Classroom for GitHub

Classroom for GitHub is a Ruby on Rails application designed to automate repository creation and access control, making it easy for teachers to distribute starter code and collect assignments on GitHub

How it works

Assignments are the core of Classroom for GitHub. Teachers can easily create an assignment and distribute it to students using a private invitation URL. Optional starter code can be provided for individual or group work. It's even possible to delegate assignment creation and management to co-teachers and teaching assistants by adding them as organization administrators.

Hacking on Classroom for GitHub

Get started

New to Ruby? No worries! You can follow these instructions to install a local server.

Installing a Local Server

First things first, you'll need to install Ruby 2.3.0. We recommend using the excellent rbenv, and ruby-build

rbenv install 2.3.0
rbenv global 2.3.0

Next, you'll need to make sure that you have Nodejs, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, and Elasticsearch installed. This can be done easily :

• For OSX using Homebrew : You don't have to do anything! When you run script/setup later on this will be taken care of for you.
• For Linux : apt-get install nodejs postgresql redis-server memcached. For Elasticsearch, follow the instructions on their website.

You will want to set PostgreSQL to autostart at login via launchctl, if not already. See brew info postgresql. Redis and memcached may be setup similarly via launchctl or setup project wide by using foreman, described below.

Now, let's install the gems from the Gemfile ("Gems" are synonymous with libraries in other languages).

gem install bundler && rbenv rehash

Setup Classroom for GitHub

If you are using Linux, configure PostgreSQL :

• Edit /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/postgresql.conf and uncomment #unix_socket_permissions = 0777
• Create a user and give him the rights to create a database : su postgres -s /bin/bash -c "psql -c 'CREATE USER classroom_user; ALTER USER classroom_user CREATEDB'" (Change classroom_user to the username that will run the classroom server)

Once bundler is installed (and PostgreSQL correctly configured for Linux users) go ahead and run the setup script :

script/setup

Production environment variables

Development environment variables

These values must be present in your .env file (created by script/setup).

To obtain your GitHub Client ID/Secret you need to register a new OAuth application.

After you register your OAuth application, you should fill in the homepage url with http://localhost:5000 and the authorization url with http://localhost:5000/auth/github/callback.

To obtain your GitHub User ID for the NON_STAFF_GITHUB_ADMIN_IDS field, go to https://api.github.com/users/your_username

Testing environment variables

If you want to make a functionality change to the application you will need to write tests to accompany that change. In order to do this, the test values in the .env file must be filled in.

Classroom for GitHub uses VCR for recording and playing back API fixtures during test runs. These cassettes (fixtures) are part of the Git project in the spec/support/cassettes folder. If you're not recording new cassettes you can run the specs with existing cassettes with:

script/test

Classroom for GitHub uses environmental variables for storing credentials used in testing, these values are located in your .env file (created by script/setup). If you are recording new cassettes, you need to make sure all of these values are present.

To obtain these values you will need:

• A teacher (your primary GitHub account)
• A student (another Github account, created for this purpose)
• An organisation that the teacher is an owner of, but the student does not belong to.

It is best if you create your own organization for testing purposes, if you have done so:

To obtain the OWNER_GITHUB_ID value, you can go to https://api.github.com/users/organization_owner_username.

To obtain the OWNER_GITHUB_TOKEN value, you will need to generate a personal access token.

To get the STUDENT_GITHUB_ID value you will need to create another user account on GitHub and get the ID by going to https://api.github.com/users/student_username

To get the STUDENT_GITHUB_TOKEN value you will need to generate another personal access token for the student account.

To obtain the OWNER_ORGANIZATION_GITHUB_ID/LOGIN you can go to https://api.github.com/orgs/organization_name.

Now you should have all of the values filled in, great job!

Running the application

Foreman is setup to manage redis, memcached, sidekiq, and elasticsearch in development mode. Postgresql must be running prior executing foreman.

After that, you may start the rails server in a separate terminal with:

script/server

And that's it! You should have a working instance of Classroom for GitHub located here

Deployment

We strongly encourage you to use https://classroom.github.com, but if you would like your own version Classroom for GitHub can be easily deployed to Heroku.

Contributing

We'd love to have you participate. Please check out contributing guidelines.

Contributors

Classroom is developed by these contributors.

Shout out to GitHub Summer of Code student, Mark Tareshawty, from The Ohio State University for his work on Classroom for GitHub.