labseps

Goals

• Work on mobile phones > work on desktops.
• Provide a website with info on which labs are free at the moment.
• Allow users to check for availability at any time in the future.
• Allow users to check for the next available slot of time in a room.
• Provide info on room resources.
• Provide info about scheduled classes/labs. Link to EPS homepage.
• Bonus: build a WhatsApp bot.

Structure

• A web scrapper that parses data available at http://eps.uam.es and stores it in a database.
• A web server that queries the database and returns information to the user.
• A database that stores all data.

The Web Scrapper

Data is available by browsing to http://eps.uam.es > Estudios > [Select major] > [Select Horarios on the sidebar] > [Select year on the sidebar]. A couple of tables are shown: one per group and semester. Tables adhere to the following structure:

• Tables are wrapped inside a div.tabla_horario. Each of theese contains:
  • An h1 tag containing the string Primer Cuatrimestre|Segundo Cuatrimestre.
  • An h2 tag containing the string Grupo [0-9]. This is not used as the group is already specified in an the time lot detail and can vary even under the same timetable.
  • The actual table.tabladatos tag with the schedule info.
• Each table.tabladatos contains:
  • A header row of multiple th cells inside a thead wrapper (good semantics!). They always have the same number of columns: Hora, Lunes, Martes, Miércoles, Jueves, Viernes
  • Multiple time slot rows each containing:
    • A th.celda_hora cell which contains the start and end times of the time slot in the format start<br>end.
    • Multiple td cells each containing a link with a JS onlick handler and the course code as the text. The onclick handler is a function call with 4 arguments: course_id, start_time, end_time, day_of_week. The function opens a small window that loads a webpage (a.k.a. the slot detail) with further information on the course.
• The slot detail webpage is another table tagged table.tabladatos. The rows are key-value pairs.
  • The first cell is always a th cell which contains the key. The following keys are known: Asignatura, Grupo, Profesores, Hora, Día, Aula.
  • The other cell is a td cell with the value asociated with the key in the previous cell. Formats vary.

Consistency issues

• Sometimes there are multiple comma-separated values for the Profesores key in the time slot detail table.
• Sometimes there are multiple comma-separated or new-line-separated values for the Aula key in the time slot detail table.
• There is a non-existing room: Pendiente de asignar. These entries should not end up in the database.
• There is a non-existing professor: Pendiente de asignar. These should not end up in the database either.

The Data Model

We have settled on a relational data model with two main realtions: Classes and Rooms. To represent entities in code we adhere to the repository pattern as much as possible. There is one entity class and one repository class per each relation.

Rooms

Field name	Field Type	Source
id	integer	Auto increment
name	string	Aula in time slot detail

Classes

Field name	Field Type	Source
short_name	string	Content of the td element in the main table
semester	integer	Content of the h1 element in the main table
code	string	onclick handler first argument
starts_at	string	onclick handler second argument
ends_at	string	onclick handler third arguement
day_of_week	integer	onclick handler fourth argument
course_name	string	Asignatura in time slot detail
group	string	Grupo in time slot detail
professors	string	Profesores in time slot detail
room_id	integer	Aula in time slot detail

The database can be initialized by running db_init.py. For now, this script deletes any previous database and initializes a new one. No migrations have been implemented as this database is not the primary source for the data.