🎖️ UnitSync: ROTC Cadet & Attendance Management System

UnitSync is a terminal-based cadet administration and attendance tracking system developed in C++ as the final project for Computer Programming 2 (second semester, first year). Built to digitize and streamline ROTC corps management, UnitSync offers role-based access control for Basic Cadets, Advance Cadets, Staff Officers, and Brigade Staff. It features automated credential generation, real-time 15-day attendance tracking with color-coded status badges, multi-criteria smart search, an announcement bulletin board, alphabetical sorting, and file persistence.

💻 Preview

========================================
                UnitSync
========================================
----------------------------------------
 MAIN MENU
----------------------------------------
 1. Register
 2. Log In
 3. Exit
========================================

============================================================
                      USER ATTENDANCE
============================================================
Legend:
== Present  == Late  == Excuse  == Absent  -- Not Yet Taken
------------------------------------------------------------
TRAINING DAY   01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 
STATUS        |==|==|==|==|==|==|==|==|==|==|==|--|--|--|--|
------------------------------------------------------------
                     ATTENDANCE SUMMARY
------------------------------------------------------------
Present    : 11                  Late       : 0
Excuse     : 0                   Absent     : 0
============================================================

UnitSync: ROTC Management System ← Click the link to visit the repository

🚀 Features

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Distinct permissions and personalized dashboards for Basic Cadets, Advance Cadets, Staff Officers (S1/S3), and Brigade Staff.
• Automated Credential Generation: Automatically formats standardized usernames (LASTNAME.SURENAME) and secure default passwords (LASTNAME-<ID_NUMBER>-<INDEX>) from student records.
• Cadet & Officer Registration: Captures complete student information (Last Name, Sure Name, Middle Name, Student ID, Program) alongside role-specific assignments like Company, Platoon, Military Rank, and Staff designation.
• 15-Day Attendance Cycle Tracking: Comprehensive multi-day tracking supporting four official statuses: Present, Late, Excuse, and Absent.
• Color-Coded Status Display: Terminal status indicators rendered using ANSI escape sequences: Present (Green), Late (Blue), Excuse (Yellow), and Absent (Red).
• Officer Attendance Logging: Staff Officers (S1 for Basic Cadets, S3 for Advance Cadets) can take batch attendance designated by Company and Platoon with built-in input validation.
• Attendance Smart Search: Brigade Staff can search and filter cadet attendance by Company, Platoon, Academic Program, Last Name, or Sure Name.
• Corps Announcement System: Brigade Staff can post official drill orders (What, Who, Where, When, Uniform Attire, Checklist of items to bring, and Notes) accessible to all units.
• Alphabetical Auto-Sorting: Automatically sorts cadet and officer registries from A to Z by last name using an optimized bubble sort algorithm powered by a C++ template swap function.
• Master User Roster & Analytics: Displays full battalion rosters broken down by tier with total headcount statistics.
• Persistent File Storage: Saves and loads all user data, attendance matrix records, and announcements to persistent comma-separated text files.
• Input Validation & Security: Sanitizes numeric and string inputs against unexpected entries and enforces a 3-attempt login lockout to prevent unauthorized access.

🛠 Technologies

• C++ (C++11 or higher)
• ANSI Escape Sequences (for screen clearing and colored terminal text)
• C++ Standard Library:
  • <iostream> & <iomanip> (formatted tabular output with std::setw, std::left)
  • <fstream> & <sstream> (file persistence and comma-delimited parsing)
  • <string> & <limits> (robust string manipulation and input buffer clearing)

🛠 Tools

• Visual Studio Code
• MinGW / GCC (g++)
• Git & GitHub
• Windows PowerShell / Command Prompt

🤳 How to Use

Registering a User

1. Select 1. Register from the Main Menu.
2. Select your role (1. Basic Cadet, 2. Advance Cadet, 3. Staff Officer, or 4. Brigade Staff).
3. Enter your student information:
   • Last Name (e.g., DELA CRUZ)
   • Sure Name (e.g., JUAN)
   • Middle Name (e.g., REYES)
   • Student ID (e.g., LQ-00093-2025)
   • Academic Program (e.g., BSIT-1-1)
4. Fill in role-specific details:
   • Basic Cadet: Choose your assigned Company (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta) and Platoon (1st to 4th).
   • Advance Cadet: Enter your military rank (e.g., C/1LT) and select your Platoon.
   • Staff Officer / Brigade Staff: Enter your military rank and select your staff office (S1 or S3).
5. The system will display your auto-generated User Name and Password. Keep a copy for logging in!

Logging In

1. Select 2. Log In from the Main Menu and choose your corresponding role.
2. Enter your auto-generated username (e.g., DELACRUZ.JUAN).
3. Enter your password (e.g., DELACRUZ-00093-0).
4. Upon successful validation, your role-specific dashboard will appear.

Viewing Attendance (Cadets)

1. From the Cadet Menu, select 3. View My Attendance.
2. Inspect your personal 15-day training status matrix and color-coded attendance breakdown summary.

