Meteor Version

[deskinsjt]

To make things easier to deploy to multiple universities we are looking to changing over to Meteor. I have spent a little time thinking about how we want this to look and before I start writing I think we should have a more complete outline for what is going to happen.

There are two reasonable models I see for the new version of the website:

1. Single central server for all institutions
2. single app that is deployed on multiple servers (one per institution)

There are pros and cons to both:

Option 1

• Pro: Will allow more conversation between Universities and such
• Con: We will need to provide a central server (and maintain it or pay for it)
• Pro: More impressive from a resume standpoint

Option 2

• Pro: Simpler database and site structure
• Con: less control of usage
• Pro: easier to develop

At the moment I am more or less ambivalent to which path we take. Perhaps leaning towards option 2 as the Meteor framework feels unnatural to me at the moment. Hopefully this will change once I get into it.

In any case here is a sketch of the database structure (for Option 1), I think it lays out nicely the core functionality and if we decide to go option 2 should be easy to pair down.

• databases
  • papers
    • paperUID //_id
    • arxivId
    • url //to arxiv page
    • title
    • authors
    • abstract
    • [arxivs,] //maybe boolean for all arxivs?[{arxiv:bool},]
    • importDate
    • updateDate
    • COMMENTS//3rd party?
    • [{userUID,votes,date,institutionUID},]
  • institution
    • institutionUID //_id
    • graphic? //Graphic for each institution?
    • longName //char type and length limits?
    • shortName //char type and length limits?
    • users: [{userUID,email},]
    • admins: [{userUID,email},] //globalAdmin to be hidden from list and protected from deletion
    • meetings: [{startTime,endTime,collectVotes},] //how should we deal with repeats? make them pick each date or pick a selection?
  • users
    • userUID //_id
    • LongName
    • nickname
    • email
    • [institutionUID,]
    • globalAdmin

Here is what I am thinking to start for development, mainly so that something working is going from the start.

• Start
  1. Import (single) arxiv (xml2js)
  2. Display papers from the feed
• Interact 1
  3. Add vote to paper data
  4. Add vote functionality
• Simple publishing/routing
  5. Import multiple arxivs
  6. route between them (react router)

Thoughts on anything are welcome. I may have an initial commit sometime over the weekend.

[deskinsjt]

Also I think the database structure will address issues: #47 and #24. Using meteor should address #7. Further I think for the user control we may use googles OAuth (#38) and may address #46. It shouldn't be hard to alter the database structure for #31 either.

[jbmertens]

Like the thoughts. Should this be its own repo?

I'm also in favor of Option 1, as long as page load times are reasonable.