--- title: "Project Leaguer: Design Document" author: [ Nathaniel Foy, Guntas Grewal, Tomer Kimia, Andrew Murrell, Luke Shumaker, Davis Webb ] --- Version 1.0 – 2014.02.10 # Purpose The purpose of this document is to outlay the design, intent, and structure of the Project Leaguer tournament organizing software. Released under an open license, Project Leaguer leverages powerful web technologies to provide everything needed to organize an online tournament. While it is designed with “League of Legends” in mind, it should provide an online tournament interface that is easy to use for tournament organizers, participants, and spectators for all kinds of games, such as Chess, Poker, and more. Even better, Project Leaguer offers scoring features and options, such as peer review and team-independent individual scoring, which would be very difficult to implement with traditional tournament organizing practices. The software itself operates as a stand-alone background server application accessible and configurable though its web interface which reveals to users a sleek web application which manages tournaments. # Non-Functional Requirements Security : Because Project Leaguer servers may store sensitive user information like name, email, statistics, user-name, profile, etc. it is an important non-functional requirement that such data is well secured from both accidental exposure and intentional tampering. Even so, the System may not be responsible for the theft of user information or even alterations made to the database from a source different from that of Leaguer. Platform Compatibility : A non-functional requirement for the system is to be able to run on multiple platforms. Primarily a web based application, Leaguer may not be able to install into embedded gaming devices and special operation systems that do not run the interface that Leaguer was initially built on. Response Time : Even though the "Model 2" architecture tends to scale well for medium/large applications and data sets, it is still important to keep the response time of the system in mind. Using efficient data structures, short time complexity algorithms, and minimizing network overhead whenever possible will help to keep the response time of the system reasonable even for large data sets or complex statistics or scoring schemes. # Design Outlines ## Design Decisions and Components Project Leaguer is written on the Ruby on Rails platform and will use the “Model 2” (often mis-identified as “MVC”) design pattern/architecture. This architecture is comprised of three interacting components: Controllers, Views, and Models. ![](DesignDocument-architecture-model2.pdf)\ Controllers : Requests received by the server are processed by a routing subroutine and directed to a controller responsible for handling them. Controllers accept these requests and manage any logic necessary to obtain the correct content for display, retrieving and updating information from the Model as needed. It then creates a new request, places the content from the model in the request (if applicable), decides which view it will be passed to, and passes on the request. Models : In Ruby on Rails, models are usually implemented as an interface to a table in the database and a Ruby file which queries this table and interacts with the other components. For example, a "user" model would be connected to the "user" table and a file "user.rb" in the app/models directory would provide an interface to interact with the "user" controller. Views : Views will primarily be dynamically generated HTML pages and will display the users desired content inside of the web browser. These may be implemented with inline Ruby scripts and tags within traditional HTML. ## Component Interaction Controllers will be used to run all of the background work of Leaguer. They will fetch the necessary data and will tell the view what to do. We will be implementing eight controllers into Leaguer. Those will be: i. PM & Alerts – This controller will be used for sending and receiving private messages to and from the host. Players will be able to message the host in order to inform him/her of anything during the tournament. This will also allow the host to post any notifications he or she desires that will be displayed for all to see. ii. Settings & Homepage – Used to handle the homepage. This will be the first web page seen by any user of the application. iii. Login – This controller will be used when a user attempts to sign in to their profile on Leaguer. iv. Search – This controller will be used to search the web-base for on going tournaments, players and past tournaments. v. Tournament – Used for setting up a tournament. This will be restricted to the host of the tournament. vi. User – The controller that will take each user to their own profile. vii. Match/Peer Review – used for gather game statistics and the separate player reviews. viii. Teams - This controller will be used to handle the separate teams. It will contain: a list of the team's members and will be used to handle team roster modifications. Each of these controllers will fetch the data specified by its separate section. The view will then be used to display all of this information, so Login will take the user to a login page, search will take the user to a search page and so on. The Model will be the data section that will map all of the information to their proper locations in the data base. # Design Issues ## Scoring Algorithm In an effort to keep our system broad, one of our requirements is that Leaguer is adaptable to many competitions, not just League of Legends. How do we assure that the different scoring systems of different sports are represented in Leaguer? Option 1 : One of our interfaces could be “Scoring System” which will be implemented by many classes with common scoring systems. For example there would be a implementing class in which the highest score wins, and one in which the lowest score wins. This is likely to be the winning option, as there are not too many obscure scoring systems that we could not think of. Option 2 : We could design an API in which the host writes a method to update the scoring. This is pretty complex, and while it would allow more customization, it is hard to imagine completing this task without first completing option 1. ## Offline Data Management Leaguer manages players and games within tournaments, but it also stores statistics about the games and players themselves. We need a system to store this information after the server-host shuts down the server. Option 1 : Perhaps the simplest and most intuitive option is to implement a database dump system. The server would dump the information into an SQL format. All game and player data would be stored to the host and could be restored to a new server. The host would be responsible for preserving the data. Additional