Zorza

(/'zɔʐa/ ZAW-zha - Polish for aurora)
An informational website for schools with an advanced timetable interface.

• View class, group, teacher, classroom timetables
• Set a default timetable for easy repeated access
• Find out about upcoming schedule changes, cancelled lessons and teacher substitutions
• Fast experience - minimal use of JavaScript and good caching
• No registration - everything works without user accounts
• Use on any device - fully responsive design
• Check which classrooms are occupied at a given time
• Access school documents and files quickly
• Not a student information system, but can be complementary to one
• See remaining break time and substitutions also on a publicly installed screen

Setup

Install Python 3.5 or later and set up a Python virtual environment, then install Django 2.2.5 or later (you can use pip install -r requirements.txt).

Now you can git clone the repository. You will need to create a zorza/localsettings.py file and set DEBUG, SECRET_KEY, LANGUAGE_CODE, TIME_ZONE.

The root (/) url is an alias for /pages/home/, which is a Django flatpage. Create a flatpage with the URL /home/ in Django administration (/admin/), otherwise you will get a 404. You have to create an account first with ./manage.py createsuperuser. In the footer there is a link to the flatpage with URL /about/.

Populating the timetable database should be done by scripts. The zorza_scripts repository is a collection of scripts for importing timetables generated by aSc TimeTables and tailoring the database for a specific usecase.

Very basic example timetable and flatpage data can be loaded by ./manage.py loaddata fixtures/demo.json.

For a production setup, consult https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/howto/deployment/checklist/ and https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/howto/deployment/ .

The directories mediafiles, staticfiles, and favicons have to be served directly by the web server. Example nginx configuration for that:

	location /media  {
		alias /sites/zorza/mediafiles;
	}
	location /static {
		alias /sites/zorza/staticfiles;
	}
	location ~ ^/(android|apple-touch-icon|browserconfig|favicon|manifest|safari)(.*)\.(png|xml|ico|json|svg)$ {
		root /sites/zorza/staticfiles/favicons;
	}

This software is designed with response caching in mind because the content is mostly static and by nature not requiring urgent updates. Set CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS in localsettings.py and configure your web server for response caching.

The page /timetable/display/ displays remaining break/period time and teacher substitutions. It's intended to be run fullscreen in a browser on a public big screen. Use browser zoom to make it look right.

Administration

Custom admin commands (see ./manage.py COMMAND --help):

• uploaddir - uploads a directory of files to a category
• cleanup - removes old substitutions etc.

To access substitution editing forms or the calendar (DayPlan formset) the user needs the add_substitution or add_dayplan permission respectively. To access Django Admin is_staff is needed, as is normal with Django.

After timetable changes or group changes in real world, such that teacher/class/group ids saved in the default timetable cookie correspond to a different thing than before, you must increment/add the integer TIMETABLE_VERSION in localsettings.py. Otherwise you risk default timetables being wrong or 404s.

License and credits

This project is licensed under AGPLv3.

The header image is a modified photograph by Simo "Ximonic" Räsänen and is available under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The logo font is Raleway.

This project includes medium-editor by Davi Ferreira (http://www.daviferreira.com) licensed under the MIT license.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md