[GSoC’21] OpenWrt Device Page

‘Tis the week 5! 🎊

Greetings! I am Aditi, and I am at the end of fifth week of my ten week “summer of code”.

Experience So Far

The first five weeks have been really amazing. When I started working on the device page project, it seemed as if there was a clear set of tasks that need to be done. Everything felt pretty straight-forward!

But while working hands-on, I realised I’ve learnt so much along the way. My first task of the project included improving the device data form, allowing easier input of data.

The form is designed in React with the help of React-JSON-Schema-Form. The hardest part of form implementation was to use Custom Components to facilitate onChange events. Due to asynchronous behaviour of React.useState(), it was challenging to manage form states. The project allowed me to do a plethora of exploration on React Hooks. In addition to it, it compelled me to read extensive documentations, find out a lot of ways in which React Hooks don’t work fine. To quote, Thomas A. Edison,

In addition to that, the project gave me an opportunity to engage with open source communities, raise some issues, discuss it with maintainers!

Progress

The project essentially involved two tasks:

1. Creation of input form from a JSON Schema to simplify the process of adding device metadata to the github repository.
2. After creation of input form, the second step is to render the device pages with search masks, allowing users to search specifically for devices with certain features like USB port, WiFi6 etc.

The step one of the project is done i.e., creation of an input form: with the autocomplete functionality and saving the device data in form of YAML, A demo of which can be seen here:

Now, after the completion of step 1, for the next few weeks, we’ll be focusing on working on rendering of device data for device pages.

Looking forward to another half full of learnings and new experiences! 🎉