Developer Centric Framework for End User Involvement in Application Design

Abstract

With the advancement of information and communication technology, computer software has been designed to make it easy for end-users to build and customize the software to suit their needs. As a result, end-users have become software developers and have the opportunity to contribute directly to technological development activities. The main intent of this paper is to propose the new integrated technology stack for API based application development used for developed, Developer Centric Framework for Enduser Involvement in Application Design. The technology stack with CentOS 8 operating system has been applied for application development. On top of that, Containerized environment with Docker and Portainer has been used to manage the containers. The backend API architecture was developed using the existing PHP Laraval 8.0 framework, and the backend was serving with Nginx as a reverse proxy with Apache. Herein, JWT (JSON Web Token) has been used to secure communication between the frontend and backend. The frontend has been developed with Angular 11 together with component-based architecture. In contrast, Jenkins has been used for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CICD). Jenkins has done the frontend app building process and deployment to production servers. Content Delivery Network (CDN) has been used to fast deliver the content as an intermediate service. This framework will allow institutional information management to be effective, efficient, and used for other related purposes with minor customization. The faculty website developed using the above framework with the proposed technology stack is actively running with regular updates of events, news notices etc., by department users. The results of the activity logs generated by the framework ensure that the staff profiles are updated with up-to-date information by themselves without facing any barriers. The proposed technology stack will reduce the time it takes to rebuild similar systems, thus reducing the cost and improving the quality and productivity of the software.