Copyright (C) 2012 Gael Abadin
License: MIT Expat

This project was completed on 2012 during an Erasmus internship on Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza University of Science an Technology (Krakow), under the supervision of Professor Bipin Indurkhya at AGH-UST's Computer Science Department and Professor Juan Carlos Burguillo Rial at the Telematics Engineering Department of Universidade de Vigo.

Its purpose is to present an experiment consisting on a series of crowd-sourcing related activities through an online web platform for exploring and developing its user's cognitive skills related with the creative process.

The activities presented are:

• Synapp's main activity, consisting on pairing 2 presented images by writing a word or short phrase describing a new, original artifact involving both of them. Each pair of images can be presented simultaneously (one next to each other), or sequentially (one after another, with a few seconds delay).

• Synapp's creativity tests, consisting on:

• Two standard creativity tests:

  • A modified version of Guilford's alternative uses task taken from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.

  • Wallach and Kogan's common property test.

• A test based on a word puzzle: Will Shortz's Word Equation (Ditloid) Analysis test.

Synapp also acts as a crowd sourcing platform, allowing its users to evaluate other users' responses on the activities performed and follow up the evaluations received on their own answers. After performing an activity, a user can evaluate other user's answers to that activity, and check her/his own performance on the stats section.

A profile page is also available, where users can optionally provide relevant background about themselves so it can be collected for statistical purposes and help further study of the data obtained from the activities performed.

The main activity is performed randomly before or after the creativity tests. Every new user will be randomly assigned to one of two existing groups. A user can only evaluate answers provided by users assigned to a different group.

With the default configuration and bundled resources, users are randomly assigned to one of two existing groups. Each group has a collection of resources assigned, and there is no overlapping of resources between the two collections.

An administrative interface provides a way for the administrators guiding the experiment to check on the progress of any user or group of users, and it also gives the necessary functionality for manipulation of the activities and resources presented (such as adding, deleting, and assigning resources to resource collections, groups of users and activities).

• Make profile, stats and profile details hidden by default upon new user registration.
• PHP 8 compatibility updates.
• Query item description conditionally on test type to avoid query result access warning on test evaluator.

• Remove EULA and privacy resources. (These were only added to production deployment to comply with facebook login support submission request. They are only part of the deployed service and they do not apply to this source code).

• Secure random code generation

• Migration to bitbucket

• Code clean-up

• Dependency upgrades

• Full W3C HTML5 and CSS2 specs compliance.

• synapp-vagrant-box subproject: Autodeployment of a running synappv1 webapp on any host machine with a simple:

git clone https://bitbucket.com/synappv1/synapp-vagrant-box && vagrant up

, using git, vagrant orchestrator and puppet provisioner.

• Repackaging and releasing of standalone modules and third party dependencies into their own repositories.

• Dependency managing through composer

• Added optional improved password storage security through PHP >= 5.5.0's password_hash function.

• Rebuilt admin module.

• Added Facebook login support to login module.

• HTTPS redirection of HTTP requests on production and testing

• Uses and common property test activities evaluation module.

• Ditloid test activity evaluation module.

• Uses and common property test activities module.

• Ditloid test activity module.

• Improved stats module.

• Client-side input validation module.
• Improved menu bar module.

• Optimized database queries.
• Error message handling.

• SynappV1 stats module.

• SynappV1 login module.
• SynappV1 user registration module.
• SynappV1 profile edition module.
• SynappV1 main activity module.
• SynappV1 main activity evaluation module.

There are no currently known bugs on the application (you are welcomed to open a ticket if you find one).

All the client and server modules and 3rd party client and server dependencies are defined on synapp/composer.json and installed on synapp/vendor/synappv1 folder by simply running composer install on the project's synapp folder. The installation will retrieve the dependencies from their respective repositories. Each of them will include a copy of its GNU compatible license (In case a license is missing please open a ticket on synapp's public repository and it will be included). There is also a Vagrant/Puppet project aimed to set up a virtual machine running synapp with a single vagrant up command (You are welcomed to collaborate if you are interested and know how to use vagrant for orchestrating a virtual machine with Puppet provisioning).

Synapp's client application platform software requirements:

• Any updated web browser with support for HTTP/1.1, ECMA5 Javascript, HTML5 and CSS2.

Synapp's client application platform hardware requirements:

• Any system capable of running the mentioned browser smoothly: 1GB+ of RAM, 1.5GHz+ minimum (4GB 2.5GHz dual core recommended) for desktop devices; 256MB+, 600MHz+ minimum (1GB, 1GHz recommended) for mobile devices.

• With a network connection to the server with moderate latency and bandwidth (tests show 3G 1GB/month quota plans or 1MB/112KB bandwidth asymmetric DSL Internet connections comfortably fulfill all client endpoint connection requirements).

• A display of 10" minimum for desktop devices; 4" minimum for mobile devices, with a minimum resolution .

Synapp's client application makes use of the following client libraries and modules:

• jQuery The popular javascript library to facilitate cross browser compatibility, DOM manipulation and client/server communication.

• jQuery flot A widely used graphs and charts generation plugin for jQuery.

