[development] Call for action: Drupalize Google's SoC Mentors App

[Angela Byron]

Dmitri Gaskin wrote:
> (I also cc'd you, Matt ;))
> 
> So another tricky thing - there are two types of comments - public 
> comments and private comments.
> 
> There is a distinction because public comments are student-visible, and 
> private comments, and edits may only be made after a public comment is 
> posted.
> 
> And FYI this app is only for mentors and administrators.

Yep. Don't get too hung up on those details though; we can always refine 
and improve this tool over time once it's written. :) The main thing is 
to make it so any mentoring organization can login to this Drupal site, 
and access an admin panel that's a nice sortable table view of all their 
apps, synchronized with Google. Everything else is icing on the cake.

> On Mar 28, 2008, at 7:08 PM, Angela Byron wrote:
> 
>> (Larry, I cc'ed you because dmitri said you'd done this before and 
>> thought it would be a good idea ;))
>>
>> So as those who've participated in Summer of Code as a mentor before 
>> know, the web app that Google provides for ranking/reviewing 
>> applications is a little bit ... suboptimal. The view of applications 
>> it provides isn't sortable, it's not possible to see when applications 
>> are updated, or when new comments have been posted, or... And 
>> unfortunately, the person on Google's side of things who's in charge 
>> of making incremental improvements is out on medical leave, so the 
>> tool we have is about all we're going to get.
>>
>> This is a great opportunity for Drupal to shine, however. With Views, 
>> CCK, VotingAPI, and a couple other add-on modules, it'd be possible to 
>> whip up a very comparable web app, only with tons more features such 
>> as  a "new" indicator, the ability to sort applications by last 
>> updated time, the ability to tag applications, etc. And if we did this 
>> with something like Organic Groups, we could potentially build 
>> infrastructure for all 175 open source mentoring organizations to use 
>> Drupal, plus take some much-needed weight off the Google admins who 
>> are busy with other organizational things. Nice way to build positive 
>> relationships in the open source community.
>>
>> Functionality is as follows (rough outline):
>> - "Organization" node type (Organic group); one for each of the orgs 
>> listed @ http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
>> - User import of list of Organization Members 
>> (http://code.google.com/soc/2008/drupal/mentors.html) -- I think only 
>> admins can see this screen.
>> - "Application" node type with fields for (starred ones are the 
>> important ones):
>>   - Title*
>>   - Student*
>>   - Student Email*
>>   - Student Major
>>   - Student Degree
>>   - Student Graduation (year)
>>   - Student Home Page
>>   - Student Blog
>>   - Student IM
>>   - Assigned mentor (userreference)*
>>   - Abstract*
>>   - Description*
>> - Probably a "Tags" vocab on that application node type as well, so 
>> people can group them.
>> - A View that displays a list of applications with columns for sorting 
>> by things like "last updated time", "title", "student", and "assigned 
>> mentor"
>> - The ability to vote on applications and display a score. In the 
>> Google app, this will be basically a +1/-1, or a +4 ("I want to 
>> mentor") or a -10 ("Ineligible"). Maybe those last two could be flags 
>> instead and we could just use Vote Up/Down module?
>> - The web app has both private and public comments. Not sure how we 
>> could do this in Drupal off-hand.
>> - A bunch of data import crap to synchronize stuff between Drupal and 
>> Google.
>>
>> This is the tricky part: sucking in (and ideally, synchronizing) data 
>> between Google's app and the Drupal side. For example, when I post a 
>> comment on Drupal, it ought to show up in the Google app and 
>> vice-versa.  When an application is updated on Google's side, it ought 
>> to update it on Drupal's side as well. But at a minimum, we basically 
>> would need to "screen scrape" information off Google's end and suck in 
>> applications as nodes.
>>
>> I was pointed in IRC at dataminerapi, which looks awesome. However, I 
>> won't have time this weekend to monkey with this at all, and ideally 
>> we need a solution built by *Monday*. :\ Dmitri's offered to pick up 
>> the ball and run with it.
>>
>> a) Anyone have time to help him with that?
>> b) Can anyone give us some advice on how to do the 
>> screen-scraping/synching? Have some sample code? etc.?
>>
>> -Angie
>