Overview

Schooler is an open-source software that simplifies data management for schools. Data includes information on students and their assessment grades. Schooler has graphing capability by which basic data analytics is possible. It is possible to export the grades as PDF reports. Software is implemented as a web application.

Installation

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, a web server is available by default at /var/www.
Download Schooler as a zip file and unpack the contents into /var/www/html/schooler. For the rest of this guide, files and folders are w.r.t. /var/www/html/schooler.
Configure access to MySQL DB by editing these lines in file configuration.php (change root to username applicable to your MySQL server and supply the password):

	public $user = 'root';
	public $password = '';

Import DB by running the following command (change root to username applicable to your MySQL server):

	mysql -u root < schooler.sql

Grant write permissions to all users to specific folders as noted below:

	chmod -R a+w cache/ tmp/ logs/
	chmod -R a+w components/com_chronoforms5/chronoforms/uploads/studentForm/

That's it! You may now access Schooler from any web browser by entering the URL http://localhost/schooler. To access the application by any other name of your choice, you may rename schooler sub-folder.

Windows

To run this software, a web server must be running. WampServer is recommended as the web server. Install this first. For the rest of this guide, we assume that WampServer is installed at c:\wamp
Download Schooler as a zip file and unpack the contents into c:\wamp\www\schooler. For the rest of this guide, files and folders are w.r.t. c:\wamp\www\schooler.
Edit the file configuration.php as follows (change root to username applicable to your MySQL server and supply the password):

	public $user = 'root';
	public $password = '';
	public $log_path = 'c:\\wamp\\www\\schooler\\logs';
	public $log_path = 'c:\\wamp\\www\\schooler\\tmp';

Import DB from file schooler.sql into your MySQL.
Edit the file templates\yoo_master2\schooler.php as follows:

	$basePath = "c:\\wamp\\www\\schooler";

Grant write permissions to all users to specific folders noted below:

cache
tmp
logs
components\com_chronoforms5\chronoforms\uploads\studentForm

That's it! You may now access Schooler from any web browser by entering the URL as http://localhost/schooler. To access the application by any other name of your choice, you may rename schooler sub-folder.

Joomla! Admin Password

Administrator can access the Joomla! administrator interface at http://localhost/schooler/administrator with username webadmin and password admin123.

Creating User Accounts

From Joomla! administrator interface, go to [Users . User Manager . Add New User]. Enter relevant details in tab Account Details. Choose a non-obvious password for each account to keep the system secure.
Go to tab Assigned User Groups. By default, Registered item will be checked. Do not change this. When creating accounts for teachers, also check particular classes to which the teacher is allowed to enter and modify data.

App Configuration

App can be configured by editing the file templates/yoo_master2/schooler.config.php.
To change the header image appearing on every web page, you can replace the file images/header.png with any other image of your choice. The name of the image should be the same. For best results, it should be of dimensions 930 x 172 pixels.

Data Backup

Backup procedure has been written in files templates/yoo_master2/warp.php and templates/yoo_master2/schooler.php. However, this backup functionality is not used since initial access can be very slow and frustrate the user. Backup code has been commented.
On Ubuntu, a simple script can be written and installed as a cron job to take regular backups. This is left to the administrator.
On Windows, it is recommended to take backup using a third-party free tool named MySQLBackupFTP. FTP login and password can be configured in c:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql{version-number}\.my.cnf where {version-number} will correspond to your installation.
No backup is taken of the code. Only data is backed up.

Developer Notes

DB is named schooler.
DB structure without application data is found at schooler.sql.
Test data can be generated by running Python script genTestData.py. Generated file testData.sql can then be imported into the DB using phpMyAdmin. Do not do this on a live site since this will overwrite application data.
Most of the customized code is in templates/yoo_master2/schooler.php.
In Joomla! administrator interface, you may be prompted to upgrade Joomla! installation. Do not perform this upgrade since this will overwrite all code changes done on top of Joomla!.
Currently, the system has defined two academic years: '2014-15', '2013-14'. In future, this will need to be updated. Please update getYears() function in templates/yoo_master2/schooler.php. Also update, form definition within Joomla! administrator interface by accessing the menu [Components.ChronoForms5] and updating gradesForm. In the form, go to Designer tab and edit the Year field.
To promote all students to the next higher class, access is restricted. Only the administrator can do this, since this is a critical update that will modify all student data.
Sponsor data is disabled in all browser access. Students who have completed Class X are named as Graduates. However, graduates are not shown in browser views. Sponsors and graduates can be enabled, if required.

Technologies

Joomla! is used as the content management system (CMS) for this web application. Version used is 3.2.3.
Joomla! template used is Master2 from YOOThemes.
Main data entered into the system fall into three types: student data, grades data, sponsor data. For each data entry, there is a corresponding input form. Free third-party component named Chronoforms, version 5, RC5, has been used for form creation, processing data and saving it to the database.
Server-side programming is in PHP. Database used in MySQL. App has been tested on Apache server.

Licensing

Please refer to the file named UNLICENSE for details.

DevopediaOrg / schooler