Advanced Language Practices (ALPs)

Improve your language skills with inspiring images & immediate feedback!

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Now that you've "climbed the mountain" of learning another language, keep your skills fresh with regular practice! Language output (speaking & writing) is key but can get dull with routine drills, plus you may never know if it's entirely correct.
🔸
With ALPs, every writing challenge comes with an inspiring image to ignite your imagination, a random verb & grammar points to help focus your language, and immediate feedback with the help of AI!

Visit the ALPs website!

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Table of Contents

1. About The Project
   • Agile Methodology
   • Built With
2. Getting Started
   • Prerequisites
   • External API Keys
   • Schema
   • Testing
3. Endpoints
4. External APIs
5. Stretch Technologies
6. Future Iterations
7. Contributors

About the Project

🔸 Deployed Site
🔸 Backend Service
🔸 Front End Repository

ALPs was created by a cross-functional development team of students from the Turing School of Software and Design as their capstone project.

The mission of ALPs is to provide users with writing promts that ignite their imagination and provide immediate feedback on their language output.

Users simply choose their target language via an avatar to start a new challenge. When they begin, they'll see a random verb, inspiring image, and multiple grammar points to create fresh, unique sentences. Once they submit the challenge -- with the help of AI -- immediate feedback and correct sentences are provided so they can review and learn even faster!

Agile Methodology

This method is a flexible and iterative approach to project management that focuses on collaboration, adaptability, and continuous improvement.

The agile methodology was chosen for backend development to expedite the app's launch and progressively abstract functions across multiple phases of development.

Built With

Phase 1: Delivered Minimum Viable Product (MVC)

Phase 2: First Attempt to Refactor Deployment

• Aimed to Replace: With:

Phase 3: Successfully Refactored Deployment

• Replaced: With:

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Getting Started

If you'd like to demo this API on your local machine:

1. Ensure you have the prerequisites
2. Sign up for external API Keys
3. Clone this repo: git clone git@github.com:A-L-P-s/ALPs_api_sqlite_finale.git
4. Navigate to the root folder: cd ALPs_api_sqlite_finale
5. Run: bundle install
6. Run: rails db:{create,migrate,seed}
7. Run: bundle exec figaro install
8. In the app/config/application.yml file add you API keys:

• UNSPLASH_API_KEY: add_api_key_here
• OPENAI_API_KEY: add_api_key_here

1. Inspect the /db/schema.rb and compare to the 'Schema' section below to ensure migration has been done successfully
2. Run: rails s
3. Visit http://localhost:3000/

Prerequisites

• Ruby Version 3.1.1
• Rails Version 7.0.4.x
• Bundler Version 2.4.9

External API Keys

Sign up for your individual external API keys:

• Unsplash Image API
  • Follow instructions provided.
• OpenAI API
  • Once you have signed up, click on your profile at the top left and selecting View API keys.
  • Then click Create new secret key.

Schema

Testing

To test the entire spec suite, run bundle exec rspec. All tests should be passing.

Happy path, sad path, and edge case testing were considered and tested. When a request cannot be completed, an error object is returned.

See Error Object

    
{
  "errors": [
    {
      "status": "404"
      "title": "Invalid Request",
      "detail": "Couldn't find User with 'id'="
     }
   ]
}
    

Status Codes

See All

ALPs API reutrns the folowing status codes:

Status Code	Description
200	OK
201	CREATED
204	NO CONTENT
404	NOT FOUND
418	I'M A TEAPOT
422	UNPROCESSABLE CONTENT
500	INTERNAL SERVER ERROR

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Endpoints

GET "/api/v1/users"

Response:

Code	Description
200	OK

    
{
  "data": [{
    "id": "55",
    "type": “user",
    "attributes": {
        "name": "Deniz",
        "preferred_lang": "Turkish"
    }},
   {
    "id": "1",
    "type": “user",
    "attributes": {
        "name": "Alexis",
        "preferred_lang": "Spanish"
      }
   }]
}
  

GET "/api/v1/users/:id"

Response:

Code	Description
200	OK

    
{
  "data": {
    "id": “55”,
    "type": “user",
    "attributes": {
        "name": "Deniz",
        "preferred_lang": "Turkish",
        "challenges": [
            {
              "challenge_id": "1", 
              "language": "Turkish", 
              "verb": "(i) gitmek",
              "eng_verb": "to go", 
              "image_url": "/random/unplash/image.url",
              "image_alt_text": "Plane flying over the Bosphorous", 
              "created_at": "05/30/2023"
            }, 
            { ...etc...}
        ]
     }  
   }
}
    

GET "/api/v1/users/:id/challenges/new"

