E-Attendance using Blockchain

Our project implements an E-Attendance system which stores student attendance data on a blockchain.

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Introduction

Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin etc.

A blockchain, is a list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. The data, once entered in a block is immutable due to the way blockchains are designed.

This concept of immutable digital data storage can be used for storing data securely, such as student attendance, medical records, and financial transactions, to prevent tampering with this data.

Disclaimer and assumptions

This project is to be considered as a proof of concept only. As such the basic algorithm behind a blockchain is used which constructs blocks and associates them using their cryptographic hashes. A proof of work or proof of stake algorithm has not been implemented to prevent the need for higher computing resources. Unlike traditional decentralized blockchains, this blockchain works using a centralized flask server to avoid dealing with multiple nodes unnecessarily for now.

Some assumptions have been made in this project:

• A teacher will enter the attendance of a class, only once for a date. Multiple lectures in a day are not supported.
• Roll numbers are assumed to start from 1 for each class.
• Roll numbers of students who are repeating a year, will not be available.

Objectives

• Implementing blockchain for secure data storage.
• Storing student attendance data along with their roll numbers in the blockchain.
• Retrieval of data from the blockchain.
• Web interface for insertion and retrieval of data.
• Ability to check if a block has been tampered with.

Technologies Used

• Python 3.6+
• Flask 0.12.2+
• HTML5
• CSS3
• Javascript
• Jinja2

Installation of Dependencies on Arch Linux

Update your system first.

$ sudo pacman -Syu

Install Python3 if not already installed.

$ sudo pacman -S python

Install pip for installing python packages.

$ sudo pacman -S python-pip

Install Flask for Python. This will also install the required Jinja2 dependency.

$ pip install Flask

Install requests module for Python

$ pip install requests

Running the application

• Open a Terminal
• Navigate to the root folder of the project.

$ cd path/to/Blockendance

• Run the python app

$ python blockchain.py

• Open a web browser and navigate to "http://localhost:5000" to use the application.

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2018 Adeen Shukla - Released under the MIT License