'Year' column for professors most recent semester on class query page?

[mattthw]

On the class query page such as this the class sections are listed separated by professors. However, I am unable to tell if a professor's class/GPA is relevant to me (example) because I don't know when he last taught the class without clicking on each one individually. This doesn't sound like a huge ordeal on paper, but I find many classes have listings with professors that have moved departments or left.

Since I like to view class data when choosing my next professor, I would love to have the 'Year' column in the class query page where, next to the professor's name, there is their most recent semester of teaching (that class).

[chrisforrence]

Good morning Matthew,

That seems like a good idea; would you be interested in submitting a pull request?

[mattthw]

I haven't worked with JavaScript before but this seems like something I can tackle. Does my environment need ElasticSearch or anything in order to successfully run/preview it?

[chrisforrence]

It shouldn't require it, no. ElasticSearch is only really used on the front page, but you will need PHP/MySQL.

[mattthw]

Looking through all this tonight has reminded me how little I know about apache, mysql, and php. Is there a way to just open the course search with a static stable in my browser?

[chrisforrence]

Unfortunately, not easily. I'll make a testing branch that can act as if it had dummy data and comment here when it's ready. At that point, you'd just want to clone that branch instead of master.

[mattthw]

ok great! Thank you

[chrisforrence]

Alright. Short of it is that the query would have to be rewritten, and it wouldn't be necessarily a trivial thing.

The database has the literal value "Fall 2008", "Spring 2013", etc. To sort based on that (so that we can get the latest semester), we're going to have to transform the data in some way.

On the plus side, I made great progress into doing a testing branch that would allow for any database connection (including sqlite3, which is literally a file). It's not ready though, I'll probably get it checked in by next week though.

[mattthw]

Awesome! The sorting will be a harder but altogether Okay. I mean year is ready to sort and as far as seasons go fall > summer > spring