Add `/comments` API

[Naragod]

Task

We wish to create an API that allows us to view all of the overall comments given to an assignment and similarly update all overall comments on an assignment.

Investigation

Currently, we are able to provide over all comments on the UI through the markdown text area.

Everytime this textbox is updated, the overall_comment value on the results table for the given assignment is updated with this expression.

We wish to able to update this stored value through an API PATCH call and similarly receive this value through a GET request.

Suggestions

All changes are handled by the annotations_controller.rb, particularly the create and update methods. It would be a good idea to expose this functionality in an api annotations_controller.

[philipkukulak]

The overall_comment field exists as a column in the results table, which is linked via foreign key to the submissions table. It appears to me that there is no direct relationship between overall_comment and annotations in the data model, only indirectly via annotations -> submission_files -> submissions <- results[overall_comment].

The UI AnnotationsController reads from the results table quite a bit, but never writes to it. Furthermore, the only place the results table is touched in the API is in GroupsController.

My intuition tells me that associating this API with annotations is a bit misleading. It feels like creating a ResultsController in the API to serve as a named counterpart to the UI controller is the right way to go, since overall_comment is not an annotation at all and having a named API counterpart to AnnotationsController implies an API that operates on annotations.

Here's my proposed route:

/api/courses/:course_id/assignments/:assignment_id/groups/:group_id/overall_comment

I would love some thoughts on the best design choice for this API.

[david-yz-liu]

Hi @philipkukulak, great observation. Yes, I agree that adding the route under GroupsController is most appropriate, as that's where all of the result-specific actions currently live.