Taking Attendance (Staff Officers)

1. From the Staff Officer Menu, select 2. Take Attendance.
2. Enter the training day number (1–15).
3. Select the target Company and Platoon.
4. For each cadet displayed in the roster, enter the status code:
   • 1 for Present
   • 2 for Late
   • 3 for Excuse
   • 4 for Absent
5. The roster file updates automatically upon completion.

Creating Announcements (Brigade Staff)

1. From the Brigade Staff Menu, select 2. Create an Announcement.
2. Enter the What, Who, Where, When, and Uniform Attire details.
3. Enter list items for the "To Bring" checklist (type done when finished).
4. Enter any special instructions or reminders for "Note" (type done when finished).
5. The announcement is immediately published to announcement.txt.

Using Attendance Smart Search (Brigade Staff)

1. From the Brigade Staff Menu, select 4. Attendance Smart Search.
2. Select whether to query Basic Cadets or Advance Cadets.
3. Choose your filter criteria:
   • Search by Company
   • Search by Platoon
   • Search by Program
   • Search by Name (Last Name or Sure Name)
4. View the matching cadets alongside their full 15-day attendance charts.

👨‍💻 Run Locally

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/cedrexpelagio/ComProg_2_Final_Project.git

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd ComProg_2_Final_Project

3. Compile the program using g++:

   g++ -std=c++11 main.cpp -o main

4. Run the executable:
   • On Windows:

     .\main.exe

   • On Linux / macOS:

     ./main

Note: For Windows Command Prompt or PowerShell, ANSI escape sequences are supported in modern Windows 10/11 terminals for displaying colors and screen clearing.

🔮 Future Improvements

User Experience & Interface

• GUI Migration: Transition the CLI console interface to a graphical user interface (using Qt, ImGui, or web frontend) for enhanced usability.
• Password Management: Allow cadets and officers to change default passwords and update personal contact details.

Data & Analytics

• Export to Excel / PDF: Enable exporting formatted attendance sheets and battalion rosters into .xlsx or .pdf for submission to ROTC commandants.
• Attendance Correction Tool: Allow authorized officers to review and retroactively adjust attendance records for past training days.
• Database Integration: Upgrade flat CSV-style .txt storage to an embedded database like SQLite for enhanced relational queries and data integrity.

⚙ Process

I started by identifying key pain points in our university's ROTC corps operations: paper attendance rosters were easily damaged or lost, manual roll-calls were slow, and cross-checking cadet records across companies and platoons was tedious.

To solve this, I mapped out the corps hierarchy into four roles (Basic Cadets, Advance Cadets, Staff Officers, and Brigade Staff) and designed custom C++ struct definitions (User and Announcement) to handle cadet profiles, credentials, and 15-day attendance arrays.

During development, I utilized dynamic memory allocation (new User[MAX_USER]) and modularized the codebase into functional areas:

1. Authentication & Validation: Designed automated username/password generation based on string parsing and added input-clearing mechanisms with cin.clear() and numeric_limits to prevent infinite loops from invalid keystrokes.
2. Data Conversion: Initially used multiple verbose switch cases for converting menu choices to strings, then refactored them into a 2D lookup array (CONVERT_TABLE[5][4]) to keep the code clean and maintainable.
3. Sorting & File Handling: Created a generic template swap function (swapUser<T>) to power an alphabetical bubble sort on registered users by last name, ensuring all persistent files remain organized in alphabetical order.
4. Attendance Matrix & Visual UI: Leveraged ANSI escape codes to render colored status markers and formatted tabular rosters with <iomanip> (setw, left) for a clean terminal dashboard experience.
5. Search Algorithms: Developed overloaded attendanceSmartSearch functions to enable multi-criteria queries across companies, platoons, programs, and cadet names.

I used Git for version control, documenting each milestone through clear commit messages and hosting the project on GitHub.

📝 Learning

Developing UnitSync significantly deepened my mastery of core C++ and object-oriented programming concepts taught throughout Computer Programming 2:

• Pointers and Dynamic Memory: Gained hands-on experience allocating and deallocating memory on the heap using new[] and delete[], managing pointer arithmetic, and passing pointers to functions.
• File Handling & Stream Parsing: Mastered persistent data storage using <fstream> (ios::in, ios::out, ios::app) and parsed comma-separated string records using std::stringstream and std::getline.
• Function Overloading & Templates: Applied function overloading for takeAttendance, attendanceSmartSearch, and verifyInput, and wrote a reusable generic template function (swapUser<T>) for data manipulation.
• Defensive Programming & Input Sanitization: Learned how to handle unexpected user inputs by clearing the cin fail state and flushing the input buffer, preventing stream corruptions and crashes.
• 2D Arrays as Lookup Tables: Replaced nested switch-case blocks with multi-dimensional constant arrays, improving code clarity and runtime efficiency.
• Terminal UI/UX Design: Explored ANSI escape sequences for text coloring and screen manipulation, transforming a standard CLI into an interactive, intuitive management tool.

Overall, this project was a rewarding milestone that bridged foundational programming theory with a practical, real-world application for campus organizations.