TheElectionMachineRest

This is the second part of The Election Machine project that uses REST
Check the first part here.

I started creating the base for the site with HTML before it was transformed to jsp files. Here you can see little bit of the process of it and see the first raw (non-functional) version of the site. Unfortunately it doesn't have the admin features.

Task

Our task was to continue with The Election Machine using REST and JPA.
In the first part we already used JSP, database (MySQL) and HTML/CSS.

In the previous version there were features for

• the voter to find suitable candidates
• the candidate to answer questions and edit/delete them

For the second part we wanted to add features for the admin side. In the task description there was asked to do only one feature but we wanted to add two. New features were:

• Admin can add, edit and delete questions
• Admin can add, edit and delete candidates

All data is saved in a local database and it is handled with JPA. The methods for JPA are in Daojpa.java and they are called from Rest.java. Data is transferred between the REST and JSP files with RequestDispatcher.

We added few extra features e.g.

• login for the admin using AuthFilter
• pop-up window when deleting data
• adding commenting opportunity for the voter when answering questions

Conclusion

The project was fun to work with and we learned a lot. It was demanding and it helped develop our problem-solving skills. We only had few weeks to work with and there was a much to take in. The fact that we had to connect the first part of the project with this one added some extra challenge.
For example, we hadn’t thought how deleting questions and candidates would affect the functionality. We also had to re-create the database because we had used two primary keys instead of foreign keys.

All in all, the second part came together quickly after we figured out how the data is being transferred. We succeeded to create functioning site and added few extra features like:

• adding candidate’s picture from local machine/project’s folder
• admin login
• customized confirmation window for deleting

If we had more time we would have wanted to create filtering for the candidates for example by party or municipality.

Team: Jenna Hakkarainen, Amanda Karjalainen, Anna-Maria Palm