IT-Workz Project

This project is a collaboration between Fontys ICT, IT-Workz and Breens network to create a new version of the PARS application. PARS is a student registration system used by Dutch highschools. The reason for wanting a new version of PARS is that they overdeveloped the current version specifically for one of their clients. They now want a version of PARS that is usable for different highschools with the ability to configure settings per school. The PARS application should meet the set requirements and is fully available to the end user as a cloud application. For this, a good architecture must be set up, which is well secured. The application should have 2 roles available, the first one being a teacher role. The teacher should be able to keep track of students attendance with the PARS application. The second role being an administrator. The administrator should be able to configure the school's settings to fit their needs.

Table Of contents

• IT-Workz Project
• Evaluation and future
• Back-end
• How to use the project
• UserValidation Service
• Configuration Service
• UserManagement Service
• ScheduleManagement Service
• API Gateway
• Installation of the project
• Front-end
• Installation of the project
• Useful Sources
• Dependencies
• Documentation

Evaluation and future

At the moment of writing, the backend does not function the way it was intended. The UserManagement and ScheduleManagement services are not yet functional. One of the reasons being that information needed for these services haven't been deliverd to the project group. PARS needs all backend services to function, since it wasn't possible to make all of them work, PARS isn't fucntional. The Microsoft Authentication is working properly and is implemented in the frontend. The UserValidation Service can be used to validate if students are either present, late, late with a reason or absent in specific classes with their respective teachers. The Configuration Service can be used to setup basic school settings like colors of the presence/absence indicators and the class schedule. The API Gateway can be used for frontend -> backend communication. Since not all backend services are up and running, it isn't possible to make them function in the frontend either. In the future, the Usermanagement and ScheduleManagement services should get fixed so that their functionality can be used in the frontend to create a working version of PARS.

Back-end

How to use the project

Because this project makes use of the microservice architecture the project is split into several components/services. These different microservices consist of 3 projects:

• The DAL, or data access layer is responsible for handling data persistence and database interactions. It provides an abstraction layer between the application and the underlying data storage system. The DAL project communicates with the database to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations and ensures data integrity and consistency.
• API.Core, this project serves as the core functionality and business logic layer of the microservice. It encapsulates the essential business rules and operations of the application. It defines the models, services and interfaces that represent the core functionalities of the microservice. The API.Core project does not directly handle the HTTP requests but provides a foundation for the API layer to build upon.
• API, the API project is responsible for exposing the microservice's functionalities to clients through HTTP-based APIs. It acts as a communication interface between the clients and the core logic of the microservice. This layer handles incoming HTTP requests, parses the request parameters and routes them to the appropriate API.Core service or method.

UserValidation Service

The UserValidation Services handles the attendance of students in classes. This is used by teachers in the frontend to keep track of attendance of students in their classes.

Configuration Service

The Configuration Service handles the configurations of the PARS application for schools. This is used by administrators to setup the preferences for their school.

UserManagement Service

The UserManagement Service is responsible for getting student data from the ODS2 Database. This student data will be used to keep track of all students in a school.

ScheduleManagement Service

The ScheduleManagement Service is responsible for getting the schedules of teachers and students from the Xedule software system.

API Gateway

The API Gateway is used as a way for the frontend to communicate with the different backend services. This way the frontend doesn't have to talk to each backend service specifically.

Microsoft login frontend

For future development using Microsoft auth we used the following guide to create a basic set up in the React frontend

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/external-id/customers/tutorial-single-page-app-react-sign-in-prepare-tenant This guide will give a step-by-step guide on how to create a tenant and how to retrieve information from them. The project was setup with only organisation accounts in mind as such if any part of the login does not work this is likely one of the first causes to look at.

Installation of the project

To fully use this project, all services need to be running. This can be done either through your IDE for development or through the docker-compose file. To start working with this project:

• Clone the repository to your device
• Make sure you are on the Main branch.
• Open the repository with your IDE of choice.
• Start by routing into the correct repository.

  cd ..\Shared\Docker\

• Proceed to launch the containers using the images on the LOUPE container registry

  docker-compose up -d

• Note that the -d is optional and will run the containers in detached mode. More Info

Front-end

The frontend is written in React using Typescript. The frontend can be used by end users to validate student absence, to configure schedules and to authenticate/authorize users. To start working with this project:

• Install node.js Latest Stable version link
• Clone the repository to your device.
• Make sure you are on the Main branch.
• Open the repository with your IDE of choice.
• Start by routing to the Pars_Frontend folder.
• Start by installing necessary packages.

  npm install

• Run the application

  npm start

Useful Sources

What are microservices?
Backlog with open issues

Dependencies

Documentation

All documentation can be found here