🚀 CodeGrader

An automated online coding assignment platform built with Django & Django REST Framework

Teachers create programming assignments with test cases. Students submit Python solutions and get instant, automated grading with detailed feedback.

Live Demo · Report Bug · Request Feature

---

📖 Table of Contents

• About
• Live Demo
• Features
• Tech Stack
• Screenshots
• Project Structure
• Getting Started
• Environment Variables
• API Reference
• Workflow
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• License
• Author

---

📌 About

CodeGrader is a full-stack coding assignment platform that automates the process of setting, submitting, and grading programming assignments. Teachers can create assignments with multiple hidden/visible test cases, deadlines, and marks. Students submit Python code that is automatically executed and evaluated, receiving instant per-test-case feedback and a leaderboard ranking.

The project exposes both a server-rendered web UI and a complete REST API (with JWT authentication), making it usable as a standalone web app or as a backend for a separate frontend/mobile client.

🌍 Live Demo

The project is deployed and publicly accessible.

🔗 App URL: https://codegrader.up.railway.app

✨ Features

👨‍🏫 Teacher

• Secure teacher login with role-based authorization
• Create coding assignments with descriptions, deadlines, and marks
• Add multiple test cases (input/expected output) per assignment
• View all assignments and track submissions

👨‍🎓 Student

• Registration and login
• Browse available assignments
• Submit Python solutions through the web UI or API
• Automatic code execution against all test cases
• Instant grading with per-test-case pass/fail feedback
• Personal dashboard with submission statistics

📊 Dashboard

• Total submissions count
• Best score achieved
• Recent submission history

🏆 Leaderboard

• Ranking by highest score
• Live score updates as students submit

🔐 Authentication & Security

• Django's built-in authentication system
• Role-based access control (Teacher / Student)
• JWT authentication for the REST API
• Session authentication for the DRF Browsable API

🌐 REST API

A complete, browsable REST API built with Django REST Framework, supporting registration, login, assignment management, and submission/grading — all consumable by external clients (e.g. a React/Vue SPA or mobile app).

🛠 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Python, Django, Django REST Framework
Database	PostgreSQL (production), SQLite (local dev)
Auth	JWT (djangorestframework-simplejwt), Django Session Auth
Frontend	Django Templates, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Styling	Tailwind CSS, DaisyUI
Deployment	Deployed to production (see Live Demo)

📸 Screenshots

Assignment Dashboard	Submission Result	Submission History
Assignment Dashboard	Submission Result	Submission History

📂 Project Structure

codegrader/
│
├── accounts/          # User auth, registration, roles (teacher/student)
├── assignments/       # Assignment & test case models, views
├── submissions/       # Submission handling, code evaluation, grading
├── templates/         # Django HTML templates
├── theme/             # Tailwind CSS / DaisyUI theme config
├── manage.py
└── requirements.txt

⚙️ Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• PostgreSQL (for production-like setup) or SQLite (quick local testing)
• pip and venv

Installation

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Unnati-29/CodeGrader.git
cd CodeGrader

# 2. Create and activate a virtual environment
python -m venv venv

# Windows
venv\Scripts\activate

# macOS / Linux
source venv/bin/activate

# 3. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 4. Configure environment variables
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your values (see below)

# 5. Apply migrations
python manage.py migrate

# 6. Create an admin/superuser account
python manage.py createsuperuser

# 7. Run the development server
python manage.py runserver

Open your browser at:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/

🔑 Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the project root (do not commit this file):

SECRET_KEY=your-django-secret-key
DEBUG=False
ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1,your-domain.com

DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:password@host:port/dbname

JWT_ACCESS_TOKEN_LIFETIME_MINUTES=60
JWT_REFRESH_TOKEN_LIFETIME_DAYS=7

Adjust variable names to match however settings.py is currently configured (e.g. if using django-environ or python-decouple).

🌐 API Reference

Base URL: /api/

Endpoint	Method	Description	Auth Required
/api/auth/register/	POST	Register a new user (student/teacher)	No
/api/auth/login/	POST	Log in, returns JWT tokens	No
/api/auth/profile/	GET	Get logged-in user's profile	Yes
/api/assignments/	GET	List all assignments	Yes
/api/assignments/	POST	Create a new assignment (teacher only)	Yes
/api/submissions/	GET	List submissions (own / all for teacher)	Yes
/api/submissions/	POST	Submit code for grading	Yes

Authentication: Include the JWT access token in requests:

Authorization: Bearer <access_token>

The API is also explorable via the DRF Browsable API in a web browser, and supports Session Authentication for that purpose.

🔄 Workflow

Teacher

1. Register / Login
2. Create an assignment
3. Add test cases, set deadline & marks
4. Students are notified / can view the assignment

Student

1. Register / Login
2. Browse available assignments
3. Submit Python code
4. Code is automatically executed and evaluated
5. Receive score & detailed per-test-case feedback
6. Leaderboard updates in real time

🗺 Roadmap

Planned enhancements for future releases:

• Containerized code execution sandbox (Docker) for safe/isolated code runs
• Redis + Celery for asynchronous grading
• Multi-language support (C++, Java, in addition to Python)
• Plagiarism detection
• Email notifications (new assignments, results)
• Assignment-level analytics for teachers
• Submission status states (Pending / Running / Accepted / Wrong Answer)
• Dedicated teacher dashboard with class-wide insights
• Student progress tracking over time

📌 Project Status

Current Version: v1.1

• ✅ Deployed to production
• ✅ PostgreSQL as the production database
• ✅ Template-based web application
• ✅ REST API (DRF)
• ✅ JWT authentication
• ✅ Role-based access control
• ✅ Automatic code evaluation
• ✅ Dashboard & leaderboard
• ✅ Assignment management

In Progress / Upcoming

• 🚧 Docker-based code execution sandbox
• 🚧 Multi-language compiler support
• 🚧 Advanced analytics

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To contribute:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m "Add: your feature")
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/your-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Please open an issue first to discuss significant changes.

👩‍💻 Author

Unnati Raj Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate, NIT Silchar Aspiring Software Development Engineer | Django · DRF · DSA · Web Development

GitHub · LinkedIn

If you found this project useful, consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub!