This directory houses our data factories and seeders. Since we can't use actual student data for our project outside of production (you know, FERPA), we need to have mock data ready to be sent to our frontend from our local databases.
We are using typeorm-seeding, a poorly documented and poorly maintained package that gets the job done.
In order to seed your data, make sure you have the latest version of the ormconfig file. Then, follow the instructions in the Migrations Documentation for emptying your database, seeding it, and running the migrations.
In order to seed our database, we need to define Factory objects that can mass produce our stuff. One of these has been defined for all of our entities except for Users. As we continue to flesh out and update our models, we should try our best to update these factories to reflect those changes. All factories can be found in factories/.
After defining our factories, we need a way to actually send our data to our local database. This is where seeders come in.
As of now (3/2021), we only have two seeders defined, in seeds/. This is because our data models are very complex and intertwined. So, we have a seeder for Courses and a seeder for Students. The Course seeder must be run before the Student one, because the Student one pulls course data that needs to already be populated.
The Course seeder creates a set of Exams for each course. The exams are attached to the courses after they are created, during the creation of the Course.
The Student seeder creates sets of Notes, StudentCourses, and StudentExams. The Notes are attached to the student after creation. The StudentCourses are attached to their courses while being created, and then attached to the student after creation. The StudentExams is attached to their exam while being created, and then attached to the student after creation.