Whenever I'm trying to register for classes, I always find that one of the hardest parts is picking courses that don't conflict. At best, all the courses offered will be displayed on a calendar, which is usually so cluttered it's nearly impossible to keep track of all of your options. At worst, there's no calendar at all, and you need to keep going back and forth between webpages, comparing offering times and holding them in your head to make sure you end up with a schedule that doesn't have time conflicts. The goal of this application is to lessen the headache of choosing courses by making clear which ones conflict, and when.
To run this application, you'll need to have Python and MySQL installed on your computer.
Then, run the SQL scripts to create the database and tables, respectively:
shell> mysql -u root -p < create_db.sql
To create the database, you'll need to run MySQL as root.
NOTE: The create_db script grants access to 'aaron@localhost' with password 'COMP311' as defaults. You can change those by editing the script, if you care, but you'll also need to pass the new values to the timeclash.py script so MySQL is able to connect to the database.
After creating the database, create the database tables used to store the school and course information with the create_tables.sql script (you can run this script as a normal user):
shell> mysql -u aaron -p timeclash < create_tables.sql
After creating the database, run the timeclash.py script to launch the application:
shell> python timeclash.py
If you changed the default username or password, run this:
shell> python timeclash.py --user=alternate_user --pw=alternate_password
- Write a better conflict-checking algorithm that can tell you exactly which courses are causing the problems.
- Change the interface so that users can select which specific offering they want to use in their schedule.
- Change the interface so that users can dynamically change the number
of offerings a course has.
- Is this possible with MySQL? Might need to think of a clever way to implement.
I originally started building this application as my final project for the course COMP311: Foundations of Database Systems at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The assignment is to create any database application with a user interface. I chose to create this application after spending a frustrating two weeks trying to organize my course schedule at the beginning of my study abroad semester.
To use this application, you can add your school to the database, and then populate the school with courses and some information about them, including the offering times. Then you can create a schedule with all your courses, and the application will check if any of them conflict. It will tell you which do, if any, and when they conflict and for how long.
If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please don't hesitate to open an issue.
Thanks!
-Aaron
To create the user interface for this application, I used Allen Downey's Python module Gui.py, which he makes available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.