security measures could be implemented to help protect data. This option leaves the users with great control over the data. Option 2 : We could host Leaguer ourselves with our own server. All users would connect to it instead of to a user-hosted server. Game and player information would be stored and maintained on Leaguer's server and the users would not need to manage data themselves, but instead we would have to host the service. ## Fetching Data from Games Obtaining the statistics from the end of game or match is a vital step in Leaguer's function. A quick and easy method for obtaining this information will ensure smooth usability. Option 1 : In the case of online multiplayer games, such as League of Legends, it may be possible to obtain the information directly from the game-hosted server or even websites that already do so. In the case of League of Legends, `lolking.net` and `lolnexus.com` already grab statistics from the server automatically. There are also some open source projects, such as data-hut on GitHub, that could be used to help extract and categorize the data itself. This option is complex, but also highly desirable for compatible games, as it ensures a fast and simple environment for our users. Option 2 : Users manually enter the data themselves. Different games would require different methods for the users to implement. In the case of online games, users could take screenshot of a match's score screen (and then the statistics would be manually entered in), or a select pool of users could be responsible for recording the information and then entering it in. This option is tedious and undesirable. Option 3 : Use Optical Character Recognition to obtain statistics from score screen screenshots. This option would require someone to take a screenshot in each match and submit it to Leaguer. This would require more work than Option 1, but much less than Option 2. An OCR plugin would have to be implemented for each game and thus support would be limited from game to game. Outside contributors could help widen the number of games with OCR support. # Design Details ## Class Descriptions and Interactions ### MODELS ![](DesignDocument-models.pdf)\ ActiveRecord::Base (abstract) : The abstract model that all other models inherit from. Server : Server model providing access to system settings such as Language, Time_Zone, Server_name, Owner_name, and Version. This class is edited and read by the MainController. Tournament : This model represents the structure of a tournament. It will have several data sections to it including: The match settings, the matches contained inside of the tournament, a unique id for the tournament, and the registered players that are participating in the tournament. This class interacts with a multitude of other model classes (see UML) and all four tournament controllers. Match : A match will be a single set of data that contains all of the statistics of one game. This includes: players personal scores, team members, scores for each team, game time, the tournament that match took place in, and the date. This model interacts with the match controller, and is both a part of and has a many to one relationship with a tournament object. Team : This model will consist of a list of players for a tournament. The team creation process is chosen by the host of the tournament and team setup will either be pre-determined teams or randomly assigned teams. This model interacts with the tournament model class. User : This model represents all types of users; hosts, players, and spectators. These roles are identified by a “role” attribute. The user is an object that is often referenced by other classes, including tournament, match, and team. ### VIEWS Asynchronous JavaScript may be used to load one view inside of another. From the core architecture, this does not matter, as the same HTTP requests are made, though the user interaction is a little cleaner. layouts/application.html (abstract) : An abstract HTML file, that contains the basic page layout that all other views inherit. If a user is not logged in, it contains a login form, and a registration button. The form causes a POST to `LoginController#login()`, and the button causes a GET to `UserController#new()`. If a user is logged in, it displays a logout button that causes a POST to `LoginController#logout()`. It may contain an alert box of recent alerts submitted by a tournament host. It contains a search form that is POSTed to `SearchController#show_results`. If the user is authorized to publish alerts, it also contains a button that causes the browser to GET `MessagesController#new_alert()`. common/permission_denied.html : A generic page for when a user attempts to do something for which they don't have authorization. common/invalid.html : A generic page for handling invalid requests (such as logging out when not logged in). main/homepage.html : This page is visually simple. In addition to the basic functions of `layouts/application`, this page has a “Go to Tournament” text area, in which you enter a tournament title, and will take you to the relevant tournament page. main/edit.html : This page is a form for editing the server-wide configuration, such as the language or the graphical theme. The form is submitted to `MainController#update()`. search/results.html : Shows the results of a search. Each item is clickable and triggers a GET request to the relevant controller method. messages/new_alert.html : This is a form for a host to submit a new system-wide alert. The form is POSTed to `MessagesController#post_alert()`. messages/private.html : This page is used to handle user private messaging. It both displays private messages, and contains a form for sending a new private message. New messages are POSTed to `MessageController#post_private()` tournaments/index.html : Shows a list of tournaments. Clicking on any of them causes the browser GET that tournament via `TournamentController#show()`. If the user is authorized, it also contains a button that causes the browser to GET `TournamentsController#new()`. tournaments/show.html : Shows the information for a single tournament. If the user is authorized, it also shows an “edit” button that triggers a the browser to GET `TournamentsController#edit()`. This is a tree-like display of matches, where each match consists of a pair of teams. All users can click on a match to go to that match’s page. Host can see a gear on top left corner that represents tournament settings, it will GET `TournamentsController#edit()`. There will be an “end” button that will redirect to back to the homepage after POSTing to `TournamentsController#end()`. tournaments/new.html : A form for creating a new tournament. The form is POSTed to `TournamentsController#create()`. tournaments/edit.html : A form for editing an existing tournament. The form is POSTed