CS51-Python Autograding

How-to use:

1. Clone this repo.
2. Copy all the assignments into a directory within your working directory (e.g. you can use the scripts/copy_asgts script for this; note that it has to be copied into the dropbox, and run from there).
3. Configure the config.ini file as you wish (see 'How-to setup the config file' section).
4. Write tests to a json file, following testing specification (see 'How-to write tests' section).
5. Run the autograder (definitely using Python 3, and probably using 3.6 to make sure you can run the assignments) with python3 autograder.py.

How-to setup the config file

The config file is parsed using the configparser library, and thus, follows standard INI file specifications. For autograding, the file must be called config.ini and be in the same directory as autograder.py. The file must look as follows:

[DEFAULT]
AssignmentsFolder = <path/to/dir/w/asgts>
GradesFolder = <path/to/dir/where/output/will/be>
AssignmentNumber = <some_integer>
TestsFile = <path_to_json_test_file>
WhoToTest = <*|username|username_1 username_2 ... username_n>
FuncsToTest = <*|func_name|func_1 func_2 ... func_n>
ResultsFile = <yes|no>

Each of the above values are used as follows:

• AssignmentsFolder: This directory should exist before running the autograder and should contain the assigments to be graded. The Python files should be in the format <username>_assignment<asgt_num>.py, where username is the student who submitted the file, and asgt_num is an integer indicating the assignment number.
• GradesFolder: This directory doesn't have to exist before running the autograder; it will be made if it doesn't exist. In this directory, each student's output and resulting score will be written to a text file in the form <username>_assignment<asgt_num>.out. If the ResultsFile variable is set to yes, this is also where the results.txt file will be written.
• AssignmentNumber: This is an integer representing the assignment number of what is to be graded. This is used to distinguish previous assignment python files in the assignments folder from each other (i.e. only assigments that follow the naming convention, with the integer specified here in the name, will be graded)
• TestsFile: This is a path to a json file containing the tests to be run for this assignment. The specification for writing tests is in the "How to write tests" section.
• WhoToTest: This is either *, indicating that all the assignments that match the convention in the assignments folder are to be graded; <username>, where username is a student's username, indicating that only this student is to be graded; or a sequence of usernames separated by a space, indicating that only these students' assignments are to be graded.
• FuncsToTest: This is either *, indicating that the autograder should run all the tests in the tests file; <function_name>, indicating that only the tests for the specified function should be run; or a sequence of function names separated by a space, inficating that only these functions' tests should be run.
• ResultsFile: This is either yes or no, indicating whether or not a results.txt file should be produced. This results file contains the total score of each student, and is helpful to see generally how the class did, but individual results can be found in each student's respective result file.

How-to write tests

tbd