We make sure that the person who requested password resetting is really you. When you click on the link (or you copy & paste it into your web browser) you will be able to select a new password for your account. The token is valid only for a couple of minutes, so do not forget to reset the password as soon as possible, or you will have to request a new link with a valid token.

If you sign in through CAS UK, then please follow the instructions provided by the administrators of the service described on their website.

How to configure your account?

There are several options you have to edit your user account.

• changing your personal information (i.e., name)

• changing your credentials (email and password)

• updating your preferences (e.g., source code viewer/editor settings, default language)

You can access the settings page through the “Settings” button right under your name in the left sidebar.

Scenario #2: User is a student

@todo: describe what it means to be a “student” and what are the student’s rights

How to join a group for my class?

@todo: How to join a specific group

Which assignments do I have to solve?

@todo: Where the student can find the list of the assignment he is expected to solve, what is the first and second deadline.

Where can I see details of my classes’ group?

@todo: Where can the user see groups description and details, what information is available.

How to submit a solution of an assignment?

@todo: How does a student submit his solution through the web app

Where are the results of my solutions?

@todo: When the results are ready and what the results mean and what to do about them, when the user is convinced, that his solution is correct although the results say different

How can I discuss my solution with my teacher/group’s supervisor directly through the web application?

@todo: Describe the comments thread behavior (public/private comments), who else can see the comments, how notifications work (not implemented yet!).

Scenario #3: User is supervisor of a group

@todo: describe what it means to be a “supervisor” of a group and what are the supervisors rights

How do I become a supervisor of a group?

@todo: How does a user become a supervisor of a group?

How to add or remove a student to my group?

@todo: How to add a specific student to a given group

How do I add another supervisor to my group?

@todo: who can add another supervisor, what would be the rights of the second supervisor

How do I create a subgroup of my group?

@todo: What it means to create a subgroup and how to do it.

How do I assign an exercise to my students?

@todo: Describe how to access the database of the exercises and what are the possibilities of assignment setup – availability, deadlines, points, score configuration, limits

How do I configure the limits of an assignment and how to choose appropriate limits?

@todo: Describe the form and explain the concept of reference solutions. How to evaluate the reference solutions for the exercise right now (to get the up-to-date information).

How can I assign some exercises only to some students of the group?

@todo: Describe how to achieve this using subgroups

How can I see my students’ solutions?

@todo Describe where all the students’ solutions for a given assignment can be found, where to look for all solutions of a given student, how to see results of a specific student’s solution’s evaluation result.

Can I assign points to my students’ solutions manually instead of depending on automatic scoring?

@todo If and how to change the score of a solution – assignment settings, setting points, bonus points, accepting a solution (not implemented yet!). Describe how the student and supervisor will still be able to see the percentage received from the automatic scoring, but the awarded points will be overridden.

How can I discuss student’s solution with him/her directly through the web application?

@todo: Describe the comments thread behavior (public/private comments), who else can see the comments

Writing job configuration

To run and evaluate an exercise the backend needs to know the steps how to do that. This is different for each environment (operation system, programming language, etc.), so each of the environments needs to have separate configuration.

Backend understands powerful, but quite low level description of simple connected tasks written in YAML syntax. More about the syntax and general task overview can be found on separate page. One of the planned features was user friendly configuration editor, but due to tight deadline and team composition it did not make it to the first release. However, writing configuration in the basic format will be always available and allows you to use the full expressive power of the system.

This section walks through creation of job configuration for hello world exercise. The goal is to compile file source.c and check if it prints string Hello World! to the standard output.

The problem can be split into several tasks:

• compile source.c into helloworld by /usr/bin/gcc
• run helloworld and save standard output into out.txt
• fetch predefined output (suppose it is already uploaded to fileserver) with hash a0b65939670bc2c010f4d5d6a0b3e4e4590fb92b to reference.txt
• compare out.txt and reference.txt by /usr/bin/diff

The absolute path of tools can be obtained from system administrator. However, /usr/bin/gcc is location, where the GCC binary is available almost everywhere, so location of some tools can be (professionally) guessed.

First, write header of the job to the configuration file.

submission:
    job-id: hello-word-job
    language: c
    file-collector: http://localhost:9999/exercises
    hw-groups:
        - group1

Basically it means, that the job hello-world-job is for C language and needs to be run on workers with capabilities of group1 group. Reference files are downloaded from http://localhost:9999/exercises.

Next the tasks have to be constructed under tasks section. In this demo job, every task depends only on previous one. The first task has input file source.c (if submitted by user) already available in working directory, so just call the GCC. Compilation is run in sandbox as any other external program and should have relaxed time and memory limits. In this scenarion, worker defaults are used. If compilation fails, whole job is immediately terminated (fatal-failure bit set). Because chdir and bound-directories options in sandbox limits section are mostly common for all tasks, they can be set in worker configuration instead of job configuration (suppose this for following tasks). For configuration of workers please contact your administrator.

- task-id: "compilation"
  type: "initiation"
  priority: 1
  fatal-failure: true
  cmd:
      bin: "/usr/bin/gcc"
      args:
          - "source.c"
          - "-o"
          - "helloworld"
  sandbox:
      name: "isolate"
      limits:
          - hw-group-id: group1
            chdir: ${EVAL_DIR}
            bound-directories:
                - src: ${SOURCE_DIR}
                  dst: ${EVAL_DIR}
                  mode: RW

The compiled program is executed with time and memory limit set and standard output redirected to a file. This task depends on compilation task, because the program cannot be executed without being compiled first. It is important to mark this task with execution type, so exceeded limits will be reported in frontend.

- task-id: "execution_1"
  test-id: "A"
  type: "execution"
  priority: 2
  fatal-failure: false
  dependencies:
      - compilation
  cmd:
      bin: "helloworld"
  sandbox:
      name: "isolate"
	  stdout: ${EVAL_DIR}/out.txt
      limits:
          - hw-group-id: group1
            time: 0.5
            memory: 8192

Fetch sample solution from fileserver. Base URL of fileserver is in job header, so only the name of required file (sha1sum in our case) is necessary.

- task-id: "fetch_solution_1"
  test-id: "A"
  priority: 3
  dependencies:
      - execution
  cmd:
      bin: "fetch"
      args:
          - "a0b65939670bc2c010f4d5d6a0b3e4e4590fb92b"
          - "${SOURCE_DIR}/reference.txt"

Comparison of results is quite straightforward. Important is to mark the task as evaluation type, so the return code represents if the program is correct (0) or not (other). Worker default limits are used.

- task-id: "judge_1"
  test-id: "A"
  type: "evaluation"
  priority: 4
  dependencies:
      - fetch_solution_1
  cmd:
      bin: "/usr/bin/diff"
      args:
          - "out.txt"
          - "reference.txt"
  sandbox:
      name: "isolate"
      limits:
          - hw-group-id: group1