ocw_user_favorites.rb

# This gist describe's the OpenConferenceWare data structures
# related to user favorites. 
#
# The hope is that this will help with creating an algorithm that
# can schedule sessions in an optimal way based on:
#
# * User favorites: Don't schedule talks at same time if many
#   users favorite them together.
# * Tracks: Balance out tracks so that there aren't, for example,
#   only "cooking" track talks happening at the same time.
# * Times: A proposal's session_type has a duration in minutes
#   which needs to be accounted for.
# * Speakers: A speaker can't give multiple talks at the same time.
# * Rooms: We'll have multiple talks running at the same time in
#   rooms of different capacity, we currently have no data in the
#   system estimating how big an audience a talk will get, but can 
#   add this with some very rough ballpark guesses.
#
# The items below are represented for clarity as simple Ruby hashes.
# The actual data is stored and accessed via ActiveRecord classes
# with many more attributes and built-in logic for traversing
# an association, e.g. `User.find(1).proposals` will retrieve
# a user with id #1 and return their proposal objects. It may
# be easier to work with the real objects for this, but this
# high-level overview is still useful for explaining the data.
#
# Naming convention: Every item has an "id" field that uniquely
# identifies it. Some items have foreign keys, these are represented
# as fields whose names end with "_id", e.g., "user_id" is a foreign
# key that refers to a particular user record.

# A user
igal = {
    :id => 1,
    :first_name => "Igal",
    :last_name => "Koshevoy"
}

# Another user
jamey = {
    :id => 431,
    :first_name => "Jamey",
    :last_name => "Sharp"
}


# A proposal belongs to a track and session_type
proposal = {
    :id => 291,
    :title => "Unlikely tools for pair programming",
    :session_type_id => 5,
    :track_id => 9,
    :room_id => nil
}

# A user's proposal, associates a user and proposal
user_proposal = {
    :id => 282,
    :proposal_id => 291,
    :user_id => 431
}

# A track for the above proposal
track = {
    :id => 9,
    :title => "Cooking"
}

# A session type for the above proposal -- duration is length of talk in minutes
session_type = {
    :id => 5,
    :title => "Short Form",
    :duration => 45
}

# A room that a talk can be scheduled in
room = {
    :id => 8,
    :title => "Marquam",
    :capacity => 80
}

# And finally ... a user's favorite, associates a user and proposal
user_favorite = {
    :id => 2931,
    :user_id => 1,
    :proposal_id => 291
}