roman-kaspar / rata-project

iPhone PWA for elementary-school exercises for my children.

rata-project

rata-project is a set of school exercises that I wrote for my children. Since they got their mobile phones for Xmas at the end of 2018, I wanted them to spend at least some amount of time with something meaningful (besides all the games they installed there).

Sure, there are hundreds of educational games, but I wanted something tailored for them, something that could follow their progress at school. Also, most of the games are in English and focus on one subject. I wanted to have something in Czech and for all the subjects at once (mathematics, Czech, and English to start with).

Finally, I use this as a negotiation tool with my children. Do you want to play on Playstation? Do you want to install a new game on your phone? Do you want to watch this movie? Then go, do some exercirses in your phone and then come back.

PWA, hosting

The application is written as a Progressive Web Application (PWA). It means that it works from the browser, but uses caching mechanisms and web worker process, so that it is fully working even when completely offline.

One of the properties of PWAs is that you can use menu in the mobile browser and pick "Add to home screen" and then the web application behaves as any other application installed from App Store.

The application is hosted at https://rata.roman-kaspar.cz/.

Once installed the application (when online) pings the server to check for newer versions. When available, the app will auto-update to the newest version.

App concepts, goals

There are three main areas of the app:

• exercises
• results
• help

The exercises are grouped into categories (e.g. mathematics - integer calculus). The results and help follow the same hierarchy.

There are three goals of the exercises:

• correctness (correct answers)
• speed
• repeatable fast and correct answers

User (child) collects stars, up to three stars per exercise (one for all correct answers, second for correct and fast answers, and third for three correct and fast answers in row).

The system remembers wrong (and slow) answers and asks them repeatedly, until correct (or correct and fast) answer is provided.

Tech-stack

• react
• redux
• router5
• local-storage + data encryption
• custom plain CSS

Development

$ git clone ...
$ cd ...
$ yarn start  # to start the dev version

$ yarn test   # to run the linter
$ yarn build  # to create production bundle

Code structure

The source code is divided into the following folders:

• core, where the main framework of the application is,
• categories, where the exercises are coded in modules, and modules are grouped into categories (based on subjects),
• shared for files that are used by both the core and the categories / modules, and
• service-worker, where the code of servicer worker process is along with the build process for it.

Core (the application framework)

The core contains most of the code of the app, it is the heart of the application. It is managing the local-storage, the in-app routing, and provides main views for the available categories (navigation menu of the app), help, and results.

It also takes care about (auto-)updating of the application.

Categories

Categories group modules (exercises) of the same type together, and provide exercise run-time loop of (present exercise - wait for response) along with the view for the exercises.

After the loop finishes, the category code is responsible for updating the local-storage with the results.

In the future, categories will also be providing color themes for shared components (e.g. keypads or inputs).

Modules (exercises)

Code for modules (exercises) is located with the categories they belong to. They are responsible for setting the parameters of the exercise-loop (e.g. how many exercises to generate in one run of the loop), and (most of all) for generating the exercises themselves.

Contributions

If you want to contribute with a good idea for new module / exercise type, drop me an email to [e-mail]

You can also fork the project, implement new functionality yourself, TEST IT PROPERLY, and then create a pull request back with the description of new code. However, I'd still prefer to discuss new ideas before you go ahead and code it, as I'd like to keep the project consistent (so cannot guarantee I would merge just any crazy idea you may have).

This project is open source, so you can fork it any time and manage (and deploy) your own fork as you wish.

Commercial apps

In case you can see how custom-tailored modules / categories would help your business (e.g. some training app for your organisation), you can again fork the project and develop it yourselves, or you can drop me an email, we can discuss the terms and conditions and I can develop it (white-labeled for your company) for you.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Roman Kaspar [e-mail]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.