Also check CodewarsLogger!
This is a little program that prints a chart, in the form of a calendar (based on the year you choose),1 that shows the days a specified user completed katas in Codewars and the quantity of the katas they completed in that day. The API also counts the total amount of katas completed in the year and the streak of completion.2 Head to the Screenshots section to see how it looks. The contribution chart from GitHub was my inspiration.
Charts like this exist in some websites. Although they look cool, I don't think they provide anything useful, and, in some cases, I believe they're noxious as force you to keep contributing (even if you don't want to) or preserve a streak that is, pretty much, useless. This may not seem like an issue, but I do believe it's wrong to make a change (in any website) just to keep the chart "pretty". It's not that of a big deal as it's up to you not to pay attention to the chart and stop doing useless changes, but it's still an incentive to do so.
This program serves only as a cool statistical graph. I recommend you practise your coding skills when you want and as you want, not to keep the chart full.
To get the chart, simply go to https://codewars-activity-chart.glitch.me and add the required parameters. Below you can find the list of the available path and query parameters, as well as some examples. If the user couldn't be found or there is no katas completed for the choosen year, the API will let you know with a red message.
To see the amount of katas completed in a day, you must hover over that day.
| Parameter | Required | Default value | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| username | yes | https://codewars-activity-chart.glitch.me/jhoffner | |
| year | no | Current year | https://codewars-activity-chart.glitch.me/jhoffner?year=2016 |
You can embed the chart in your website (or any website that allows for embedding
other websites) using the <iframe>
tag from HTML:
<iframe src="CHART_URL" width="625" height="421"></iframe>625 of width and 421 of height looks good enough to show only the chart, but you can tweak these values as you want.
- The JSON data that you get from the Codewars API contains a maximum of 200 katas completed per page. It needs to make new calls to retrieve all of the katas that a user completed, and that's what the program does. If you have completed a massive amount of katas, it may take some time, but I believe it's not of a big deal. Please, don't overwhelm the API.
- When no one has made a request to the website in 5 minutes, Glitch (the host I'm using) turns off the website. In this case, you'll need to wait some seconds for the chart to appear. There is also a limited amount of hours per month for the free plan (which is the one I'm using).
- The timezone used by the program is UTC. This is because it's faster this way for the user to get the chart (as he would need to also type in the timezone they want). However, I may introduce the feature to select a specific timezone in the future.
- You have to embed it in another page for it to show. I tried generating the image directly in PNG or SVG (without the use of any third-party library), but it was too messy.
Footnotes
-
The shape of the months are different from one another because, instead of printing the days as GitHub does, it prints them like a normal calendar. You can see the day of the week by counting the row the day is in. It starts at Monday and finishes at Sunday. ↩
-
If you choose the current year, it will print the current streak. If you choose any other year that has already passed, it will print the longest streak made. ↩
