Quizzical

Functionalities

Question editting

• Provides a UI for user to edit their quiz questions
• Provides a way for users to start their quiz bank from scratch

Question I/O

• Allows users to import quizzes from csv (or sheets)
• Allows users to download quiz into csv

Quizzing functionality

• Renders questions for users
• Renders questions in a kahoot type quiz game
• Collect results and export them into csv

User Flows

Rendering from User csv

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]

	user--csv-->qfe--POST /edit csv-->qbe
	qbe--form-->qfe--form-->user

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Rendering from google sheet

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]
    gSheet[google sheet]

	user--googleSheetURL-->qfe-- POST /edit googleSheetURL-->qbe --> gSheet
	gSheet-->qbe--form-->qfe--form-->user

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Exporting questions into CSV

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]

	user--form-->qfe--form-->qbe
    qbe--csv-->user

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Preview questions

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]
    cache[redis]

    user --form--> qfe --form--> qbe --"{{key}}: quizObject"--> cache
    qbe --"REDIRECT quiz/{{key}}/preview"--> qfe --> user

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Start a quiz

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]
    cache[redis]
    gSheet[google sheet]

    user --> qfe --"GET quiz/{{key}}"-->qbe --"{{key}}"--> cache
    cache --quizObject--> qbe
    qbe --form--> qfe --form--> user

    qbe .-> gSheet

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Collecting results

flowchart LR
    user((user))
	qbe[quizzical backend]
	qfe[quizzical frontend]
    gSheet[google sheet]

    user --> qfe --"POST quiz/{{key}}/{{question}}"-->qbe .-> gSheet

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Architectural Decisions

What are the decisions and why?

Frontend

Current status: a static page rendered using go templates

Advantages

• Comes included with Go standard lib
• UI can be customised easily by embedding css from others
• Minimal UI FE work required
• Currently seems enough to pass data back and forth

Disadvantages

• Not able to do cool front end stuff like the games interface in Kahoot
  • Perhaps can explore using HTMX or something
• Still basic HTML looking pages, nothing like cool modern pages

Backend

Current status: Basic go server, no frameworks

Advantages

• Lightweight and simple
• Builds and works nicely with render.com
• Nice testing ecosystem

Disadvantages

• Lots of code to write

Database (or lack thereof)

Current status: Google sheet + Redis cache + user submits CSV

Advantages

• Less infrastructure to take care of
• No one is going to use this anyways
• Data can be easily seen
• Caching helps with latency issues
• Most people are comfortable with sheets

Disadvantages

• Communication with google sheets is slow (latency issues v.s. db)
• Not sure how much data can we store in gSheets
• Inconsistencies in data structure read in from gSheets
• Brittle data: 1 wrong format can throw everything off