Timetable Generator for Lecture Evaluation

Python script to generate a timetable from a long list of lectures. Used to organise the evaluation of lectures at KIT's physics department. The script reads a list of lecture IDs form a CSV file and queries KitHub's API to retrieve information about them. As output, an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file is generated.

Prerequisites

• Python 3
• simpleodspy. As the current version has a bug that makes it impossible to insert text in cells, use the fork of blipp, where this is fixed:
  • pip install git+https://github.com/blipp/simpleodspy.git@fix-decoding-str
• odfpy, the most recent version supports Python 3 and is available on GitHub: https://github.com/eea/odfpy . Follow the instructions in the readme there to install it.

Usage

At the end of this section, a recommended workflow for using this script is described.

Get the code

Clone this repository or simply download the file evaluation.py.

Configuration

Configuration is currently done at the beginning of the Python file evaluation.py. To set up the script for a new semester, term_id has to be adapted. This is the ID of the semester within KitHub's database. The right number can be retrieved by using the web interface to KitHub's API, just click “Try it out!”, or by reading the reply of the API directly. The time interval for which the timetable will be generated has to be specified with eva_starttime_str and eva_endtime_str.

Input data

Different csv files are used to configure the program. There is no special reason why the input file has to be CSV, other than that simpleodspy currently has problems reading OpenDocument Spreadsheet documents.

Lectures to be included

By default, the script expects a file input.csv in its working directory. The column delimiter needs to be , and " needs to be used for quoting strings. The first row is the header and will be ignored.

The following 6 column need to be present in the file. Even if some of the last columns are completely empty, they need to be defined explicitely; if you prepare the csv file with a spreadsheet program like LibreOffice, it is enough to define the 6 columns in the first row.

• 1st column: the lecture ID's used in KIT's official university calendar, called “Lehrveranstaltungsnummer”. This ID will be used to query KitHub's API.
• 2nd column: short string describing the course of studies, as we have at least three different ones at our department. This will be printed in the timetable.
• 3rd column: name of the lecture, as it should be printed in the timetable. Some lectures have very long official titles, but very common abbreviations.
• 4th column: if an x is entered here, the lecture will be ignored.
• 5th column: if an x is entered here, a note will be added to the end of the name of the lecture to indicate that an exercise course belonging to the lecture has to be evaluated as well.
• 6th column: if an x is entered here, a note will be added to the end of the name of the lecture to indicate that a laboratory course belonging to the lecture has to be evaluated as well.

Aliases for rooms and lecturers

By default, the files rooms.csv and lecturers.csv can be used to define aliases for rooms and lecturers. This is useful to define abbreviations if the names coming from the database are very long. If the files do not exist, they are created, filled with the names from the database and without aliases.

Run the script

Execute ./evaluation.py in the directory where the script is located.

Output

The downloaded lecture data will be written to JSON files in a subdirectory courses. By default, the script writes the timetable to timetable.ods and a file output.ods in the current working directory. The file output.ods is a copy of input.csv with two additional columns. These can be used to check certain functions of the script:

• 7th column: an indicator if an appointment was found within the specified time frame. The cell will be coloured red, if none was found, and yellow, if the lecture was ignored due to an x in th 4th column.
• 8th column: contains the name of the lecture as it was returned by KitHub's API. If the name in the 3rd column differs from it, the cell will be coloured red. This can be used to check if the lecture ID and the lecture name don't match.

Workflow

1. Prepare an OpenDocument Spreadsheet document, for example called input.ods, that fulfills the requirements described above.
2. Export it as CSV to input.csv.
3. Make sure the configuration options at the beginning of the file evaluation.py are set correctly, e.g. update the time range and the ID for the term.
4. Call the script.
5. Open output.ods to check what has been done. Decide which lectures to mark as ignored, and which ones to include an exercise or laboratory course.
6. Decide if you want to define aliases for rooms and lecturers in the files rooms.csv and lecturers.csv.
7. Go to step 2 if you changed anything in step 5 or 6. If not, check if timetable.ods.
8. Adjust the formatting of timetable.ods if needed.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Carsten Griesheimer, the creator of KitHub, for providing an API to the data and for adapting the API for our needs.