When running a front end application in a different port than the backend, the application must allow cross origin resource sharing. This allows the front end and back end to talk to each other if they are running on diff ports. I tried using flask-CORS but I was having issues when I tried to allow specific domains (localhost:3000). Although it's easy to allow all domains to hit any endpoint. I think BGG should restrict it to only certain domains for security and to prevent unauthorized domains from retrieving data.

I wonder if instead of passing in a username from a field, I could have users sign in with their board game geek account and get their user that way?

Linter to catch syntax errors with yaml files

restart server automatically on changes
add alias for starting backend
add alias for running tests

Linter to catch syntax errors with JS files for the front end

I got the proxy to work in react and now i am able to hit the /random_game endpoint but the create react app is setup so that when you save the file, it automatically refreshes the page. For some reason I got this long message from the BE :

HTTPSConnectionPool(host='boardgamegeek.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /xmlapi2/collection?username=JDGiardino (Caused by ResponseError('too many 429 error responses'))

Would it be possible to include instructions to run this locally on the read me.

The backend python is already setup to filter games that will be randomized. It just needs to be enabled on the front end where filter parameters can be passed back.

The OrderBoardGames class in the bgg_companaion_order_games.py module currently has no test coverage. This story is to track adding tests for it as part of the CI/Python tests.

/favicon.ico is the icon on the tab

I noticed that a collection can contain games previously owned, and there might not be a list for only owned games.

When trying to write tests for the random_game function on bgg_companion_api I realized it was pretty challenging. It made me reconsider where the logic for certain things live like where random.choice on a board game list is actually called. Is this more business logic and maybe should live within app.py where the endpoint is called? Should there be more of a contract that says give me a user and get back a list of board games? Maybe a layer inbetween app.py and bgg_companion_api? These are just things to think about for organizing the code. Here are further chicken scratch notes :

We need to make off this project to be rich. We need to setup our sponsor button.

As Nicholas pointed out, it's probably not best to be displaying the actual exception message to users. Not only would a user not have context to the error but it could leak some unwanted information about the application and exposing some issue.

The change for this is small: Instead of return abort(Response(response=str(exc), status=500)) return a static string. But we want to hold off on this for now because the exceptions being displayed have been useful for development. Once logging has been implemented and we can rely on that, this change can be pushed out

Continuous Integration to run automated tests for TypeScript

User Story :
As a User, I would like to be able to see from a game collection the top rated games for the given amount of players I have. For example, Aeons End can play up to 4 players but it actually has a higher rating for playing with 2 players.

Technical Details :
A more complex one might be showing games that was voted by the community the be best played with 2 players for example. Using Aeons end again as an example clicking Community: 1-4 - Best: 2 here https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191189/aeons-end it shows some voting stats :

which is also available in the API https://api.geekdo.com/xmlapi2/thing?id=191189. So doing best value divided by the total of votes for a number of players we can get the percentage. Aeons End for 2 players that would be the best (292) divided by the total (375) to get 77.9% rating for best played with 2 players.

Acceptance Criteria :

• User can have a game collection displayed and organized by the top rated games for the given amount of players

https://python-poetry.org/docs/cli/
https://python-poetry.org/docs/pre-commit-hooks/#poetry-export
poetry export -f requirements.txt --output requirements.txt

Logging for backend activity to help debug

This is an actual issue that's a bug I've seen come up multiple times. Will update with evidence the next time it happens. But it seems like the first time calling the BGG API in awhile the return of that request is a "please wait" sort of message. And than calling it again works. It doesn't seem like the retry client module works for this and I think it's because a response is given from the API it's just not the real response it's like an acknowledgement of the request and a please wait pending request without actually updating it. This causes an error in the python code for that first inital request and seems to also affect the front end.

I will update this issue the next time it comes up. But there will probably have to be some research here to see what exactly is happening and is the issue.

It would nice to also be able to randomize a game that is only up to a certain complexity. This data is already available as part of the BoardGame data class so it's simply about the HTML/Javascript part

User Story :
As a User, I can click a button that will download the Board Game Geek user I specified's game collection as a csv.

Acceptance Criteria

• A BoardGameGeek user's game collection can be downloaded as a csv through BGG Companion.

User Story :
As a User, it would be nice for me to see games in a collection organized by their overall BoardGameGeek ranking. A rank is community voted standing for a game based on the average rating for a game.

Technical Details :
It would probably be easy to just show games with overall rating for example :
Overall rating 67 for Aeons End - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191189/aeons-end
Data available in api using &stats=1 parameter - https://api.geekdo.com/xmlapi2/thing?stats=1&id=191189

Acceptance Criteria :

• User can have a game collection displayed and organized by the overall rating of games

Would probably be easy but nice to include a clickable link to the BGG url for a particular game. Like when one is randomly chosen or in future features. Ideally this could be embedded in the name of the game. Or even better a more fancy clickable button specifically for the BGG url.

User Story :
As a User, it would be great as a companion app if BGG Companion could optionally accept a spreadsheet with leaderboards and embed the Google Sheet into a separate tab or page within the app.

Technical Details :
This could be a feature worked on after authentication is implemented. That way the selected Google Sheets to embed is saved as a preference for the user.

Acceptance Criteria :

• User can input what Google Sheet they would like to be embedded into their BGG Companion instance
• Google Sheet can be embedded into the front end.

User Story :
As a User, it would be a nice experience if the field for providing a BoardGameGeek user was automatically populated with the last user I provided.

Technical Details :

• This will involve a basic implementation of cookies in flask
• A cookie will have to be set at the point in time a user is set as a argument
• A cookie will have to be requested at the point the html is rendered

Documentation :

• https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.1.x/quickstart/#cookies
• https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.1.x/api/?highlight=cookies#flask.Request.cookies
• https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.1.x/api/?highlight=cookies#flask.Response.set_cookie

Acceptance Criteria :

1. When I enter a user for a random game, when I reload the page that same user is pre-populated in the field
2. End-user has the option to either have their username saved or not

https://www.randomlists.com/team-generator

Just as the above link, it would be nice to have functionality that randomizes different players if you want to make teams.

Tests should be created for all methods within this module for all scenarios

It would be cool to use react for building the front end. React is heavily used in the industry and there are a lot of well tested libraries we can use to display tables or any complex features that we may need in the future. I am not entirely sure what would be the best approach for separating the front end and backend. Creating a mono repo and having a dedicated backend folder and front end folder is what I was thinking about, but open to other ideas.

I think there is some data from the BGG api response about gams being co-op or not. That might require some extra logic to include in the BoardGames data class but would be really useful to have.

This might be under genre and also include other genres we want to consider.

In order to create the build folder, we need to figure out how to install now in digital ocean and also need to figure out how to serve the static files.

For the random game endpoint and future game generation endpoints, a thumbnail of the game should be included. Which right now is available from the API and we are including in the BoardGame data class.

Include filtering for ordered board games for coop only

User Story :
As a User, I would like to have the released year of a board game next to its title similar to how BoardGameGeek displays names. This is important information for the user for board games with the same title such as Dune.

Technical Details :
The release year for a board game should be available in the https://api.geekdo.com/xmlapi2/thing?id= API endpoint

Acceptance Criteria :

• In all places a board game title is displayed, the release year for that game will be included