[Xerte] Re: xot data disappearing

Mon May 13 10:31:19 BST 2013

Not sure. I’m sue we had some code in the wiard / associated php that took the data and attempted to make an XML object with it, and if it failed, we didn’t allow the data to save, and promoted the user. I wanted to look at it and see what it did, and whether it was letting things through that it shouldn’t. I couldn’t find it… is it a figment of my imagination?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 11 May 2013 19:04
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xot data disappearing

Hi all
by coincidence (or maybe not) attached below is a message I received from Alistair on Friday but couldn't look into it then. It seems like this was another case of corrupted xml. I have fixed the xml for this LO now so the link below and pages referred to should be fine but I've attached the xml files as they were when corrupted in case it helps point to where this one went wrong.

It looks like this went wrong on the hotspot page 14 e.g. the preview.xml ends with:
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
<hotspot name="10.2 Creating content" text="Function: 10.2 c
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

and the fixed version has:
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
<hotspot name="10.2 Creating content" text="Function: 10.2 creating content.
NOS title: PUB18 Create content.

Includes:
...recognising that good practices such as tagging heading levels and reading order can have a positive impact on accessibility." x="314" y="101" w="79" h="35" />
                                             <hotspot name="15.1 Developing digital products and solutions" text="<b>Function: </b> 15.1 Developing digital products and solutions.
<b>NOS title:</b> Cross reference to IT & Telecoms Standards and Interactive Media 5.

Includes (IT and telecoms):
â€¢        4.3 Human Needs Analysis
â€¢        4.6 Human computer interaction / interface (HCI) design
Includes (Interactive media)
...ensure that user interfaces are fully accessible to all users.
" x="26" y="112" w="147" h="36" />
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Not sure that helps but what are the â€¢ characters?

Note: I added the ////etc for clarity.

I know this sort of thing has happened occasionally in the past but wondering if it has somehow become more likely/frequent now with the latest codebase - certainly hope not!
HTH
Ron

Extract from message from Alistair...

Subject: Weird stuff in /Xerte

Hi Ron
I’m giving up for the moment but I’ve been getting strange stuff with http://vle.jisctechdis.ac.uk/xerte/play_54..

Initially it was problems with specific slides
11 - Alternative perspectives only able to access 1 of 4 videos
14 - Hotspot image page not rendering
15 - Italian case study ditto
17 - not rendering
19 - not rendering

Then slides 15 onwards disappeared entirely

Then when I tried to recreate the pages they just refused to be added. There was nothing obvious giving an error message but I edited, pressed Publish then if I shut that window and opened up the LO again the pages I added disappeared.

There’s no content that I can’t repair but I want to ensure it actually saves before I do any more work on it.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat @ Pgogy
Sent: 09 May 2013 17:34
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xot data disappearing

YouTube urls can have crazy formats these days

On 9 May 2013, at 15:03, Julian Tenney <Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
The file ends like this:
<youtube linkID="PG1366110707596" name="Non-parametric two paired samples Video" text="The video clip on this page shows how to carry out the commonly used &lt%

I can embed the video fine, close, publish, re-open, everything intact.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Loughlin, Colin
Sent: 09 May 2013 14:55
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xot data disappearing

Hi Julian – thanks for the reply – we did manage to recover a previous in-tact version of the files.

I’m not sure if this is what you meant, but I’ve attached the before and after failure xml files, if that’s any use to you for debugging.

Also just fyi – I’ve checked and they weren’t pasting from MS office, the last set of edits were mainly youtube pages.

Thanks again, Colin

From: Julian Tenney [mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: 09 May 2013 11:48
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: xot data disappearing

Hi,

This is always bad news. Happily it doesn’t seem to be happening often. From time to time it happens here as well, and almost every time it is because people are pasting in text from MSOffice or elsewhere that carries unseen formatting that breaks the XML, as much as we try and protect it. There is better error handling code in there now than the early days so if you upgrade it may improve – of course, if it’s a rare occurrence, it’s hard to tell.

We do test to see if the xml is well formed, and prevent it being saved if it isn’t, but I think from time to time things do slip though, and when this happens no one can tell us exactly what they were doing when it broke. We hear ‘well, I, er, dunno, but it was working one minute, and not the next… pardon? Paste form word, no, I don’t think so, er, shouldn’t I do that then, oh, I didn’t know that…’ etc, so it’s hard to replicate things and prevent them happening again.

If it happens, the first thing to look at is whether data and preview.xml files are the same. If they are, there’s probably not much you can do about it, but try and see if the xml file contains more info than they are seeing in the editor. If so, some of it might be able to be rescued.

If they are different, you can restore to the last good published place. If you can catch a real example I’d love to see it, because this is about the worst thing that can happen, and it shouldn’t be possible.

Julian

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Loughlin, Colin
Sent: 09 May 2013 10:06
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: [Xerte] xot data disappearing

Hi – apologies if this has already been covered, but I have now had several incidents of data disappearing from Xerte objects and wondered if this was a known problem, and/or what the solutions might be.

It happens infrequently (4/5 times over the last two versions that we have had installed during the last couple of years), we’re currently on version 1.7.

I think what happens is that data gets corrupted/lost during the saving process. For example the most recent case the LO was about 40 pages and was saved normally, but when we went to open it again it contained only 29 pages.

Thanks,
Colin Loughlin
CMALT FHEA
Kingston University

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