Let registrar upload course export files?

[calebsander]

Currently we receive the export files by email and then run a script on the server to import them. The registrar would like to be able to upload them directly to the website. I think this would require:

• An authentication method. We could allow non-undergrad users (like on legacy Donut), but I don't think this is a great approach. We ended up with a lot more Caltech people than probably necessary having access to Donut features intended for undergrads. A better solution is probably to generate unique tokens (with an expiration date!) for non-undergrads. The database could keep track of which permissions are granted to which tokens (where the token is salted+hashed, of course). We could let these people automatically generate new tokens sent to their email address, but I think it's better to make this go through Devteam.
• The registrar generates the export files by running a SQL query manually. So sometimes we get incorrect files (e.g. for the wrong term, or missing all courses without meeting times). This leads to courses being deleted from the given term, which irrevocably deletes them from everyone's schedules. So we would probably need a confirmation screen to verify the list of courses that are going to be added and removed.

Not sure the benefits outweigh the implementation costs, but thought I would record the requirements just in case.