What does sakai.properties.url.key do?...

[Tony Atkins-2]

Folks:

So, what does the configuration property sakai.properties.url.key do (besides hurt my brain)?

It's meaningfully accessed in the following portion of the web tool's code:

https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn//web/branches/sakai_2-5-x/web-tool/tool/src/java/org/sakaiproject/web/tool/IFrameAction.java

It looks to me like this is a failover URL used by the web tool when it's not performing its special duties for "My Workspace" or providing a worksite's description, or serving up a site's info page.  My question is, under what condition is the URL specified by sakai.properties.url.key (I would assume it's a URL) used?

Many thanks to anyone who can answer this reasonably.  In the mean time I'm moving on to some of the lower hanging fruit that still needs to be documented in other areas.



Tony




==
Tony Atkins
<tony.atkins@...>
Software Development Manager
UHI Millennium Institute



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[Seth Theriault]

Tony Atkins wrote:

> It looks to me like this is a failover URL used by the web
> tool when it's not performing its special duties for "My
> Workspace" or providing a worksite's description, or serving
> up a site's info page.  My question is, under what condition
> is the URL specified by sakai.properties.url.key (I would
> assume it's a URL) used?

If you want to "create" a Web Content tool that points to a
specific URL, then you use "sakai.properties.url.key" in the
tool's XML file to tell it to use the value of a specific
setting in sakai.properties.

For example, I have a "Library Reserves" tool that people can
add to their site. It's really just a Web Content tool that
loosely integrates Sakai with an existing system. So, I have
this is the id file, courseworks.reserves.active.xml:

<configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key" value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" />

In sakai.properties, I have:

# URL for Columbia Library Reserves tool
courseworks.reserves.active.url=FULL_URL_TO_LIBRARY_RESERVES

We use some custom site properties and "iframe.allowed.macros"
in sakai.properties to pass the necessary course info to the
Libraries.

For more information, see:

http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-5464

Seth

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[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Seth,

I'm really interesting in this way of allowing a Web Content tool to  
be added like a tool, can you expand on this? How would I go about  
setting it up for my particular URLs I want to link to?


cheers,
Steve


__________________________________
Steve Swinsburg
Web Developer
Teaching & Learning Centre
University of New England, Australia
Ph. [phone]

On 12/11/2007, at 1:24 PM, Seth Theriault wrote:

> Tony Atkins wrote:
>
>> It looks to me like this is a failover URL used by the web
>> tool when it's not performing its special duties for "My
>> Workspace" or providing a worksite's description, or serving
>> up a site's info page.  My question is, under what condition
>> is the URL specified by sakai.properties.url.key (I would
>> assume it's a URL) used?
>
> If you want to "create" a Web Content tool that points to a
> specific URL, then you use "sakai.properties.url.key" in the
> tool's XML file to tell it to use the value of a specific
> setting in sakai.properties.
>
> For example, I have a "Library Reserves" tool that people can
> add to their site. It's really just a Web Content tool that
> loosely integrates Sakai with an existing system. So, I have
> this is the id file, courseworks.reserves.active.xml:
>
> <configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key"  
> value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" />
>
> In sakai.properties, I have:
>
> # URL for Columbia Library Reserves tool
> courseworks.reserves.active.url=FULL_URL_TO_LIBRARY_RESERVES
>
> We use some custom site properties and "iframe.allowed.macros"
> in sakai.properties to pass the necessary course info to the
> Libraries.
>
> For more information, see:
>
> http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-5464
>
> Seth
>
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[Tony Atkins-2]

Aha!  Thanks much for that clear explanation, Seth.  I see that this opens the door for a whole other range of configuration options.  If there are bundled tools that use this approach, I can document the properties they define/use, but I don't think I can really document this type of "metaproperty" in the Config Viewer/Config Editor itself.


