Application data model

[dirn]

I’m trying to sort out the data model for applications, as well as the user flow for submitting and managing applications.

For starters, I don’t envision there being a User model. Most people probably won’t ever even want to log in, so making them create an account is busy work. We can send magic links to email addresses for anyone who wants to log in to edit an application they’ve already submitted. I think we can start with an Email model that resembles the following:

class Email(Base):
    email = Column(CIText(), nullable=False, unique=True)
    is_admin = Column(Boolean, nullable=False, default=False)

Having email addresses in a separate model will allow us to have a one-to-many to applications so that when someone does log in we can show them all of their applications. While we really only expect one per person, we have received two from people in the past; although that was probably more a side effect of using Google Forms and people not being able to see their previous submission. I don’t want to request email addresses first and prompt users that they have already submitted an application, though, because this would leak data about who has applied for financial aid.

Historically we’ve asked people to provide the following information:

• name
• background
• why they want to attend PyGotham
• travel cost (if requesting travel reimbursement)
• willingness to share a room (if requesting lodging)
• requested roommate (if willing to share a room)
• gender (if willing to share room)
• roommate gender preference (if willing to share a room)

In addition to this, I’d like to include (something along the lines of) name_on_id for anyone requesting travel reimbursement and/or lodging.

We also need to track the state of applications. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far

class ApplicationStatus(Enum):
    SUBMITTED
    WITHDRAWN
    ACCEPTED
    REJECTED
    CONFIRMED
    DECLINED

ACCEPTED and REJECTED represent the decision of the financial aid committee. CONFIRMED and DECLINED represent the decision of the award recipient.