Restructuring how we store resource links

[Bhupesh-V]

Right now everything is messy

• one big file, ughh!
• people add tips, advices everywhere
• sometime comments on resource are also present

Need an automated way to cleanly manage all resource without the need of a website.

All suggestions are welcome 🙏🏽

[Bhupesh-V]

A draft solution would be to have separate folders based on common topics like languages, cs

each folder will have a links.json looking like this

{
    "links":[
        {
            "title": "dksjklds",
            "url": "https://url.com",
            "type": "book",
           "level": "beginner",
            "reviews": [
                {
                    "comment": "Costly, But Worth the money!"
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "title": "dksjklds",
            "url": "https://url.com",
            "category": "video",
            "reviews": [
                {
                    "comment": "Costly, But Worth the money!"
                }
            ]
        }

    ]
}

List of resource types:

• Book
• Video
• Cheatsheet
• GitHub
• Blog
• Course

a different json file called tips.json can be used to store advice, agreed by the community or even just one-off opinions

{
    "tips": [
        {
            "comment": "",
            "user": "",
            "user_profile_link": ""
        }
    ]
}

We use these json files to automatically create the well structured README.
Here is a sample script that can be used as an inspiration

Pros

• Contributions would be easier and streamlined. since different categories and folders
• this will help us automate the task of importing resources from discord as well

Cons

• Bit of over-engineered

[BlackGoku36]

A draft solution would be to have separate folders based on common topics like languages, cs

Agreed

Bit of over-engineered

Agreed Too

How about we have different files for categories and tabulate resources and have tips section beneath? like:

In ComputerGraphics.md:

Title/Link	Category	Language	Comment
Scratchapixel	Article	C++	Theoretical resources with code
Daneil Shiffman	Videos	JS (P5)	Creative coding
Kha	Tool	Haxe	Open source, cross-platform multimedia framework

Tips/Advice:

• Level up by writing your own project

• Use graphics abstraction instead of writing bare Metal/OpenGL/Vulkan/DX12 code

We can enforce arranging columns in a particular order (Like articles come first, then come videos, and than tools. Also sub-groups are arranged in alphabetical order)

[jarmos-san]

@BlackGoku36 yeah you're right agreed with tabularizing the resources, doing that shouldn't be an issue. But serializing the resources for maintainability & portability is the important task at hand right now.

For example, the tips.json file can be used easily to give due credit to whoever suggested something helpful. On top of that, once the resources are properly serialized in the first place, automation should be a piece of cake. And the respective README files in each folder can be presented in whatever way as needed.

So, like right now, the priority should be, to think of a way to store the resources in a JSON (or YAML?) file for reasons mentioned above. And how exactly should we proceed to achieve this task is the first step.

[Bhupesh-V]

Cool thanks a lot for the suggestions @jarmos-san @BlackGoku36 👍🏽
So now the follow up things to decide on are:

• What categories we need ? (will start a separate thread for this)
• How the build process looks like (will use Github Actions to run a cron) ?
• What other things need to be considered before we start with a bot/service to link the the resources channel to this repo

[BlackGoku36]

What other things need to be considered before we start with a bot/service to link the the resources channel to this repo

For that, we could have bot in resource channel that with command create pull request?
For example, command could be something like:

append {
category: "Computer Science",
subcategory: "Computer Graphics",
title: "Something",
link: "https://somelink.com",
type: "Article",
language: "C",
comment: "Lalalalalala"
}

or whatever json schema we will use.
Bot than can ask for account or whatever detail that can be use to credit the contributor. And finally ask whoever responsible for accepting this to accept it (maybe with simple emoji reaction).
Resource channel could only have a resource list which is fetched from the repo.
So, it will be something like this:
Contributor enters resources -> bot ask for review -> bot push to repo -> bot fetch new repo details and update the resource list in resources channel.

[Bhupesh-V]

I like this, I had a similar idea a while back 👌🏽

• we can also use the concept where if a minimum amount of reactions are done on a message, the PR will be generated (this emphasises community involvement)
• Something to figure out do we actually need to credit the person who posted, some people might not like there name/profile being publicly shared

Contributor enters resources -> bot ask for review -> bot push to repo -> bot fetch new repo details and update the resource list in resources channel.

Seems like a good idea 🔥 , will refine this when we start working on the bot

[Bhupesh-V]

Thread for categories to include

All these categories will be folders, followed by JSON files for each. E.g cpp.json, javascript.json

1. Langauges
   • C
   • C++
   • JavaScript (will include frameworks)
   • Literally any other language.....
2. Computer Science
   • DSA
   • Computer Graphics
   • Machine Learning
3. Software Engineering
   • Front-end
   • Back-end
   • DevOps
   • Interview Prep
4. Miscellaneous

Reply below for suggestions

[jarmos-san]

Wonderful! Excited to see the project is gradually taking shape. But I've a couple more suggestions which should make maintaining the project much more easier.

Suggestions for Project Maintenance

1. Edit the above thread as you receive suggestions for more topics so that it acts as a one-stop solution for readers. GitHub tends to collapse long threads so that subtle task should be rather helpful to many.
2. Another suggestion I've is to create a draft JSON schema first. This should take some clean-up burden off of from the maintainer's shoulders. That way contributors will no longer be able to add any arbitrary properties to the respective JSON file(s).

Additional Categories to Include

That said, here are a few more categories I can think of right away on top of my head. Will update this thread & leave a ping in the server for a notification (or reminder) of the same.

5. Interview Prep
6. Freelancing

NOTE: Strongly suggest drafting an initial JSON schema which will take off a huge burden of maintaining the JSON files.

[Bhupesh-V]

Another suggestion I've is to create a draft JSON schema first. This should take some clean-up burden off of from the maintainer's shoulders. That way contributors will no longer be able to add any arbitrary properties to the respective JSON file(s).

TIL about JSON schema, will incorporate this for sure. Will spend some time testing the Python client over the weekend

Interview Prep
Freelancing

Interview Prep comes under SE, what about Freelance, a new category altogether
Are we going to have sub-categories inside this as well 👀 ?

[jarmos-san]

...what about Freelance, a new category altogether

I guess it should come under a separate topic (maybe Career Advice)?

[Bhupesh-V]

Hey, we have finally re-structured the way we store resource links. The JSON schema is available here https://github.com/developersIndia/resources/blob/master/resource.schema

Closing this for now. Feel free to open up a new discussion for further development & questions