Tony


==
Tony Atkins
<tony.atkins@...>
Software Development Manager
UHI Millennium Institute

>>> On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at  2:24 AM, Seth Theriault <slt@...> wrote:
> Tony Atkins wrote:
>
>> It looks to me like this is a failover URL used by the web
>> tool when it's not performing its special duties for "My
>> Workspace" or providing a worksite's description, or serving
>> up a site's info page.  My question is, under what condition
>> is the URL specified by sakai.properties.url.key (I would
>> assume it's a URL) used?
>
> If you want to "create" a Web Content tool that points to a
> specific URL, then you use "sakai.properties.url.key" in the
> tool's XML file to tell it to use the value of a specific
> setting in sakai.properties.
>
> For example, I have a "Library Reserves" tool that people can
> add to their site. It's really just a Web Content tool that
> loosely integrates Sakai with an existing system. So, I have
> this is the id file, courseworks.reserves.active.xml:
>
> <configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key"
> value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" />
>
> In sakai.properties, I have:
>
> # URL for Columbia Library Reserves tool
> courseworks.reserves.active.url=FULL_URL_TO_LIBRARY_RESERVES
>
> We use some custom site properties and "iframe.allowed.macros"
> in sakai.properties to pass the necessary course info to the
> Libraries.
>
> For more information, see:
>
> http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-5464
>
> Seth
>
> ----------------------
> This automatic notification message was sent by Sakai Collab
> (https://collab.sakaiproject.org/portal) from the DG: Development (a.k.a.
> sakai-dev) site.
> You can modify how you receive notifications at My Workspace > Preferences.

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[Brian Jorgensen-2]

Seth:


This is a great idea and sounds pretty easy to implement; would the
following steps do the trick:


1. under $SAKAI_COMPILE_HOME/web/web-tool/tool/src/webapp/tools, copy
sakai.iframe.xml to sakai.iframe.newtool1.xml to create a new tool
registration file;

2. change the tool id in that file to match: sakai.iframe.newtool1;

3. add the <configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key"
value="web-content.newtool1.url" /> property in that tool registration file;

4. tweak the site categories as required in that tool registration file;

5. add <configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key"
value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" /> to sakai.properties


Also, would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean when you say

> We use some custom site properties and "iframe.allowed.macros"
> in sakai.properties to pass the necessary course info to the
> Libraries.

perhaps by providing an example? (Sorry, it's almost lunchtime and I'm
not quite grasping exactly what this looks like from both ends;
presumably some params get pasted onto the end of the URI that your
external tool receives, but it's a little unclear to me the exact
mechanism, what those params end up looking like, and what exactly is
meant by "macros" in your paragraph, in SAK-5464, and in the Config Viewer.)


Peter or Tony: is there anywhere I should capture this recipe, maybe
somewhere in the SakaiPedia?

I believe that creative uses of the web content and the link tool can be
quite powerful imagination enablers, and help to increase buy-in among
less technical stakeholders.


Brian

Seth Theriault wrote:

> Tony Atkins wrote:
>
>> It looks to me like this is a failover URL used by the web
>> tool when it's not performing its special duties for "My
>> Workspace" or providing a worksite's description, or serving
>> up a site's info page.  My question is, under what condition
>> is the URL specified by sakai.properties.url.key (I would
>> assume it's a URL) used?
>
> If you want to "create" a Web Content tool that points to a
> specific URL, then you use "sakai.properties.url.key" in the
> tool's XML file to tell it to use the value of a specific
> setting in sakai.properties.
>
> For example, I have a "Library Reserves" tool that people can
> add to their site. It's really just a Web Content tool that
> loosely integrates Sakai with an existing system. So, I have
> this is the id file, courseworks.reserves.active.xml:
>
> <configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key" value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" />
>
> In sakai.properties, I have:
>
> # URL for Columbia Library Reserves tool
> courseworks.reserves.active.url=FULL_URL_TO_LIBRARY_RESERVES
>
> We use some custom site properties and "iframe.allowed.macros"
> in sakai.properties to pass the necessary course info to the
> Libraries.
>
> For more information, see:
>
> http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-5464
>
> Seth
>
> ----------------------
> This automatic notification message was sent by Sakai Collab (https://collab.sakaiproject.org/portal) from the DG: Development (a.k.a. sakai-dev) site.
> You can modify how you receive notifications at My Workspace > Preferences.
>

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[Seth Theriault]

Stephen Swinsburg wrote:

> I'm really interesting in this way of allowing a Web Content
> tool to be added like a tool, can you expand on this? How would
> I go about setting it up for my particular URLs I want to link
> to?

