Attendix

Teachers and administrators in small educational institutions were recording attendance on paper registers and then manually transferring data to spreadsheets for reporting — a time-consuming, error-prone process.

A web-based attendance system where teachers can mark attendance digitally in seconds, and administrators get an instant dashboard with attendance rates per student, class, and course — plus exportable reports.

Three-tier architecture: React dashboard, Node.js/Express REST API, and a MySQL relational database. Chose MySQL over NoSQL due to the relational nature of the data — students belong to classes, classes belong to courses, attendance records join all three.

Unit tests for attendance calculation logic. Integration tests for the bulk-mark API endpoint to ensure partial failures didn't corrupt records. Manual testing of edge cases like holidays and makeup classes.

Hosted on a shared Linux server. The Node.js process managed with PM2 for auto-restart. MySQL database backed up nightly via cron job.

Database design decisions made early have long-lasting consequences. The initial schema didn't account for the concept of academic terms, requiring a non-trivial migration midway through development.