Requirements
A Requirement analysis phase was performed in order to investigate the project's main features and stakeholders' requirements that were expected but not already clearly defined.
Business Requirements
The user can log in/register using a web app
The user can look through his/her saved works
The user is able to manage sources, creating/renaming/deleting them as well as opening one to edit it. The user can then save its modifications.
The user can customize the generation through simple forms
After a successful authentication, the user can open one of his/her available works and start generating results. Using simple forms in the application, the generation parameters can be customized to define the final results.
The user can inspect the results of the generation easily
After running a generation, the user can scroll through the obtained results, showing them in various forms depending on the starting configuration. If an error occurred during the generation, the user can inspect the type of error and correct eventual mistakes in the configuration.
Functional Requirements
The user can authenticate to the system
The user must be able to register as a new user or log in to get authenticated. Some features of the system may not be available unless authenticated.
The user can generate results through a configuration
The user can provide a configuration in various forms, for example a YAML document or simple customizable HTML forms. Depending on the values set in this configuration, the system must generate results that can be made available as simple text, a JSON document or as files of various formats.
The user can reuse part of the configuration various times
The user can use parameters and macros as a mean to avoid repeating the same values in the configuration multiple times. Parameters are identified by a name and are constituted of multiple values that are plain strings. Macros are like parameters, but can accept arguments and return different values depending on the arguments that are passed.
It is possible to reuse the same parameters and macros multiple times to generate multiple results.
The generation uses expressions that permute parameters and macros values
Inside the configuration provided, the user can specify parts of text, called Subjects defined by expressions that can use parameters and macros values inside them. The output of these parts are all the possible permutations obtained substituting all the possible parameters and macros values.
The user can customize the expressions delimiters and other generation parameters
Using specific configuration values, the user can customize how to identify the expression inside the text of the subjects, using custom delimiters. Other parameters can be set in order to guide the generation, for example deciding adding a preamble to each generated result.
The user can display a tree showing the origin of the results
Since each subject can contain permutations of expressions, group of results referring to the same parent subject must be grouped and displayed in tree-like structure, making the generation outcome clear.
Non-Functional Requirements
The generation must be sufficiently fast
Between the start of the generation and the outputs getting displayed the user doesn't have to wait more than a few seconds.
The user interface must be clear and easy to use
The way the results are displayed must be clear and not confusing. The user must be able to navigate the interface and understand how to customize a generation without too much effort.
Implementation Requirements
The system library is available for multiple platforms (JVM, Javascript)
When using the system as a software library, JVM-based languages and Javascript projects must be possible hosts.
The system is available by means of a REST API and a simple frontend interface
When using the system as a standalone project, all of its features must be available through a REST API service and a frontend user interface.