Some courses lack titles

[sebthedev]

Searching the database for db.getCollection('courses').find({title:''}) yields 42 courses with empty titles. At least some of these (such as PHI 304 and ART 344) do have titles in the Registrar's courses web feed (see PHI 304 and ART 344 in the web feed).

These courses should have titles. It's probably some bizarre bug with importBasicCourseDetails.js.

[sebthedev]

This appears to be a bug with the data feed provided by OIT/the Registrar.

Princeton Courses receives course title information from asking web feed for all the data about all the courses in all subjects across all semester (a request to /courseofferings/?subject=all&term=all). This returns a 14 MB JSON file for which some of the courses lack titles. For example, ARC 517 in both terms 1152 and 1162 have title: "" (you can jump to this course in the file be searching for the phrase "advanced pro-seminar").

However, if you narrow the search criteria to just return ARC courses from all semesters (a request to /courseofferings/?subject=ARC&term=all, then the title correctly displays in the results as "Research in Architecture".

This currently only impacts only 0.5% (5 courses) of all the courses offered in Fall 2017, so I think think we should reach out to OIT and ask for help in resolving this bug with their system.

For reference, these are the unique IDs of the affected courses:

[1152000395, 1152000590, 1152004967, 1152006511, 1152006538, 1152008463, 1152008910, 1152011027, 1152012796, 1152012846, 1152012934, 1154001326, 1154004905, 1154011559, 1154012934, 1154012985, 1154012999, 1162000395, 1162006477, 1162006538, 1162008910, 1162009251, 1162012846, 1162013317, 1164006511, 1164008128, 1164012985, 1164013461, 1164013609, 1164013619, 1172001262, 1172004449, 1172008910, 1172009251, 1172013796, 1174006511, 1182001262, 1182004449, 1182006511, 1182008910, 1182009251, 1162001262]