[Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Mon Sep 21 10:34:26 BST 2009

Thanks for the suggestion Dave but as before for me that works in Firefox
but not IE. (IE7)

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Burnett
Sent: 21 September 2009 00:41
To: Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Bit more poking around:

Try this one in IE just for laughs:

callJS(' function(){ return 
document.location.href.toString();}'); 

  _____  

From: ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:21:55 +0100

Thanks Pat and Dave

I got a bit bored with some other work I was doing so just did a few more
tests via a localhost installation so in case this is of use to anyone in
future a quick update:

My tests echo what Dave has said my_location =
callJS('window.location.href.toString'); gives exactly what I was after e.g
the url ending with play.php?template_id=8 but unfortunately this doesn't
work in IE and most of the colleges and staff I work with still use IE by
default.

I looked at the flashVars and my_location=_root.site_url; certainly works in
all browsers and I thought that combined with root.linkID and a bit of
joining  might give me what I wanted but root.linkID gives undefined
irrespective of browser.

A couple of the flashVars seem to include the id e.g. FileLocation equals
USER-FILES/8-guest-Nottingham/ and the 8 is the id so a bit of string
manipulation gives me what I wanted where I can automatically re-create the
url with the correct ID on the end.

However I realised that's still not universal and a question for Pat I guess
- some installations will be play.php?template_id=8 others will just be
play_8 is there any way I can automatically detect that? 

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 20 September 2009 01:28
To: Xerte discussion list; Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

the site_url is passed in as a flashvar, probably script accessible as
_root.site_url - the id can be get at from templateData (I think).

  _____  

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk on behalf of Dave Burnett
Sent: Sat 19/09/2009 21:16
To: Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Is that null in IE?

I just did some poking around and it looks like the original call works in
FireFox/Mozilla, but IE won't let you call the location object directly, it
has to be through a function in the <head>.

Good old IE.
ActiveX didn't manage to totally win the browser war, but it sure introduced
the world to a lot of viruses (virii?)

;-) 

  _____  

From: ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:04:58 +0100

Thanks for the suggestion Dave

I did try something like that and just tested again using your suggestion.
When I try that locally I get file:///I:/xerte/test_templates/index.htm but
online via a toolkits installation I get null. As Julian suggested I was
wanting something like server.com/toolkits/play_123 and to be honest that's
further complicated by the fact that the QR code and short url are generated
at runtime, so even if I could get this working it might give unpredictable
results if the LO is embedded or played via preview rather than the public
url. So in short I've left it so that the author just adds the public url of
the LO or the address of another site/page when authoring rather than have
an option for the url of the LO to be automatic.

Thanks for your help

Ron

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Burnett
Sent: 19 September 2009 19:32
To: Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Ron, that's why asked if the callJS could talk to the DOM directly.

In the archives I found this posted by Julian:

I added a new function 'callJS(functionName, parameters)' which wraps
Flash's ExternalInterface.call method.
Use it like this:

callJS('myJavascriptFunctionName', 'parameters');

Now, if it is a wrap of the ExternalInterface.call method, which looks like
this:

ExternalInterface.call("window.location.href.toString");

then in your code,

my_location = callJS('window.location.href.toString');

*should* give you the URL location of the page the .rlo (or at least the swf
engine) is executing from.
No need for any extra javascript in the <HEAD>. 

Dave

  _____  

From: ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:03:09 +0100

Hi Julian

As we discussed I really wanted this to work without the need for any
additional javascript so that it could be used via any toolkits installation
so if there is a function in the existing code somewhere please let me know.
As we briefly discussed it would be really good if there was a way of
containing all the code in the models and have those automatically detected
and displayed as page types available. It would make updating and keeping
custom pages in sync much easier.

I've created a simple example of each of the four custom page types I've
adapted and integrated and made them available as a zip too at
http://mitchellmedia.co.uk/?p=230 

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of RonM
Sent: 18 September 2009 09:52
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Yes indeed!       ....?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 18 September 2009 09:28
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

I think what you want is the server.com/toolkits/play_123, right?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Burnett
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 12:20 AM
To: Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Can you talk to the DOM directly with callJS?
Maybe just window.location?

  _____  

Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:40:36 -0700
From: Paul.Swanson at harlandfs.com
To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk

You might try a javascript function in the launching web page:

function returnURL() {

    var baseURL = document.URL;

    return baseURL;

}

Then use Xerte's callJS() method to get it.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of RonM
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 3:29 PM
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Thanks for the suggestion but that doesn't work for what I want. _url comes
close but this may be a question for Pat as what I really want is to
automatically detect, or at least dynamically create, the public url of the
LO. Hopefully Pat will have a suggestion tomorrow.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Paul Swanson
Sent: 17 September 2009 22:53
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

FileLocation?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of RonM
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 2:50 PM
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: [Xerte] detect/retrieve url of an LO

Hi Pat/Julian

I should probably know this but is there a system variable or functions or
something which automatically contains the url of the LO? 

Cheers

Ron

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