[Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

Thu Dec 6 22:30:09 GMT 2012

committed.

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 06 December 2012 21:59
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

window_reference is used in the lock file code - so the editor window knows
the window which created it so they can talk to each other.

If you're near an SVN commit it.

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 9:50 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

Yeah I just tested locally and can see that I can now create one project
after another without problem but if I turn on debugger I still get the
window_reference error.

Clearly that error wasn't the cause of not being able to create consecutive
projects but was the only js error detected. I guess if that isn't causing a
problem it shouldn't delay release.

re you going to commit your change?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 06 December 2012 21:08

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

This isn't the window_reference error by the way

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Pat Lockley <patrick.lockley at googlemail.com>
wrote:

For some reason there are two calls to a function which does the same thing,
and they clashed with each other.

No idea why.

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 8:59 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

That seems to have done the trick Pat. It's in place on the Techdis server.

I can see the file differences but what caused the problem and need for the
change?

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 06 December 2012 20:45

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

Try this as a fix for the JS problem

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Julian Tenney
<Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

I would prefer we have some sort of service in between the two products that
can do the work robustly. I don't think XOT should risk being delayed
because some moodle update has screwed things up. This seems to me a classic
case of code originally written for one thing, now catering for unforeseen
circumstances, and I think we should rethink it, otherwise we have the same
nightmare we had with youtube pages having to cope with different ways of
finding the IDs, but in a more serious place. But let's leave it for now if
it's fixed for now.

Let's get the remaining issues sorted out, so we can go into Christmas with
this release done,

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 16:30

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

this is the thing though, as "core" XOT now covers moodle integration, which
is a big thing.

Muddling through is fine, but if we are developing new stuff we need to know
what we are developing for / to work with? I'm not really using XOT at work,
so I'm doing this for free

I can have a look tonight at the window_reference thing, suspect it's
simple.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Julian Tenney
<Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

Quite. I'd prefer us to be accessing the moodle session data through some
'approved' means of doing so, because presumably it could change at any
major / minor version update?

Are you able to look at the second create / refresh issue Pat?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 15:54

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

i know the change is almost certainly my fault, as in theory I made the last
change, which is fine.

The merge is done line by line, so it's not a process by which you'd remove
a line of code unless it was in conflict (and database_connect isn't that
kind of code, you can connect to a database a million times and not worry
about it), and if you look at new_template.php it hasn't had a database
connect call for quite some time - it wasn't there in March (which was the
last change). So these changes make it work in moodle 1.9, I didn't commit
them as I haven't tested them outside moodle. I also worry as to why PHP
would behave differently (a require once should kill all PHP, not just
moodle PHP) depending on being inside Moodle. 

The code in the SVN works outside of moodle, it works in moodle 2.3. If I
make a change in future, does it have to work in moodle 1.9? There is no
reason I can tell you why the old 1.9 wouldn't work in moodle, but I'd be
loathe to do a completely new install just to test it on the off chance
moodle is being weird.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

Hi Pat

Firstly I'm not saying you broke anything I still have no idea really about
what changed to cause these problems. All I can say for sure is that we've
been using the Techdis install for months during the 1.8 development and
more recently the html 5 development and I've been updating that server
daily simply by getting and exporting the latest svn code and uploading that
to the test install. Sometimes hourly let alone daily and weekly. On that
server/install nothing else had changed. In my local xampp nothing else had
changed.

I haven't had time to investigate but perhaps the svn merge created that
duplicate require statement in your_templates.php and that seems to have
been the cause of the workspace refresh issue. Perhaps it's something else
like that which caused the new project issue I really can't say for sure.

I know what you mean about all the possible external tools and perhaps the
LTI work Simon started would be the ultimate solution to all that but the
fact remains there are a lot of organisations using XOT combined with Moodle
for authentication. That may never had evolved if XOT had its own account
management etc but again it's just a fact that you never needed that at
Nottingham and it's never really been fully implemented so it's either LDAP
or Moodle for most and lot's of organisations can't use the LDAP option for
all sorts of reasons. Tom may be able to provide some stats about that from
his work in Europe etc and I think it will definitely be worth doing a
survey at some point.

