source: main/waeup.kofa/trunk/docs/source/userdocs/students.rst @ 12997

.. _student_section:

Student Section :sup:`in progress`
**********************************

'Student' is a multi-purpose term in Kofa which may lead to some misconceptions. First of all 'Student' is a Python/Grok container class and student objects are the instances of this class. Sometimes we are sluggish when talking about 'creating students' and actually mean: 'creating student container objects and storing the objects (persistently) in the ``students`` container'. The latter is the parent container for all students in the portal.

The :ref:`treelike storage of objects <object_database>` in the student section can be figured as follows::


  Student Section (StudentsContainer)
  |
  +---> Student
        |
        +---> StudentStudyCourse
        |     |
        |     +-----> StudentStudyLevel
        |             |
        |             +-----> CourseTicket
        |
        +---> StudentPaymentsContainer
        |     |
        |     +-----> StudentOnlinePayment
        |
        +---> StudentAccommodation
              |
              +-----> BedTicket


.. note::

  Throughout Kofa we distinguish singular and plural expressions. A students container contains students (or more precisely student containers), a payments container contains payments, a courses container contains courses, a certificates container contains certificates.

Furthermore, a student is also a user of the portal and the student object is a user account surrogate, see :ref:`Applicants and Students <applicants_and_students>`. In the following we always refer to the student container when talking about a student.

Students
========

The `Student` class is a container class which means, there are not only attributes describing the student entity but also content. Each student container contains exactly three sub-containers: ``studycourse``  (instance of `StudentStudyCourse`), ``payments`` (instance of `StudentPaymentsContainer`)  ``accommodation`` (instance of `StudentAccommodation`). The purposes of them are described further below.

Let's talk about the attributes and methods belonging to the `Student` class, the so-called 'external behaviour' of student objects specified in Zope 'interfaces'. The data stored with each student object are subdivided into three parts: base data, personal data and clearance data. Each part has its own interface.

.. note::

  **Interfaces** are one of the pillars of Zope's Component Architecture (ZCA, see also :ref:`prerequisites`). They document the 'external behaviour' of objects. In Kofa interfaces are used to specify the attributes, methods and schema fields of objects. The first two are well-known Python concepts. A Zope schema field is a bit more complicated. It's a detailed description of a field to be submitted via forms to the server, or which is processed by a batch processor. In both cases the input data are being validated against the schema. In Kofa, schema fields in interfaces are also used to automtically add `FieldProperty` attributes of the same name to most content classes. This is done by a class function called :py:func:`attrs_to_fields<waeup.kofa.utils.helpers.attrs_to_fields>` during startup. These class attributes ensure that corresponding attributes of instances of this class - when being added or changed - always meet the requirements of the schema. Another big advantage of such class attributes is, that attributes with a `FieldProperty` do not need to be set in `__init__` methods.

All student classes implement `waeup.kofa.students.interfaces.IStudent` which defines a base set of attributes, schema fields and methods all students must provide. This 'behaviour' is fundamental so that we quote and explain the source code here.

.. literalinclude:: ../../../src/waeup/kofa/students/interfaces.py
   :pyobject: IStudentBase

The first part of the interface lists attributes. Except for the first two (`password` and `temp_password`) they are all read-only property attributes, i.e. attributes with a getter method only. These properties are computed dynamically and can't be set. Most of them return data derived from the ``studycourse`` subobject.

The second part of the interface specifies the schema fields, which are instances of schema classes with their `title`, `description`, `default`, `required`, `readonly` and `source` attributes.


Student Study Courses
=====================

Student Study Levels
--------------------

Student Payments
================

Student Accommodation
=====================