[Xerte-dev] Re: LTI Provider

[Julian Tenney]

> In my new features slot on the 10th ok if I mention this and suggest delegates speak to you if they have any questions?

Please do! I'll make a fresh zip, 1.81, the LTI release.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 03 October 2012 12:08
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: LTI Provider

Hi Simon
thanks for the screenshots - very useful. All working well now! :-)

I had added the /lti/ when configuring via admin > plugins > activity modules > external tool but I hadn't added a url or a url with /lti/ in the end when adding an external tool activity to a course. Now that I've done that it works great. It seems a shame that the Moodle settings can't automatically pick up the correct url by selecting the name of the external tool. e.g. If I select XOT as shown in the screenshot (the name I gave to the external tool via admin) I still have to add the url with /lti/ appended for the selection of an LO to work otherwise it just takes me to the standard login screen. Not a problem for me but I can see it being a problem where users just put what they know to be the installation url, or no url at all, rather than knowing or remembering to add /lti/. I know this is more a moodle limitation rather than any kind of limitation of what you've developed which is great!

I guess once users know what to do via a guide or something then they should remember and I guess in an institution it would be worth customising the help for the external resource activity to show what url to add.

I can see awareness of LTI growing quickly over the next couple of years especially where Moodle is used as the VLE. Does the functionality exist in what you have developed to automatically create accounts from the consumer e.g. if the XOT db was used to store accounts? I'm guessing not at the moment but I could see that being very useful for OER collaborative projects etc.

Great stuff!

In my new features slot on the 10th ok if I mention this and suggest delegates speak to you if they have any questions?

Cheers
Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Simon Atack
Sent: 03 October 2012 11:08
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: LTI Provider

Ron,

Sorry about not mentioning to run upgrade.php I assumed (wrongly!) that standard practice would be to run each time when upgrading code.

It should work with all the authentication methods, I had only used it against LDAP. I have just switched to static as authentication and gone through it and it appears to work as Id expect.

The steps will be (I have attached screen grabs to compare to)

1st you should get a login asking for username/password ( this will only appear once) [Xerte-lti-1.png]
2nd you should get a screen with instructions on the left and list of projects in the right with a select button at the bottom [Xerte-lti-2.png] an empty workspace & [Xerte-lti-3.png] for workspace with some content.

The obvious thing I can think of is you didn't put the correct url into the Tool Base URL,  it should be the usual Xerte url with the addition of /LTI/ on the end as only this URL is configured to accept the LTI link

Simon


From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 03 October 2012 10:10
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: LTI Provider

Hi Simon
thought I'd have a go at testing this for you but may be misunderstanding how it works. Firstly will it only work with XOT configured for LDAP or should it also work if XOT is set to static authentication?

Results of tests so far:

1. Realised I had to run upgrade.php to create the lti table - this worked fine.
2. Adding a key and secret via management.php also worked fine.
3. Configuring the Moodle external tool via admin > manage plugins etc also worked fine
4. Adding an external tool activity to a course and selecting save and display simply launches the XOT login page and upon login shows the workspace e.g. there isn't an option to select a specific LO for the link. Is this because it won't work with static authentication or am I missing something?

HTH
Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Simon Atack
Sent: 02 October 2012 17:14
To: xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Xerte-dev] LTI Provider

First thank you all for the welcome.

Yesterday I submitted to svn the LTI Provider integration function I have been working on.  This allow you to have launch Xerte from within a VLE giving single sign on etc (In moodle this is the External Tool activity plugin).

It handles the association between the LTI userid & the Xerte username (and allows regular re-authentication) and then if staff lets you select the  project you want to associate the link with, and then displays the project for subsequent launches of the link.  It also includes LTI Key/Secret Management in the main Xerte management interface.

I have tested it myself on my local box with a fresh install of Xerte (configured for LDAP authentication) and Moodle 2.2.2+.  I have tried to keep the changes as few as possible to integrate it in (I have extended a couple of functions to support extra parameters as well as factoring some repeated lines into functions so there is only 1 copy doing anything).  It would be really useful if others could download it,  test it out and give feedback.

There is a very brief documentation file LTI Documentation.txt included with a brief note of what you need to do, anyone having problems/or trouble understanding how to get it working please get it touch.

The LTI library is based off the IMS sample code for LTI in php and extended by UoN and has been used in the Rogo OSS project.

Thanks

Simon


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