Update: Network Interactions

Last Thursday, Nico and I refined the attendance tracking network protocol. We have taken the object model into account to create the set of resources that the server and client expect to send and receive.

1. GET /login: when the client first connects, the server will send a course list or an HTTP status code indicating some sort of error.
2. POST /create: the client will request a new account by sending an anonymous research ID (which every student in the study will receive) and a password. The server will respond with an HTTP status code to indicate success or failure.
3. GET /attendance_log: the client will send a course ID when the user selects a course. The server will send list of attendance logs or an HTTP status code indicating failure.
4. GET /take_attendance when attendance verification begins, the client will request a list of valid attendance methods. The server will send list of valid attendance methods or an HTTP status code indicating failure.
5. POST /take_attendance: when the user fills out attendance verification, the client will send a JSON object containing verification information. The server will respond using an HTTP status code.

The connection will be performed over HTTPS using HTTP BA for authentication and TSL for confidentiality. Data will be transmitted in the JSON format. I have created prototypes for all the types of networking and data serialization/deserialization that the client and server must perform.  I'll implement our protocol on the client side and I'll help implement part of the networking code on the server.

-- Hugo