PROJECT: Student Buddy

Overview

This portfolio serves to document my contributions in a team-based software engineering project for the module CS2113T. The team comprises of 4 members ad we were tasked to develop a working application within 8 weeks. We decided to morph the existing application into a task manager, called Student Buddy.

To comply with the module requirements, the team is constrained to start from an existing code base – Address Book Level 4 and the user must interact with the application via Command Line interface(CLI).

Student Buddy is a desktop application created for students to assist them in managing their schedule.

Summary of contributions

This section shows a summary of my coding, documentation, and other helpful contributions to Student Buddy.

  • Major enhancement: added the ability to sort tasks

    • What it does: It allows the user to sort the tasks in the task list based on name, module code, date due or priority level.

    • Justification: This feature improves significantly because it allows the user to organise the task list in a manner of their choosing.

    • Highlights: It required an in-depth analysis and understanding on how the different components of the task manager is involved with each other.

  • Minor enhancement: refactored the existing Address Book Level 4 and edited the code to make a basic task manager that was used as the base of Student Buddy.

  • Minor enhancement: created a daysRemaining function to find number of days remaining till the task is due and gave colour codes depending on how much days are left.

  • Minor enhancement: created findname, findmodule, finddate and findpriority commands to be able to search not only by task name but by other variables.

  • Code contributed: Reposense

  • Other contributions:

    • Project management:

      • Set up the organization repository and its issue tracker

      • Managed releases v1.2 and v1.3 on GitHub

    • Enhancement to existing features:

      • Wrote tests for existing features to increase coverage by 10.48% (Pull Requests: 110, 171, #173)

    • Documentation:

      • Updated the content in the User and Developer Guides according to my contribution to the project (#54, #79)

      • Updated the existing images in the Developer Guide to fit the project (#110)

      • Wrote use cases and user stories

    • Community:

      • Reported bugs and suggestions for other teams in the class (examples: 1, 2, 3)

Contributions to the User Guide

Given below are sections I contributed to the User Guide. They showcase my ability to write documentation targeting end-users with the aim of providing clear and concise instructions at a level that is easy for the end-user to follow.

(Start of extract from the User Guide)

Locating tasks by name: findname, fn

Finds tasks with names containing any of the given keywords.
Format: findname KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS] or fn KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS]

  • The search is case insensitive. e.g HOMEWORK will match homework

  • The order of the keywords does not matter. e.g. CS2113 Tutorial will match Tutorial CS2113

  • Only the name is searched.

  • Only full words will be matched e.g. Assignments will not match Assignment

  • Tasks matching at least one of the keywords will be returned (i.e. OR search). e.g. CS2113 Assignment will return CS2113 Homework, Assignment 2

Examples:

  • findname Project Tutorial
    Returns all task with names containing Project or Tutorial.

  • fn Project Lab Report
    Returns all task having names Project, Lab, or Report

Locating tasks by module code: findmodule, fm

Finds tasks with module codes containing any of the given keywords.
Format: findmodule KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS] or fm KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS]

  • The search is case insensitive. e.g CS2113T will match cs2113t

  • The order of the keywords does not matter. e.g. CS2113T CS2101 will match CS2101 CS2113

  • Only the module code is searched.

  • Only full words will be matched e.g. CS2113T will not match CS2113

Examples:

  • findmodule CS2113T
    Returns all tasks containing the module code CS2113T.

  • fm CS2113T CS2101
    Returns all tasks containing the module code CS2113T or CS2101.

Locating tasks by date: finddate, fd

Finds tasks with dates containing any of the given keywords.
Format: finddate KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS] or fd KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS]

  • The order of the keywords does not matter. e.g. 03-03 21-03 will match 21-03 03-03

Examples:

  • finddate 20-03
    Returns all task with date 20-03.

  • fd 20-03 30-03
    Returns all task with date 20-03 or 30-03.

Locating tasks by priority code: findpriority, fp

Finds tasks with priority code containing any of the given keywords.
Format: findpriority KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS] or fp KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS]

  • The order of the keywords does not matter. e.g. 1 2 will match 2 1

Examples:

  • findpriority 1
    Returns all task with priority code 1.

  • fp 1 3
    Returns all task with priority code 1 or 3.

Sorting the task list : sort, s

Sorts the task list in Student Buddy according to an input parameter. Format: sort PARAMETER or s PARAMETER

  • Sorts the task list according to the PARAMETER.

  • The parameter must be one of the following name, module, date, priority.

  • You can also use the initials of the parameter i.e n, m, d or p.