• Synapp's Open PGP javascript utility library, a repackaging of Herbert Hanewinkel's robust and thoroughly tested Open PGP AES/RSA javascript implementation and encryption utility.

• Synapp's captcha module, a standalone captcha utility used by Synapp's account registration and contact form modules.

• Synapp's client-ui resources, a collection of images used by Synapp's web client user interface.

• Synapp's uuid generator, a universal unique identifier generator PHP class.

• Synapp's cryptosecureprng, which allows for secure random codes generation (such as account deletion validation code or password recovery validation code).

The administrative interface's HTML5 client also uses:

• Bootstrap 3, a CSS framework used to build the administrative layout

• Datatables, HTML5 table customization, for user management (along with its bootstrap integration plugin)

• CKEditor, HTML5 rich editor for editing dynamic content, like the FAQ section

Synapp's server application platform hardware requirements:

• 1GB dedicated RAM, 1 x 2.5GHz Xeon virtual core, 8GB SSD VM, with 1 Gigabit Ethernet network connection**

** Settings vary widely depending on the expected server load. Stress tests were performed for this configuration using different tools: selenium (through PHPUnit), loadimpact and JMeter; On this server, running a LAMP stack, they show 100% load rate is reached at a total of approximately 200 simultaneous sessions performing requests at an aggregated rate of 19-20 requests per second; the average page loading time at this rate being approximately 5 seconds; providing php-fpm is used with [mod_proxy_fcgi][42] and [worker MPM][43] (check the PHP manual for set up instructions). The limit on this configuration is established by the available RAM: once swapping kicks in, the request processing rate drops considerably and requests start to accumulate, completely interrupting the service if no traffic management measures are taken (e.g. [mod_evasive][XX] Apache Web Server module for iptables temporary client ip ban; or [MaxClients][XX] and related Apache Web Server configuration directives for limiting the maximum number of concurrent connections; or, if using php-fpm with Apache mod_proxy_fcgi, implementing load balancing by, for example, redirecting requests to a temporary [AWS load-based instance][XX], and also limiting the maximum number of simultaneous requests on the php-fpm configuration file).

Synapp's server application platform software requirements are:

• PHP >= 5.3 default configuration with PDO, GD, mcrypt and gnupg modules installed. PHP >= 5.4.0 with curl and mbstring modules is required for facebook login support, and PHP >= 5.5.0 is required for improved password storage security through the password_hash function. Enabling [openssl][XX] module is also advised, since it is required for running composer's remote install script.

• A web server with some kind of PHP CGI connector (preferably with HTTPS support; Apache Web Server >= 2.2.X is recommended).

Synapp's server application module dependencies are:

• [Facebook API for PHP] >= 4.0 In order to provide facebook login and profile information retrieval using [Facebook's Graph API v2.2][XX].

• [Synapp's default task resources][XX], a collection of images used by Synapp's main tasks.

• [composer][XX] >= 1.0-dev is not a requirement per se, but it is highly recommended to automatically retrieve all the dependencies, which are defined in the provided synapp/composer.json file.

An updated LAMP stack is suggested as a platform for a standard deployment.

A vagrant orchestrator along with a puppet provisioner designed to meet synapp's development and trial requirements are provided on [synapp-vagrant-box][XX] repository (still under development). This box is also fitted for production use in controlled environments (labs, conferences), where the neither the server nor the service provided by the app are required to be exposed directly to the Internet. The deployment process goes as follows:

• Download and install Vagrant if not installed

• Download and install Puppet if not installed

• Download and install git if not installed

• Open a command line and input the following commands:

git clone https://butbucket.org/synappv1/synnap-vagrant-box
vagrant up

That's all. The machine's web server will be up and running synapp, accessible through http://localhost:8088/synapp

The database service will also be forwarded and accesible on mysql://localhost:3336

For production, a standard CentOS 6.X/7.X Server set up with LAMP features enabled during the installation process will usually only require the extra step of installing the PHP extension modules listed on the previous section to have it ready for deployment.

There is a detailed tutorial available on the resources/deployment_guide folder of this repository which will guide you step by step on setting up an environment and deploying the project on an Amazon EC2 CentOS 7 instance. This is the recommended and most tested production environment.

For general help deploying a CentOS 6.X LAMP stack:

• You can check out this online tutorial.

Details on how to upgrade to the latest PHP version may also be useful.

For general help deploying a CentOS 7.X LAMP stack (x86-64 architecture):

• You can checkout this online tutorial

For a cloud deployment, Amazon AWS Marketplace offers free LAMP bundle AMIs as well as CentOS AMIs ready to deploy as Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) instances.

If you need further help during this step of the process, contact an experienced sysadmin or devops expert.

After setting up the platform's environment, follow the steps below to install, configure and deploy the project:

• Copy the files inside /synapp folder to a public folder on your web server (e.g. /var/www/synapp). (You might want to leave this as the final step but it is important to keep that in mind during the next steps, particularly those related to the deployment's configuration).

• The first thing to do is to set up and select a deployment configuration. By default three deployment configurations are defined: development, test and production. Edit and select any of these three to set up the desired deployment. You can also remove any of them or add/remove extra ones at will.

