GRE helper project update 1

UPDATE: I cut this project. It turns out giving her a list generated by python script is much faster. Not everything needs a web app.

I start yet another django project on heroku today. It's a rather simple one, just to help my girlfriend memorize vocabulary and prepare her GRE test.

GRE is difficult for people whose first language is not English. The test involves so many non-daily English. You have to memorize, like hardcoded in your brain, thousands of words in order to just understand what this test is talking about, not mention other requirements. A typical preparation for GRE involves at least 4 months of memorizing words repeatedly. I have been through this before, it's a very stressful and boring period of time, especially when you spend several weeks and look back, realize you don't remember one damn word. Sadly I could not turn it into a happy thing; however, I think I could make it efficient and maybe shorten its duration somehow.

What I want it to do is let you type in how many vocabulary lists (do you want to know how many words Chinese have to memorize for just a single test?), then it will generate a calendar filled with each list as task, and distributed based on a predefined memory curve. Basically a customizable repetitive task generator hooked up with google calendar. I know it is still dull, but an organized and well-executed repetition on memorizing could efficiently reduce the amount of time you need to achieve your goal. For the calendar, I don't want to reinvent such a good calendar system, besides Google calendar API has a good python support.

Start with the model. It is pretty simple and common, but I intend to add maybe a list as a instance variable so that every list could have a list of dates on which they needs to be memorized. For the progress field, which is supposed to be within 0 to 100, I add two validators from django.core.validators to prevent overflow.


I make just one page, in which you will have a input area for you to type in how many lists you have, and a display area to show the calendar. The input with the submit button will issue a http POST request to server side, along with some parameters, including the number of your lists. Note django itself disable post method automatically to prevent CSRF attack. To reenable it:

1. add 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' to the MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in your settings.py (this should be done by default in the latest version now)
2. right after your <form> tag that involving POST action, add {% csrf_token %}
3. in the view associated with this POST request, add context_instance=RequestContext(request) as a parameter in your http response.

In the view, when received a POST request, I will generate List objects according to POST parameters. Note that for django models, when you create it, django will automatically generate an unique id as primary key so that you don't have to worry about it. When you create objects for your model in admin site, you also don't have to explicitly indicate their ids. Therefore when you want to manipulate ids for your objects, you have to explicitly mention it in your constructor or whatever.

TBD...