pensieve-srs / pensieve-api

🔭The Pensieve backend providing the API to review cards

Pensieve ·

"I use Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

Albus Dumbledore

This project contains the backend for Pensieve providing the API for accessing data using NodeJS and MongoDB.

Getting Started

Dependencies

• Node 4+
• MongoDB
• SendGrid

Installing

Clone this project and update path accordingly:

git clone [email protected]:pensieve-srs/pensieve-api.git
cd pensieve-api/

Install the dependencies:

yarn install

Copy the .env.example and update the variables to your settings:

cp .env.example .env.development.local

Start MongoDB instance:

mongod

Finally, start the server and watch for changes:

yarn run start:watch

Open up your browser and navigate to http://localhost:5000/docs/. You should see a Swagger API Docs interface.

Contributing

Roadmap

View the Project Roadmap which includes upcoming features, reported bugs, and other updates to the project.

Contributing Guide

All work happens directly on GitHub and contributions are welcomed!. Submit a Pull Request to introduce new code changes. Open an Issue to request a new feature or report a bug. Interested in contributing? Contact @nlaz for help to get started.

License

Pensieve is MIT licensed.

pensieve-api's Issues

Support deck tags

Description

Users want to use tags in order to organize and sort decks more effectively. This includes setting up new data models and creating a new endpoint for querying tags.

Support card-specific study activity

Description

Users want to see card-specific study activity in order to track and see progress over time.

Tests are slow on Windows 10

The tests are significantly slower on Windows (10 at least).

I was hesitant on making pull requests for this project until I got this resolved. Turns out to be something related to IPv6. More info here:
Automattic/mongoose#6566 (comment)

pensieve-api/mongoose/config/database.js

Line 8 in e4e9c16

mongoose.connect(config.database.uri);

Just changing the line to
mongoose.connect(config.database.uri, { family: 4 });
works. I don't think it has any unintended consequences, either. Unless the server needs to use IPv6 for some reason?

Add API documentation

Description

The API lacks clear and consistent documentation. It should be updated to include documentation and tooling to support developers.

Add request validation to backend

Currently the backend controllers don't do any sort of object validation. We should use Joi to help validate some of the controller requests.

Support shareable public decks

Description

We want to support public decks for users to share and discover decks. This requires an update to the deck and cards models and query permissions.

Move JWT token to response header

Description

The user token is currently being passed to the response's body and should be moved to the response's header.

Update controller error handling

The controllers repeat a lot of the same error handling code. This error handling could be abstracted to be more DRY.

Support `additional` field for card notes

Description

Cards frequently have additional notes that are related to the front/back information but not necessarily needed for review. Support this additional field for cards.

Prioritize cards with lowest recall rate for review

Description

Cards with low recall rate should be naturally be prompted for review. We want to keep some type of randomness with the review. However, we should set some prioritization for cards in review.

Update packages

Pull out SRS algorithm in separate package

The SM2 algorithm is deeply coupled with the backend work. It should be pulled out into it's own package to allow for its stand-alone usage.

Support export of notes

Description

Users should be able to export and download a copy of their notes and their study activity. Build support for exporting user personal notes in .csv format.

Support tags migrations in script

Support image uploads for card front/back fields

Description

Users would like to add images to cards to support different types of studying. This requires adding support for image uploads.

Turn default data into json files

Description

The data that populates the default views currently live in a .js file and should really live in the database or a json file.

Prioritize cards with lowest recall rate for review

Description

Cards with low recall rate should be naturally be prompted for review. We want to keep some type of randomness with the review. However, we should set some prioritization for cards in review.

Support 'Undo' action for review

Description

Users want the ability to undo a review action in case of a mistaken touch. Users should be able to undo an action after just causing it.

Remove SendGrid as a dependency for running project locally

The sendgrid mailer and admin emails shouldn't be a dependency for running the project locally. Remove the mailer-related code and mailer environment variables.

Support forking decks

It's very important to be able to find quality flash cards and adjust them to one's needs. That goes for both teachers and students, who both have a need for quality content, yet one that suits their class curriculum/study requirements.

To meet this need, I propose a crowdsourcing model inspired by open-source communities. The idea is for public decks to be CC BY-SA by default, allowing people to make forks and propose changes to the original decks.

(Here's also an idea for making money from Pensieve: introduce a GitHub-like model and offer a paid tier that lets people create private proprietary decks to be shared with only a select group.)

The way it works could be identical to GitHub: fork to create your own deck, with the ability to file a pull request to the original deck whenever. (The terminology might need to be changed to be friendlier to non-technical people.)

Support deck taglines

Add deck tag lines to briefly describe the contents of the deck.

Update all controllers to async/await