Response:

Code	Description
200	OK

    

  "data": {
    "id": null,
    "type": “prompt",
    "attributes": {
        "user_id": = "55",
        "language": "Turkish", 
        "verb": "(i) gitmek",
        "eng_verb": "to go",
        "image_url": "/random/unplash/image.url",
        "image_alt_text": "Plane flying over the Bosphorous",
        "grammar_points": [
           {
            "grammar_point": "şimdiki zaman (-iyor)",
            "eng_grammar_point": "present/present continuous tense"
           },
           {
            "grammar_point": "geniş zaman (-ir/-er)",
            "eng_grammar_point": "simple present tense"
            }
        ]
     }  
   }
}
    

POST "/api/v1/users/:id/challenges"

Request Body:

    
{
 "language": "Turkish",
 "verb": "(i) gitmek",
 "eng_verb": "to go",
 "image_url": "/random/unplash/image.url",
 "image_alt_text": "Plane flying over the Bosphorous", 
 "sentences": [
   {
    "grammar_point": "şimdiki zaman (-iyor)",
    "eng_grammar_point": "present/present continuous tense",
    "user_sent": "Bu yaz Hopa'ya gidiyorum." --> correct sentence <--
    },
    {
      "grammar_point": "geniş zaman (-ir/-er)",
      "eng_grammar_point": "simple present tense",
      "user_sent": "Biz her yillar biz Fethiye'ye giderim." --> incorrect sentence <--
    }
  ]
}
    
  

Response:

Code	Description
201	CREATED

    
{
  "data": {
    "id": “1”,
    "type": “challenge"
   }
}
    

GET "/api/v1/users/:id/challenges/:challenge_id"

Response:

Code	Description
200	OK

    
{
  "data": {
    "id": “1”,
    "type": “challenge",
    "attributes": {
        "user_id": = "55",
        "language": "Turkish", 
        "verb": "(i) gitmek",
        "eng_verb": "to go", 
        "image_url": "/random/unplash/image.url",
        "image_alt_text": "Plane flying over the Bosphorous", 
        "created_at": "05/30/2023",
        "grammar_points": null,
        "sentences": [
          {
           "id": "1",
           "grammar_point": "şimdiki zaman (-iyor)",
           "eng_grammar_point": "present/present continuous tense",
           "user_sent": "Bu yaz Hopa'ya gidiyorum.",  
           "ai_sent": "Bu yaz Hopa'ya gidiyorum.",
           "ai_explanation": "The sentence uses the correct grammar."
           }, 
           {
           "id": "2",
           "grammar_point": "geniş zaman (-ir/-er)",
           "eng_grammar_point": "simple present tense",
           "user_sent": "Biz her yillar biz Fethiye'ye giderim.", 
           "ai_sent": "Biz her yillar biz Fethiye'ye giderim.",
           "ai_explanation": "The word 'yillar' should be 'yıl' and the verb ending must match 'biz' (we)."
           }
         ]
     }  
   }
}
    

DELETE "/api/v1/users/:id/challenges/:challenge_id"

Response:

Code	Description
204	NO CONTENT

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External APIs

Unsplash Image API

- Used to generate the random theme image for every writing challenge.

OpenAI API

- Used to correct sentences and provide immediate feedback on user's language output.

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Stretch Technologies

- Phase 2: Attempted to redeploy app with a PostgreSQL database, using AWS Elastic Beanstalk and RDS.

- Phase 3: Successfully redeployed app after changing database to SQLite3, using an AWS EC2 instance and Elastic IPs.

Future Iterations

See Refactoring Suggestions

🔸 Add authorization & authentication

- Allow users to create own profile and dashboard

- Paid version to offer users individual OpenAI API key

🔸 Create administrative roles

- Track statistics of all users and languages

🔸 Create microservices

- For additional API calls, language exercises, nad futher abstraction of code

🔸 Expand AI functionality

- Allow users to edit their first challenge attempt

- Add multiple queries that checked for which language was written & which part of a sentence in incorrect

- Include machine learning so AI can remember a user and can track commonly made errors

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Contributors

Caleb Thomas	James Taylor	Huy Phan	David Marino	Melony Erin Franchini
BackEnd	BackEnd	BackEnd	BackEnd	BackEnd
GitHub	GitHub	GitHub	GitHub	GitHub
LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn

Kirk Hauck	Bea Ordonez	Katherine Blaine	Tyalor Pridgen	Brian Zanti
FrontEnd	FrontEnd	FrontEnd	Project Mentor	Project Manager
GitHub	GitHub	GitHub	GitHub	GitHub
LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn	LinkedIn

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