Creating an Opensource E-Learning Solution: Structuring the base of the Project's codebase

Ramzi Issiakhem — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 10:41:14 +0000

Hello Everyone, in this article, we will see how to structure the project codebase, we'll take a look to the licensing, the contributing , the documentation and the code of conduct.

Where to start ?

As for any project or any decision in your life, you need to be informed and have the information crucial for your progress.

So I started searching on guides and tutorials, I found must-read and complete guides here : Opensource Guide , you really should read it !

Basically, to start a opensource project, you need some basics :

Define your Opensource License: to protect your work and yourself
Explain your project: What is it, why is it important, how it will be, how to use it etc…
Contribution Process: Clarify how the community can contribute, providing a process and a guide to do it properly
Code of conduct: Explain what are the rules of behaviors of each one related to the project

OpenSource License:

Choosing your license is important to protect your project and yourself, as it defines how your project codebase can be used, modified, distributed with all the conditions and limitations, the license is primordial to start on a good base, and we can enumerate two categories:

Permissive Licenses: The users are allowed to freely use, modify, integrate, and distribute the software without requiring changes to be open sourced, like :

MIT License
Apache License 2.0
BSD 3-Clause License

Copyleft Licenses: Copyleft licenses require modified works that incorporate open source code also be open sourced under the same terms, like :

GNU General Public License (GPL)
GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

In our case, we'll go on a more flexible license, and we will use MIT LICENSE

Explaining your Project:

In this part, we need to explain everything about our Project, we can start by creating a README file in the root of our project, and answer to important questions like :

What is the Project
What are the problems it's solving and its goals
Why you should use it, how it is useful
How to start using it
Where to check more details/ documentation

For our project, we answered to the first ones, as the project is still in developement and the file will be modified as we progress

Contribution Process:

Here, you explain how the contribution is done in your project, and answer to the most important questions like :

What are the types of contributions wanted
How to get in touch with the maintainers
The roadmap and the vision of your projects oriented towards the contributions
How to file a bug report
How to suggest a new feature

This can be done by creating a CONTRIBUTING File in your root project, in our case it will be really simple at first and will evolve over time

Code of conduct:

This establish the ground rules of behavior in you project and to everyone evolved in it, it should define the person responsible for taking the complains in consideration as your code of conduct need to be enforced and applied, it also defines how participants should and should not behave and who it should be applied and how

Our Project
You can check for the README,CONTRIBUTING and CODE_OF_CONDUCT files direcly in our project Github here :
https://github.com/ramzi-issiakhem/learnfony

If you've read this far, I'm sure you're interested in the project. Join our Discord server stay in touch! 😁
https://discord.gg/eBqTKrYPPm

Let's create an Opensource Headless E-learning using Symfony

Ramzi Issiakhem — Thu, 30 May 2024 11:20:11 +0000

Hello Everyone, let me just present myself... we have a long way together to build The Headless E-Learning in Symfony 🔥

Who Are you ?

My name is Issiakhem Mohamed Ramzi, 22, a passionate full-stack software engineer, for being passionate i really am, I started computer science at 14 YO with Java and POO, what a mess...
Otherwise, I build websites, Web applications and I'm starting my path on the OpenSource World !!

What are you doing here ?

I wanna contribute to the community, especially to the opensource community, improve my skills and of course my network, you know... Hahaha

The Devlog Serie

Now let's talk business, during this series of Devlogs, I will share with you the process of building an opensource project, it's my first time doing it, I count on your help and contributions 😉

What you will find here:

The Project's ambitions evolution
The Critical thinking behind important decisions
The Design and conceptual study
The functionalities implementation
The Obstacles and how we surpass them
Some Feedback from the community

The Project Story !

Finally after a lot of blabla, let's start introducing the Project, SymLearn ( Still a beta name ), is The Headless Opensource E-Learning using Symfony, I recently has a freelance project for the same kind of application and said to myslef:

Ramzi, is there any opensource project for my need ?

And after some research, I found that, there is solutions but not using Symfony or that are not how I want, that's too bad 😏

The Project's Ambitions

Sky is your limit

That's some good introduction to talk about the SymLearn ambition and functionalities, we aim to make the most efficient, easy to use and deploy headless e-learning in Symfony !
In few clicks, you will be able to use a complete solution to manage your backend.
What we want is:

Extensibility: Capability to add new features easily.
Usability: Ease of use and user-friendly interface.
Modularity: Different components and modules activated on demand.
Documentation: Comprehensive and clear documentation for developers and users.
Flexibility: Easy to customize and enhanced flexibility.
Security & Authentication: A complete security system tailored to your needs
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automated processes for code integration and deployment.
Testing: Rigorous and automated testing to ensure code quality.

The project functionalities:

In this part, we'll take a look at the core functionalities that will be available on SymLearn :

User Management: A complete user management system ( authentication, authorization, profile, courses overview, rbac, progress... )
Course Management: Manage the modules,courses,chapters and lessons structure.
Workspace and groups: Create workspace with predefined groups and assign courses according to the group and the workspace.
Assesment and evaluation: Create Quizzes,exams, automatic and manual grading.
Tracking & Reporting: Track the completion, attendance and progression for students and courses, create completion certificates
Gamification: Badge and achievements system, score systems with leaderboards.

What's Next ?

All of this can not be done as a solo developer, that's when I need your help to make it real ( I was writing "WE" during the post but yeah, I'm still solo 😔
Feel free to comment or ask any questions you have in mind !

If you've read this far, I'm sure you're interested in the project. Join our Discord server to stay in touch! 😁

DEV Community: Ramzi Issiakhem