To my mind we want people to upgrade and provide feedback on the latest
release so ensuring this works for those with moodle authentication is a key
ingredient of that.

Do you agree that 1 & 2 below shouldn't break anything when moodle
integration isn't used?

1. The change to new_template.php fixes the main issue I was seeing e.g. not
being able to create new projects with a moodle 1.9 integration path
enabled. I can't see how that change would break non moodle use?

2. The change to your_templates.php fixes the other main issue of the
workspace not refreshing after creating a project. This was just removal of
a duplicate require line. Not sure if that was always there, or introduced
recently, or only a problem with moodle integration in place, but again I
really can't see how this would break non moodle use?

How do we crack the closing the editor window issue? Can anyone else
replicate that with the latest svn trunk code?

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 14:26

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

it's all of those things though.

We don't know who uses XOT and with what, so we can't guess on who uses
stuff. I could make an argument the WordPress plugin would be a world
simpler if Xerte did X and Y, but I wanted to make it work, so I found a way
round it.

If we aren't going to release changes because it breaks X, then what is X.
because we upgraded to PHP 5 and told people to change host if they had a
problem with that

So at present, if we make changes to XOT, we are only going to release them
in they work with Moodle? Which Moodles? For how long?

I don't see why those changes are required for moodle to work, I didn't
remove any of those lines of code, or add them in. I didn't change anything
in modularisation to do with folders (as it doesn't need it). All I changed
in new template was returning one extra parameter in the query - but the
code has broken a long time before that change comes into play.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

hang on a sec - let's discuss this objectively and practically...

We have a very small developer list membership and even fewer of that
membership testing/developing the latest code on anything but xampp

Realistically for organisations to use XOT in earnest they need a public
facing server install with either ldap or moodle authentication. e.g. guest,
static or db aren't current/realistic options.

I'd wager, but prepared to be proved wrong and perhaps we should do a
survey, that there are far more xot installations in use that are using
moodle for authentication than ldap. I certainly know for a fact that there
are organisations using xot that wouldn't be and wouldn't be able to if they
weren't able to use moodle for authentication. I know there's no internal
requirement at Nottingham for Moodle integration but we've had it working
for years now and it's not a change to moodle code that has stopped it
working. It's not even a change to the xot moodle integration code that has
stopped it working. Pat has worked magic in finding a solution to the two
main issues I've reported but I'm not sure we've really nailed exactly what
changed to break things in the first place or if it was one thing or
different things. (see below)

These problems with moodle integration didn't exist until last week -
something has caused a conflict. There's no problem with the previous moodle
integration in 1.7/1.8 regardless of moodle version.

There have been different errors and different issues reported during this
last week not all of which are down to the same cause/solution. I can only
reliably report on the issues I've found/tested and it's not always easy or
efficient to test one thing at a time especially when there are so many
permutations too. e.g. The blank window and language change issue that Tom
reported I haven't seen and a fix for Tom re the language setting didn't
change/fix anything for me. Different problem and  different solution I
think.

Comparing the changes Pat sent through from the current svn code I've
replaced files individually to test what fixes what:

1. The change to new_template.php fixes the main issue I was seeing e.g. not
being able to create new projects with a moodle 1.9 integration path
enabled. I can't see how that change would break non moodle use?

2. The change to your_templates.php fixes the other main issue of the
workspace not refreshing after creating a project. This was just removal of
a duplicate require line. Not sure if that was always there, or introduced
recently, or only a problem with moodle integration in place, but again I
really can't see how this would break non moodle use?

The above two changes fix the main issues I was getting when using an
install with a moodle 1.9 integration path. The other changes to
folder_library.php, user_library.php and make_new_folder.php don't seem to
be needed to fix those main issues as far as I can tell. Not sure if they
fixes other issues that I haven't seen.

