Application design¶

History¶

For a long time, AMY was almost single-application project: most of the logic, models and views was contained in workshops application; there was also api application and extforms for showing forms to the external users.

workshops grew to a massive size and needed splitting into smaller applications. However, some previous design decisions made the split complicated. Namely versioning system, provided by django-reversion, due to model instance serialization, was not flexible when it came to data migration, and very difficult when it came to move the underlying model to another app.

Application structure¶

The new application structure contains:

api - for CRUD API interface provided by DRF,
autoemails - for automated emails application (v1, 2019) - now being deprecated,
communityroles - for community roles project application,
consents - for consents project application,
dashboard - for admin and instructor dashboard views,
emails - for current automated emails application (v2, 2023),
extcomments - for overriding some functions from django-contrib-comments third party application for comments,
extforms - for forms available externally, ie. for unauthenticated users; these forms are quite complex, and they represent models:
extrequests - for all *Request objects (logic related to WorkshopRequest and TrainingRequest, but here's also where WorkshopInquiryRequest and SelfOrganisedSubmission models are defined),
fiscal - for organisations and memberships (although most of the models are defined in workshops application; here is logic related to them),
recruitment - for instructor selection project application,
reports - for reports,
trainings - for managing trainees and trainings,
workshops - for persons and workshops management, including tasks and badges.

workshops application still takes a lead in many areas, and for now should be considered "core" application. For example it defines many reusable classes, like TestBase for base test case, or multiple model mixins. Globally used template tags and utilities are also defined there.

API¶

Application with CRUD-like views using Django Rest Framework. It's not heavily used, mostly for single cases when we need to provide async experience to the user via JavaScript.

Automated emails¶

A big project from 2019-2020. Contains actions that trigger sending emails on specific time after the action has taken place.

Automated emails project documentation.

Community Roles¶

2021-2022 Project to implement badge-like mechanism for assigning roles to people in The Carpentries community.

Consents¶

2021+ Project for providing more configurable and more descriptive consents for AMY users. 2021+ Project for archiving person profile.

Consents project documentation.

Dashboard¶

Contains generic views for admins, and logic for instructor dashboard.

(External) Comments¶

Contains small extensions or changes applied to django-contrib-comments application.

External Requests, Forms¶

Applications together provide logic for forms non-AMY users fill out (extforms, external forms). extforms provides forms, while extrequests provides admin views and models (except for the models defined in workshops application).

Many of the views defined in extrequests contain logic for triggering automated emails.

Fiscal¶

Admin application for managing organisations and memberships. Since 2021 Memberships project, handling memberships was extended and adjusted to The Carpentries' needs.

Recruitment¶

2021-2022 Instructor Selection project. Enables instructors to apply for teaching at workshops directly with AMY, instead of using old techniques (a spreadsheet).

Reports¶

Contains multiple admin views for, for example, listing issues with workshops or duplicate persons.

Trainings¶

Application for managing trainees (people in training) and trainings.

Workshops¶

Core application for managing persons, events, badges, tasks, and roles.