The best way to explain all of this is probably to walk you
through what I did for my "Library Reserves" tool.

First, a little background. The Library folks here at Columbia
provide a very nice Web-based interface to reserves lists for
courses. An instructor sets up a list for a particular course and
people can click a "My Reserves" link on the Library Web site,
authenticate, and be presented with a list of current-semester
courses with reserves lists.

We provide link to a course's reserves list in our current
non-Sakai CMS/LMS offering. It uses a specific course identifier
in conjunction with a unchanging base URL to move an
authenticated user directly to the reserves list for the course
in question. Neat.

We decided to implement this functionality in Sakai. To do it, I
needed:

1) The "unchanging base URL" for access to Library Reserves
2) A way to associate "specific course identifier" with the
course's Sakai site.

For #1, I asked someone at the Libraries who told me it was:

https://www2.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/libreserves?CRSE=

(FYI, this URL is not valid)

To go directly to a course's reserves list, the "specific course
identifier" is added after the "?CRSE=" part of the URL. The
identifier comes in a few flavors, but generally looks like this:

HUMAC0000_000_2004_3

In this case, this corresponds to section 0 of a Fall 2004
Humanities 0000 course.

For #2, I decided to add  "HUMAC0000_000_2004_3" as the value of
a site property called "courseworks-unique-id".

Armed with this information, I now needed to make my custom Web
Content tool. First, I created:

SAKAI_SRC/web/web-tool/tool/src/webapp/tools/courseworks.reserves.active.xml

with this content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<registration>
<tool
id="courseworks.reserves.active"
title="Library Reserves"
description="Connect to Library Reserves (requires properties to be set)">

<configuration name="height" value="600px" />

<configuration name="sakai.properties.url.key" value="courseworks.reserves.active.url" />

<configuration name="hide.options" value="true" type="final" />

<category name="course" />
<category name="project" />
</tool>
</registration>

This is essentially a copy of sakai.iframe.xml in the same
directory. But it has an important difference: the
"sakai.properties.url.key" config option. This option tells the
tool to look for a sakai.properties setting called
"courseworks.reserves.active.url" and to use that value for the
target URL.

Then, I took advantage of a new feature. Starting in Sakai 2.3.0,
the Web Content tool has the ability to do "variable macro
expansion" in its URLs. By default, the following macros are
expanded when referred to in a URL in the Web Content tool:

${USER_ID}
${USER_FIRST_NAME}
${USER_LAST_NAME}
${SITE_ID}
${USER_ROLE}
${SESSION_ID}

The list of available macros is controlled by a setting in
sakai.properties called "iframe.allowed.macros". In addition, you
can tell Sakai to expand any one of a site's properties, but you
have to specify a custom value in the "iframe.allowed.macros"
setting. So, in my case, I want to be able to expand the
"courseworks-unique-id" property in my URLs, so I have this:

iframe.allowed.macros=${USER_ID},${USER_FIRST_NAME},${USER_LAST_NAME},${SITE_ID},${USER_ROLE},${SESSION_ID},${SITE_PROP:courseworks-unique-id}

in my sakai.properties.

Now, it is time to tie everything together. In sakai.properties,
I specified the following:

# URL for Columbia Library Reserves tool
courseworks.reserves.active.url=https://www2.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/libreserves?CRSE=${SITE_PROP:courseworks-unique-id}

So in that Humanities course, when the new "Library Reserves"
tool is added to a course and people click on it, the tool
expands the ${SITE_PROP:courseworks-unique-id} macro to
"HUMAC0000_000_2004_3" (as specified in the site's properties)
and directs people to this URL:

https://www2.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/libreserves?CRSE=HUMAC0000_000_2004_3

where the reserves list for this course is available. In other
courses, the same tool can be used and the sites'
"courseworks-unique-id" property will pass along the correct
value to the Library Reserves tool.

Seth

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