Examples:

  • sort module
    Sorts the task list lexicographically by module code.

  • s priority
    Sorts the task list in descending order by priority.

  • s d
    Sorts the task list in chronological order by date

Deleting Overdue Tasks : deleteoverdue, delod [coming in v2.0]

Deletes all tasks that are overdue. Format: deleteoverdue or delod

Examples:

  • list
    deleteoverdue
    Deletes all the overdue tasks in Student Buddy.

  • findname Project
    delod
    Deletes all the task in the results of the findname command.

(End of extract)

Contributions to the Developer Guide

Given below are sections I contributed to the Developer Guide. They showcase my ability to write technical documentation and the technical depth of my contributions to the project.

(Start of extract from the Developer Guide)

Task Feature

Current Implementation

The task list is created by refactoring the existing code in the Address Book Level 4

The class diagram below illustrates the task class.

TaskClassDiagram

Sort Task List Feature

Current Implementation

The sorting mechanism is facilitated by TaskManager, Model and SortTaskList.

Given below is an example usage scenario.

Step 1. The user keys in sort ATTRIBUTE, the SortCommandParser will trim the command to get the attribute.

Step 2. If the attribute is valid, it will then create a new SortCommand and execute with the given attribute.

Step 3. SortCommand will then call ModelManager#sortTask(toSortBy).

Step 4. It will then call TaskManager#sortTask(attribute). Then we convert the relevant attributes of the tasks in the Task List to string to compare using string#compareTo().

Step 5. Then, we use setTasks() in UniqueTaskList to update the Task List. After returning the sorted Task List, the Task Manager is then committed.

The Sequence Diagram below illustrates how the sort mechanism functions. More specifically, sorting by module code.

SortSequenceDiagram

Design Considerations

Aspect: How sort executes

  • Alternative 1 (current choice): Write a class separately for handling the sorting of the task list.

    • Pros: Easy to read and debug, Follows OOP coding and thus easier for other coders to modify.

    • Cons: Difficult to implement.

  • Alternative 2: Write a method for each attribute in TaskManager.

    • Pros: Easy to implement.

    • Cons: Does not follow OOP coding.

[Proposed] Delete overdue

Proposed Implementation

Using the existing daysRemaining variable, upon entering DeleteOverdue in the command line, the command will iterate through all the tasks and check the value of daysRemaining. If it is less than 0, the command will call the DeleteCommand to delete the overdue task.

Design Considerations

Aspect: How the delete overdue command executes

  • Alternative 1 (current choice): Write the command such that whenever there is an overdue task, it will call the delete command.

    • Pros: Easy to use as it does not require changing the existing code much.

    • Cons: Will need to iterate through all the tasks.

  • Alternative 2: Create a new class to store all overdue tasks that updates itself whenever a task is overdue.

    • Pros: Faster as it does not require iterating through all tasks.

    • Cons: Requires more space to store all the overdue tasks

Use Cases

Use case: Find task by name

MSS

  1. User requests to find a task by name

  2. Student Buddy shows the tasks according to user’s input

    Use case ends.

Extensions

  • 2a. The list is empty

    Use case ends.

  • 2b. The given index is invalid

    • 2bi. Student Buddy returns an error

      Use case resumes at step 2.

Use case: Find task by module

MSS

  1. User requests to find a task by module

  2. Student Buddy shows the tasks according to user’s input

    Use case ends.

Extensions

  • 2a. The list is empty

    Use case ends.

  • 2b. The given index is invalid

    • 2bi. Student Buddy returns an error

      Use case resumes at step 2.

Use case: Find task by date

MSS

  1. User requests to find a task by date

  2. Student Buddy shows the tasks according to user’s input

    Use case ends.

Extensions

  • 2a. The list is empty

    Use case ends.

  • 2b. The given index is invalid

    • 2bi. Student Buddy returns an error

      Use case resumes at step 2.

Use case: Find task by priority

MSS

  1. User requests to find a task by priority

  2. Student Buddy shows the tasks according to user’s input

    Use case ends.

Extensions

  • 2a. The list is empty

    Use case ends.

  • 2b. The given index is invalid

    • 2bi. Student Buddy returns an error

      Use case resumes at step 2.

Use case: Sort tasks

MSS

  1. User requests to sort tasks by an attribute

  2. Student Buddy sorts the tasks according to user’s input

    Use case ends.

Extensions

  • 1b. The given index is invalid

    • 1ai. Student Buddy returns an error

      Use case resumes at step 1.

(End of extract)