Remaining issue

I am still getting the issue that after creating a new project clicking
create doesn't work again until after a refresh but that's happening without
a moodle integration path and as far as I can tell is happening with the
latest svn code so may be a new problem.

HTH

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 13:05

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

but the PHP works outside of moodle 1.9 fine

the problem is once with a database and once with a path

Also - we are setting a precedent. We have a working code base, but when
added into another product, it stops.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Dave Burnett <d_b_burnett at hotmail.com>
wrote:

The pathing on Moodle 2.0 is a wild and crazy thing.

Maybe 1.9 was a bit of a test bed for some of what became 2.0?

Wild guessing.

  _____  

Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 12:32:09 +0000
From: patrick.lockley at googlemail.com
To: xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk

Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

it's not really about introducing errors or changes, but why moodle 1.9
requires the code to be different? That seems a bit worrying.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

I've been testing without a moodle integration path as well as with.

This particular window_reference error happens with and without a moodle
integration path. 

I'm testing via xampp but you can see it on the techdis install although
that obviously is using moodle authentication.

I haven't found any other errors when testing without integration path so
I'm not sure your changed files have introduced any problems unless this js
error is a result of those changes.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 12:14

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

Yeah, my bad - not sure why that would happen. Nothing I've changed
javascript side.

I wouldn't commit those changes as they just don't make sense to me. I don't
get why moodle inclusion would cause those problems and I am not sure what
they do outside of moodle.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

I thought that window_reference is undefined is a js error?

BTW

Are you going to commit those changed php files or do you want me to on your
behalf?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 12:02

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

Not sure then, I assumed it was that (as this was more of a patch than a
fix)

Do you get a JS error?

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

Just print_r($_SESSION) or could there be a similar print_r(something)
causing the same problem?

Have searched for print_r($_SESSION) in the install I'm using for testing
and not found.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 11:42

To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

I think it's because of the print_r($_SESSION) somewhere - remove that and
it'll be fine

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

Hi Pat

thanks for the update.

I've been testing on both the techdis server and locally via xampp.
Obviously I won't have tested every single permutation yet but from tests so
far all seems fine apart from this issue of not being able to create a new
project after creating one already until refresh. However this happens
without a moodle integration path added too.

Here's the steps to reproduce with current svn code plus your changed files.

Click create to create a new project based on Xerte Online Toolkits template

Close the editor and try to create another project - nothing happens upon
clicking create

Refresh the browser and click create works but the cycle repeats e.g. can't
create a second project

Using debugger in IE9 I get the following error when closing the editor
window:

SCRIPT5009: 'window_reference' is undefined 

edit.php?template_id=17, line 32 character 1

Not really sure where to look for the cause/solution to this one but is
there perhaps an include/require missing somewhere?

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 09:38

To: For Xerte technical developers

Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: moodle fix

the problem in new template was that for some reason moodle is leaving or
creating another database link so when toolkits sends the request to the
database it fails as the code is now pointing at the wrong database.

Added in another database_connect call to fix this

the problem in new folder creation was two require_once("config.php") being
used. Removed one and it works.

Why these would only affect moodle 1.9? No idea.

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Ron Mitchell <ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk>
wrote:

Hi Pat

thanks - from tests so far those files have certainly improved things!

What did you find/change? What was the main cause of the problem?

I've tested creating new projects and folders, moving and deleting projects
all of which were a problem previously so looking hopeful.

One problem/difference at the moment which I don't think was there before is
that with a moodle 1.9 integration path I can now create a new project
without the workspace refreshing and it appears etc but if I then try to
create a second project clicking create to create another Xerte Online
Toolkit project doesn't do anything. I have to refresh the browser before I
can create another project. Clicking to create an RSS project does work
without refresh and with moodle 2 configured I can create a second and third
template etc without problem.

I've only tested this locally so far will test on the techdis server next...

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat Lockley
Sent: 05 December 2012 00:29
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] moodle fix

try swapping these files 

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