• The database connection parameters of each deployment configuration (host, port, database name, user and password) must be set by editing the provided file accounts/config/database_host_and_credentials.php.dist and renaming it as accounts/config/{SYNAPP_CONFIG_DIRNAME}/database_host_and_credentials.php

• A SQL script intended for deployment on a MySQL/MariaDB database system version 5.5 or higher is included on the /resources folder of this repository. It contains the SQL schema objects used by the application (A few extra ones per user will be dinamically generated although it is not a best practice. This is prevented on SynappV2 by the introduction of a much better design E-R model. It can be run by running mysql -u username -p database_name < synappV1_schema.sql.

• The app's credentials and login/logout redirection URLs are required by the facebook login module. You can set them by filling them on accounts/config/facebook_credentials.php.dist and renaming the file as accounts/config/{SYNAPP_CONFIG_DIRNAME}/facebook_credentials.php. (Don't forget to allow yourappdomain.com on your facebook app settings page. You'll find a link to it here, where you can also create a new app and find the app's id and secret).

• In order to provide a minimum layer of security against packet sniffing on open wireless networks when SSL is not available, the password is ciphered using an RSA public key before being sent to the server. This public key must be set on the file crypt_constants.php, while the private key must be readily available to the server on a non public folder (by default /var/.gnupg/www-data)

(You can generate a valid RSA keypair using OpenSSH from the command line: ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com")

• Some extra configuration parameters are provided on accounts/config/profile_constants_constraints_defaults_and_selector_values.php.dist, which must be renamed as accounts/config/{SYNAPP_CONFIG_DIRNAME}/profile_constants_constraints_defaults_and_selector_values.php (This is for optimization and fine tuning purposes only. Although the renamed file must be present, modification of the default values provided on it is not required for the app to run properly).

That's all! After these steps make sure your web server is running and serving the contents of synapp folder; SynappV1 web application will then be fully deployed and ready for use.

• After deployment, use a browser or HTML5 client to hit the deployment location and follow the on-screen instructions.

• The log in screen for the administrative interface will be accessible on the route admin/admlogin.phtml relative to the deployment location.

• Before using the administrative interface, at least one admin user must be created. The CLI script provided under resources/synadmin.php can be used for that purpose. Running it without any parameters will display basic usage instructions:

php -f synadmin.php

• As of the moment of writing this paragraph (July 2012, v1.0) the development of this project has been restricted to bug fixes and standard security/maintenance tasks. A new project, SynappV2, was started with the intention of doing a full rebuild taking advantage of the improvements introduced on the latest PHP versions, as well as improving modularity and flexibility, allowing new activities to be implemented requiring minimal to no extra coding efforts thanks to a new model design, a brand new administration module, and a REST API solution. Many independent modules of SynappV2 were developed and are already production ready and released to their own public repositories (which can be found here), but the development of the V2 full stack platform has been canceled.

• Professor Juan Carlos Burguillo Rial, from Universidade de Vigo.
• Professor Bipin Indurkhya, from AGH-UST.
• The Erasmus EU programme for Education (particularly the supervisors Prof. Raúl Fernando Rodríguez Rubio and Prof. Małgorzata Żabińska)
• All the staff and colleagues at University of Vigo and Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza University of Science an Technology that made this project possible.
• My parents and brother, and the rest of my always supportive family.
• All the beta testers who helped improve the application by providing excellent ideas for improving the application and pointing out all the bugs and problems they found.

1. If you have a bitbucket account, fork this project
2. git checkout -b newbranch and git push origin newbranch your commits
3. Make a pull request from your branch

Q: I am using Apache web server and I can't access the app on the specified location when setup finishes.
A: You probably have a conflict with an existing .htaccess on your server. Add these two lines at the top of all your previously existent .htaccess files on the path to the app root, right after RewriteEngine on line:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/uri/path/to/synappV1/root/folder(/.*)?$
RewriteRule (.*) $1 [L]

Q: Does it work on Mac OS X / any version of Microsoft Windows / any OS other than Linux?
A: The project can be deployed on any OS supporting PHP and MySQL/MariaDB.

Q: Which browsers / web client rendering engines are supported?
A: Any HTML5 / ECMA5 Javascript compatible browser is supported, which means any (reasonably up to date) mainstream browser, such as Internet Explorer >= 8, Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Android Stock Browser, Konqueror, etc. will be supported. Latest Mozilla Firefox is the recommended browser, since it was the reference browser used for the development of the client application.

Q: Does it work on a web server other than Apache?
A: Although Apache is officially supported and recommended, any HTTP/1.X compatible web server with PHP support should be fine. A PHP builtin web server routing script is provided on the resources folder for development purposes.

This code and the libraries it depends on (3rd party and own) have GPLv2 compatible licenses that allow commercial and non commercial use free of charge. Check out the LICENSE file for more specific information on the MIT Expat license, used on all code and resources published on synapp's main public repository. Check out each dependency repository for specific info on its GPLv2 compatible license, which should be found on the LICENSE file of its root folder.