to `TournamentsController#update()`. matches/index.html : Shows a list of matches. Clicking on any of them causes the browser to GET that match via `MatchesController#show()`. matches/show.html : Shows an individual match; a display of both teams. Each team's players are clickable which causes a GET for the player's profile HTML (`UsersController#show()`). A link above both teams will GET the tournament the match belongs to (`TournamentsController#show()`). If the user is authorized, it also has a button to edit the match by GETting `MatchesController#edit()`. matches/edit.html : Shows a form to edit a match. The form is POSTed to `MatchesController#update()`. After a match has been completed, this included peer-review input by the players. teams/index.html : Shows a list of teams. Clicking any of them causers the browser to GET that team via `TeamsController#show()`. teams/show.html : Show an individual team, including statistics, and links to individual members (GET `UsersController#show()`). If the user is authorized, it also has a button do edit the team by GETting `TeamsController#edit()`. teams/edit.html : A form to manually edit a team, and its members. The form contents are POSTed to `TeamsController#update()`. users/index.html : Show a list of users. Clicking any of them causers the browser to GET that user via `UsersController#show()`. users/new.html : Shows a form for creating a new user. It includes fields for username, email, password, and other information. The form is POSTed to `UsersController#create()`; users/show.html : A page with the user's information. One can view the player's reviews. If the user is authorized, it also has a button do edit the user by GETting `UsersController#edit()`. users/edit.html : A form to edit a user; including meta-data and tournament registration. The form is POSTed to `UsersController#update()`. ### CONTROLLERS Any time "assuming the user has permission" it is mentioned, if the user doesn't have permission, it renders the `common/permission_denied` view. This also means that the method interacts with a `User` model to evaluate the permissions. ApplicationController (abstract) : The base controller class that all other controllers inherit from. MainController : This is the main controller. It has the following methods: - `show_homepage()` Responds to GET requests by rendering the `main/homepage` view. - `edit_settings()` Responds to GET requests by (if the user is authenticated and is a host) rendering the `main/edit` view that presents the user with a form to edit the `Server` model's settings; assuming the user has permission. - `update_settings()` Responds to POST requests by updating the `Server` model configuration with the POSTed settings. It then renders the `main/edit` view with the updated settings. This assumes the user has the permissions. LoginController : This controller handles session management. It contains two methods: - `login()` Responds to POST requests by setting a session token identifying the user. If the credentials are correct, it sends a redirect that directs the browser to the page it would otherwise be on. If the credentials are not correct, it renders the `common/permission_denied` view. This queries the `User` model to validate the username and password. - `logout()` Responds to POST requests by clearing the session token, logging the user out, then redirects to the home page (`MainController#show_homepage()`). If the user was not logged in, it renders the `common/invalid` view. SearchController : This controller handles user search terms. It has one method: - `show_results()` Responds to POST by accessing whichever model(s) contains the information requested and renders the `search/results` view. MessagesController : This controller handles inter-user messages. It has a couple methods that respond to GET requests: - `new_alert()` Renders the `messages/new_alert` template, assuming the user has permission. - `show_private()` Renders the `messages/private template, assuming the user has permission. It also has methods that respond to POST requests: - `post_alert()` Publishes a new system-wide alert, assuming the user has permission. It then redirects the browser to whichever page it would otherwise be on. - `post_private()` Sends a new private message, assuming the user has permission. TournamentsController : The following methods respond to GET requests by rendering the `tournaments/*` view with the same name: - `index()` - `show()` - `new()` (assuming the user has permission) - `edit()` (assuming the user has permission) The following methods respond to POST requests, assuming the user has permission: - `create()` Creates a new `Tournament` with the POSTed data. Then renders the `tournaments/show` view. - `update()` Updates the specified `Tournament` with the POSTed data. Then renders the `tournaments/edit` view. - `end()` Ends the specified `Tournament`. Then redirects to `MainController#show_hompage()`. All of these methods will interact with the `Tournament` model, and all of its fields including users matches and TournamentSettings. MatchesController : The following methods respond to GET requests by rendering the `matches/*` view with the same name: - `index()` - `show()` - `edit()` The following methods respond to POST requests, assuming the user has permission: - `update()` Updates the specified `Match` with the POSTed data. TeamsController : The following methods respond to GET requests by rendering the `teams/*` view with the same name: - `index()` - `show()` - `edit()` The following methods respond to POST requests, assuming the user has permission: - `update()` Update the specified `Team` with the POSTed data. UsersController : The following methods respond to GET requests by rendering the `users/*` view with the same name: - `index()` - `show()` - `new()` - `edit()` The following methods respond to POST requests, assuming the user has permission: - `create()` Creates a new `User` with the POSTed data. - `update()` Update the specified `User` with the POSTed data. - `delete()` Deletes the specified `User` account. ## UML Diagram of Classes This diagram does not show all models inheriting from `ActiveRecord::Base`, all views inheriting from `layouts/application`, or all controllers inheriting from `ApplicationController`. It does not show interactions with the `User` model that solely check authorization to perform an action. It does not show controller methods calling the error views. It shows transitions from a view to a controller *only* when that is the *primary* purpose of the view; many workflows can be interrupted at any time. Arrows between models and controllers indicate which direction data is flowing. Any data flowing from a model to the method of a controller is implicitly passed to the view that method renders. ![](DesignDocument-classes.pdf)\