Pluggable sample data framework

There are several goals to this framework:

• provide the developers with a SchoolTool setup that is close to real-world use in amounts of data in the database, so various performance and usability problems are noticed and taken care of early
• provide the users with an easy setup for evaluating SchoolTool with plausible data

The framework is pluggable and allows the creators of SchoolTool extensions to provide their own plugins that generate sample data for those extensions.

What data does it generate?

Currently, the framework generates a school with a 1000 students, 48 teachers, 64 rooms and 24 projectors, 240 sections of 24 courses, sets up a 6 day 6 period rotating timetable schema, and sets up timetables for all teachers and students. All sections and people get random events added to their calendars every now and then.

How to use it?

Sample data generation is available in the developer mode. In order to enable it, uncomment the devmode on line in your schooltool.conf. If you only have schooltool.conf.in, copy it to schooltool.conf and then edit it.

You need to run the sample data generation with an empty database, so most probably you need to remove the Data.fs file. Start the SchoolTool server, log in as manager, choose Sample Data from the developer mode menu, change the random seed if you want to, and press ‘Generate’. Be patient, it takes several minutes even on fast machines.

When the generation is done, you’ll get a summary of how much CPU time each plugin took. Unfortunately, generating this amount of data imposes significant overhead, so the run time of the plugins does not quite sum up to the amount of wall time the generation took.

How do I create a sample data plugin?

In order to create a sample data plugin, you only have to register a named utility that implements the interface schooltool.sampledata.interfaces.ISampleDataPlugin. This interface is very simple, it requires only the name attribute with the unique name of the plugin, the dependencies attribute with names of plugins this one depends on, and a generate method that generates its data given that the dependencies have already been satisfied.

If your plugin depends on some objects, such as persons, groups, courses, timetable setup, you can find out the names of the appropriate plugins by looking at the source of the existing plugins in these modules:

schooltool.person.sampledata
schooltool.group.sampledata
schooltool.resource.sampledata
schooltool.course.sampledata
schooltool.timetable.sampledata

Crude example

Let’s say you want to create a plugin that adds a ‘favorite_color’ annotation to all persons, with randomly chosen values of ‘red’, ‘green’, or ‘blue’. Obviously, your plugin depends on teachers and students already being in the database, so you will depend on plugins ‘teachers’ and ‘students’.

You need to define a plugin:

import random
import zope.interface
from zope.annotation.interfaces import IAnnotations
from schooltool.sampledata.interfaces import ISampleDataPlugin
from schooltool.sampledata import PortableRandom

class PersonColorPlugin(object):
    zope.interface.implements(ISampleDataPlugin)
    name = 'person_color'
    dependencies = ('teachers', 'students')

    def generate(self, app, seed=None):
        rng = PortableRandom(seed)
        for person in app['persons'].values():
            color = rng.choice(['red', 'green', 'blue'])
            IAnnotations(person)['favorite_color'] = color

Now, you need to register it in your configure.zcml. You need to conditionally include your registration of the sample data plugin for the developer mode:

<configure xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope">

  <!-- ... -->

  <configure
      xmlns:zcml="http://namespaces.zope.org/zcml"
      zcml:condition="have devmode">

    <utility
        factory=".PersonColorPlugin"
        provides="schooltool.sampledata.interfaces.ISampleDataPlugin"
        name="person_color"
        />

  </configure>

</configure>

Voila! Remove Data.fs, regenerate sample data, and all your teachers and students should know their colours!