[Bug] OC says that a challenge ends in 4 days, but it has added 4 days ago

[tschaffter]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• [X] I have searched the existing issues

What product(s) are you seeing the problem on?

OpenChallenges

Current behavior

Consider this challenge.

The card shows that the challenge is active ends in 4 days.

but the end date is "2023-12-15" (4 days ago).

Expected behavior

The challenge should be marked as complete and it should says that it has completed 4 days ago.

Anything else?

• The status is out of date because it has changed since the last time the OC Data sheet was exported (more than 4 days ago).
• One of the priorities of 2024 will be to update the status more frequently, e.g. using a scheduled job to update the status in the DB based on rules and start/end date.
• The label "ends in 4 days" is probably because of a bug that should be fixed as part of this ticket.

Cc: @rrchai

Commit ID

dad64404889de9d7f5f7caa7fe2b2692aa092c72

Are you developing inside the dev container?

• [X] I am using the dev container

Code of Conduct

• [X] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[tschaffter]

@vpchung The proposed solution does not prevent the issue from happening again.

@rrchai @vpchung What are the solutions that you can think of that could solve this issue once for all?

[tschaffter]

Moved to Sprint 24.01

[rrchai]

As we curate the DB and update the status of challenges weekly, there could be a 7-day window that exposes opportunities for mismatches (the actual dates & status shown on challenge card & time info "Started ... ago" etc.), which could potentially impact the user experience. Suggested proposals:

Proposal 1

• We still manually update the challenge in DB weekly
• Add dynamic validation to check if 'upcoming' challenges become 'active', and if 'active' challenges become 'completed'.
• Display the most updated status.

Proposal 2

1. Let challenge have two properties related to its status.
   • status: dynamic status, automatically changed via startDate & endDate only on the backend (this can be temporarily done on the frontend as well - #2448).
   • isCompleted: boolean whether the challenge is completed or not (current completed challenges can be set with true for this property)
2. Future: only developers can alter isCompleted - can choose a date (>=Now) or leave blank for endDate.
3. Future: proposed start/end dates are required properties if not yet and organizers are responsible to update dates to reflect status.

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I could also quickly do proposal 1 to solve the issues for any future potential mismatches (only 1 as of 1-24-2024).

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Some stats with current challenges data:

• challenges outdated: 1 ("Frost Hacks")
• challenges without both dates: 117
• challenges with start date, but no end date: 56
• challenges with end date, but no start date: 58

[tschaffter]

After giving this issue more though, I think the best strategy is to update the frequency of the data to daily.

@vpchung Could you create a CI workflow that update the OC data once a day?

[tschaffter]

Thanks @rrchai for the suggested solution. As per our discussion, we will increase the frequency of the data updates. @vpchung is currently working the GH workflow that will automate the transformation from Google sheet to CSV.

[tschaffter]

Added to Sprint 24.2