Polling App

This is a small web app which features a landing page where a random poll question is displayed along with a list of possible responses. Once the user submits a response, the page redirects to a new view that displays the question and response frequencies in the form of a bar chart. Upon returning to the homepage, a new random question will be asked. User can answer the same question more than once.

Demo

Local Deployment

Backend setup

You will need to have Python, pip, and virtualenv installed before you can proceed.

Clone git repository

git clone https://github.com/kl2611/polling-app.git

Navigate into root directory

cd polling-app

Create virtual environment

virtualenv flask

go into flask folder

cd flask

Activate virtual environment

source bin/activate

Go back to parent directory and install requirements

cd ..

pip install -r requirements.txt

Set the FLASK_APP and FLASK_DEBUG variables

export FLASK_APP=app.py
export FLASK_DEBUG=1

Run with

flask run

Frontend setup

Open new terminal window and navigate to frontend folder

cd frontend

Install dependencies

npm install

To run:

ng serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 5001

Navigate to localhost:5001 in your browser

Code

Backend

• Python Flask backend
• SQLAlchemy relational-based backend

Frontend

• Angular 2 framework
• Bootstrap toolkit
• SASS stylesheets

Available APIs

HTTP Method	URL	details
GET	/api/polls	gets all polls
POST	/api/polls	create a new poll
GET	/api/polls/:id	gets poll based on id
PATCH	/api/polls/vote	votes on a poll option

Schema

Questions

column name	data type	details
id	integer	not null, primary key
title	string	not null
options	array	not null
total_vote_count	integer	not null

Options

column name	data type	details
id	integer	not null, primary key
name	string	not null

Polls

column name	data type	details
question_id	integer	not null, foreign key (references questions)
option_id	integer	not null, foreign key (references options)
vote_count	integer	not null

Thoughts and Future Implementations

I chose Flask over Django for the Python backend due to its flexibility and minimalistic features. SQL Alchemy was used due to its excellent documentation, and the Flask SQLAlchemy extension made it easier to use SQLAlchemy directly in Flask. Angular 2 was used because of TypeScript compiler's ease-of-use and simplicity of the interface. A con of Angular 2, however, is its large set of data files that comes with angular-cli. But as a practical reason, my existing familiarity with the framework made it more convenient to use.

With more time permitted, I would implement the following:

• Unit tests
• Improving app security
• Improve UI/UX design
• Render all error views and components
• Provide a larger poll question repository/seed file. As of now there are only 10 questions in the database.
• Ability for a user to delete and modify existing poll options.