http://kroekasa.pythonanywhere.com/
- Add more security with secret key etc..
Welcome to the Bridging Coursework for Computer Science! This aims to be both engaging and useful for you in your development as a computer scientist. The task at hand is for you to create a functional web application that you can use for a variety of things such as showcasing a portfolio of your work for potential employers, to host an interactive CV or as a blogging site for all things CS-related.
In this coursework, you’re going to be working independently with a couple of technologies that you might not have used before. First, you will be using Python to develop this. While potentially new to you, in your career as a computer scientist, you will be expected to learn new programming languages and technology, and given your backgrounds, the transition to using Python for this shouldn’t be too difficult. Python is a great language to learn and will be one that will crop up time and time again, quite possibly during internships or you may even use it in your final year project, so getting some experience with this now will be extremely valuable.
Next, to develop your web application, you will be using the Django (Links to an external site.) web framework. This is a high-level framework that encourages careful thought about design and enables the rapid-development of web-applications. This is one of the world’s most popular web frameworks and as such has been used in sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Mozilla.
To get you up to speed with using these, you must go through the following resource from DjangoGirls (Links to an external site.)(alternative PDF formatPreview the document). This will build upon your current knowledge and give you the skills to develop a working web application. The code that you develop should be managed using Git and pushed to GitHub, and you will host your web application on PythonAnywhere (Links to an external site.), which can be programmed to pull the latest version of your code from your GitHub. The above tutorial will go through how to get all of this setup.
Once your web app is hosted on PythonAnywhere, it is recommended that you customise your site. Consider experimenting with new HTML templates or CSS stylesheets to alter the look-and-feel of your site. There are resources to help support this as well in the Background Reading module in the Canvas course.
Given that you’ll have the mechanism to host some content online, you should include, at a minimum, the following blog posts on your site:
A post reflecting on what you’ve enjoyed studying this year
A post looking to the future that discusses what you’re looking forward to learning about in the upcoming academic year.
A post discussing how your site is structured and in your own words a description of how Django works.
You should now have a working web application. The next part of this bridging coursework will enable you to learn about how you can verify that your website works as intended, namely through the use of Test-Driven-Development (Links to an external site.) (TDD). This approach puts testing at the heart of development and encourages the careful design of your software.
To learn about this, you will be Obeying the Testing Goat! (Links to an external site.) This online e-book (Links to an external site.) is a great resource for learning about the topic, and you should go through the first five chapters (at least) to learn about this. This looks at TDD when using Django, and in this, you will learn about the application of unit-testing and Selenium (Links to an external site.).
Following the completion of the first five chapters, using a TDD approach, you should apply what you’ve learned to develop an online CV page for your PythonAnywhere site, whereby you can manually add information to the CV via a form-based interface to update various sections as you gain more experience and skills. In this, you should consider the general sections of a CV, which parts could be static, and which sections will need updating as you progress through life. You more than likely have one already, so please use this as a template, but for more information about what should go into a CV (and to potentially update one that is gathering dust), please have a look at the following page from the University’s Careers Network.Links to an external site.
Please include a blog post on how you used TDD to develop this and ensure that your tests and all relevant files are pushed to your GitHub.
This bridging coursework is expected to take a couple of days for you to complete, but of course, you are not limited to this. It is recommended that you submit your coursework by June 30th. However, the submission system will remain open on Canvas until August 31st.
The URL to your site hosted on PythonAnywhere
The URL for the GitHub repository that hosts your site and testing code. Ensure that your repository is public.
You will receive formative feedback on what you have submitted from your persoanl tutor at the start of the new academic year.