7401ICT: Assignment 1

Due date

Midnight on Sunday 28 August 2011

Weight

20%

Task

Your task in this first assignment is to design, implement, test and document a simple Django project that manages a database of items of a singe type. The items could be articles in a discussion forum, objects offered for sale, but not people in a social network. More precisely, the project should allow users (members of the public) to add items to the database, browse the items, search for items that match a given query, update items and delete items. The task is an exercise in applying the list-detail and "crud" patterns.

Each item must have a name, a description, the date the item was added, and at least two other fields of different types, including one numerical type. Names are short strings and descriptions are arbitrary length strings.

Users may either browse the set of items in the database, search the set of all items in the database by entering a single search string that is matched against item names and descriptions, update items by changing any field value, and delete items.

The home page should simply contain a heading, a list of the five most recently added items, a link to a list of all items, a search form containing a single text field, and a form for adding new items.

Each item in a list of items (resulting from browsing or searching) should contain just the name of the item, and should be a link to a separate page containing the full details of that item. I.e., you are required to use the list-detail pattern. You may implement the list-detail pattern using either explicit views or generic views.

All user input must be appropriately sanitised and validated.

For simplicity, in this assignment, you do not need to paginate results of browsing or searching (though you may do so) and you must not define a user model or implement any user registration, authentication or authorisation mechanisms. (We'll add all these features in subsequent assignments.)

Implementation requirements

• The project must use Django and Python.
• The project must be named "assignment1".
• It must store its data in an SQLite 3 database.
• It must use the URLs-model-views-templates pattern.
• All (generated) HTML documents must be valid HTML5 files.
• The project must use cascading style sheets to provide a simple, uniform, distinctive appearance, with at least a header and footer on each page. (Don't just copy my style sheet - write your own!)
• It must provide an administrative interface that allows administrators to conveniently add, update and delete items, as well as a public interface.
• The project directory must contain a plain text README file that identifies the project, describes what the project does (and doesn't do), summarises how to use the project, and provides any other useful information about the project.
• The project implementation must use good program structuring and documentation techniques. As a minimum, all files, models and views should be well commented and there should be no unnecessarily repeated or unnecessarily long code. Template inheritance should be used to ensure a uniform appearance and to avoid writing repeated HTML.
• All Python files must follow the Python style guidelines.
• The implementation must not use JavaScript, user profiles or sessions (but don't omit any of the default INSTALLED_APPS).
• For our convenience, the home page of the project must contain your name and student number.

Suggestions

Start work now!

Design and implement and test your solution incrementally.

Start by designing the model that defines your items. This task is critical.

Then decide which URLs you will need, which views are associated with each script, and which templates are associated with each view.

Then incrementally design and implement the views and templates, testing at each stage. Leave queries until last; can get up to 18/20 without implementing queries.

Clarifications and more detailed suggestions may be given in lectures and laboratories.

Assessment criteria

We expect the structure of your application to be clear, simple, standards-conformant, validated, and well-documented. We expect the organisation and English in your implementation and documentation to be of high quality.

Assessment of your assignment will be based on functionality, implementation, documentation and overall quality. We will award approximately 10 marks for functionality, 4 marks for interface and interaction design, 4 marks for implementation quality and 2 marks for submission and documentation.

• Remove all unnecessary files, e.g., file.py~ (note the tilde) from your project directory. Be careful!

• Send me an email from your University account stating that you wish to submit your assignment. The email must be prepared exactly as follows:

  To: r.topor@griffith.edu.au
  From: your University email address
  Subject: 7401ICT Assignment 1 Submission
  

  The body of the email must contain the following:

  • Your official student name and number.
  • The exact path to your Assignment 1 project directory, e.g., ~s1234567/7401ICT/assignment1.
  • An admin username / password (preferably admin / password) for your project.

  The email must contain a zipped archive of your project directory, e.g., s1234567_assignment1.zip, as an attachment. To create such a zipped archive, give the following commands on grue:

  cd /path/to/assignment1
  cd ..
  zip -r s1234567_assignment1 assignment1
  

  Here, /path/to/assignment1 is the path to your project directory.

Other information

• Plagiarism will be dealt with according to standard University policy.
• All use of work done by others must be properly cited.
• Extensions will not be granted except for medical or other similar reasons.