I've been developing a project using php that my students use to take quizes (that moodle can't do itself) Now I would like to integrate moodle and my project such that my project authenticates against moodle users and reports grades into a courses gradebook. I've so far been authenticating using direct database reading but I'm very hesitant to do writes to the moodle database. I'm also aware of LTI; I am open to using it but the human readable documentation and any samples are impossible to find. If you could provide me a sample or documentation thats less theory and more applicable for LTI it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
To do this you need to use the Web Services API. You need to setup a web service first, see Using web services. The entire API documentation is available on your Moodle site via Administration > Plugins > Web services > API Documentation.
You need to use moodle's External Tool, which is created precisely for this kind of uses. External tool uses LTI in the background to send user, course, role etc information to an external application and the external application can even send back scores to moodle if configured as a quiz.
Check out : https://docs.moodle.org/23/en/External_tool
You will also have to make your quiz taking app, an LTI provider.
This open source package is out of the box package to create LTI provider in ruby - https://github.com/instructure/ims-lti
There are similar tools in other languages too, but this one is the most polished one.
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I'm building a mobile project that needs to be in constant communication with a server and i need some information . I know how to build local apps but this is the first time that i'm building an app that requires external call to a server / authentication service .
I'm asking for guidance how to proceed and which services/servers to use.
What type of server/database do i need ?
I'm guessing i will be requiring an API service but no idea how to choose/make one.
I want to use azure services/database but i also don't want to be dependent on it. I want to have my own url that i send request to and interact with a server/db that i can later move to another host fairly easily.
I develop websites mostly and i'm familiar with php/laravel + Mysql but i think in this case it will be overkill to create a laravel app simply for the server backend .
The app will be mobile only so i don't expect to have a webpage for it . simply an external server/database where the data will be saved.
First i need an authentication service - where each user will register on the phone which will then be saved in my external server/database . Then when they need to login - they will input the login details on the phone , which will query the esternal server/database and if validated - get their details from the server.
First, you need to decide which kind of server communication you'll need. it's in real time and constant? then you'll need a websocket. It's in bursts when you need to send or get data? then you'll need some kind of webservice (REST, RPC, SOAP). Then you have to evaluate the user load you'll have. And finally, the human resources you'll have.
Based on your question, I think a REST webservice will be more than enough. You may:
-Create a REST service for every group of related resources. Example: the /user URL should handle the signup, login, logout and user update operations.
-Create a method for each one of those operations and handle them. Then, call the method from the REST service class.
-Depending on the amount of users and the technology you're using, create a server to handle the requests, or upload your REST project to a server (tomcat, for example).
-Create an app and consume the REST services from there.
There are tons of tech you can choose for these things. PHP allows creating REST services, I think. Java is a very good choice too, since you can use the same code in both server and android apps. Node.Js is pretty popular, too, since you don't need servers and uses NIO (althought java can do both things using jetty and also has multithreading); golang and scala both have superb performance (golang is a lot more easier to learn, though, and it has no need to use external webservers).
Hope this helps.
For mobile applications the best will be REST (representational state transfer),becouse is lightweight and flex to use in other technology. I had project which include REST and mobile app and web app and it working very well.
In this scenario, we usually will build a REST API service for client end. As you are familiar with Laravel, you can refer to http://www.programmableweb.com/news/how-to-build-restful-apis-using-php-and-laravel/how-to/2014/08/13#apiu for how to build a REST API service with Laravel. Also you can leverage other light 3rd part PHP frameworks to build REST API service.
You can create and develop the application on local and then deploy to Azure Web Apps. Please refer to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-web-php-get-started/ for more info.
And there several vendors provide MySQL services on Azure. ClearDB is a BaaS on Azure for MySQL. You also can use the VM to host your MySQL Service. E.G. MySQL by Bitnami and MySQL by Docker.
Currently building a hybrid app. using Ionic Framework with PHP for backend services
I am having a case where a user has got his profile in Web app and Mobile App as well.
If the user adds two stories as favourites (Its kind of a reading app) from his mobile app or Web app,how do I sync that?
Here are the scenarios:
1) User marks the stories favourites from web app and when I come online through mobile app, display it.
2) User marks the stories favourites from mobile app when he is offline(Now this will be stored in LocalDB). So again when he comes online sync with the server?
I know there are services like Firebase which provides syncing service.
But What If I would want to develop a Custom Syncing service on my own for my application? Is that an extremely complicated process?
If yes and it can be developed ,then how should I proceed ? A basic idea? What are the best practices that I should consider?
Any links would be appreciated?
I know some of the comments recommended CouchDB in combination with PouchDB. That is a much better solution than trying to implement your own synchronization service with MySQL.
However, since you're using Ionic Framework you can also use Couchbase. Take the following example application:
https://github.com/couchbaselabs/TodoLite-Ionic
If you chose this solution you would have three moving parts. You would be replacing MySQL with Couchbase Server and running the Couchbase Sync Gateway to orchestrate any data between the device and the server. You can still keep your PHP backend if you have a web version of your application as there is a PHP SDK for Couchbase.
Two write-ups on this can be found here:
http://blog.couchbase.com/using-couchbase-in-your-ionic-framework-application-part-1
http://blog.couchbase.com/using-couchbase-in-your-ionic-framework-application-part-2
In the long term, you're going to find NoSQL much more pleasant to work with when it comes to APIs and mobile than MySQL.
Can be useful to write a POST method on the backend that receives the data from your local from the app and some user data (session, access tokens and other thing you considered neceasary). On the body for the request you include the data needed to be synced. The backend takes the body. Parse it and rreturn a result (http code) Based on that you can decide if the app should delete the local data or only mark it as synced on the local database
I have a Windows Azure subscription.
My requirement is to run a PHP script on my server. This PHP script will create a JSON file.
This JSON file will be downloaded by my iOS app. (Some kind of authentication is an added bonus)
How would I go about doing this? Should I create a "Mobile Service" or should I create a "Website" or something else like "Cloud Services"?
As far as I have researched, I think the only way to do this would be the old school website way. Any input on this will be really helpful. Thanks.
Mobile services are great if you want to create a quick CRUD layer for an app with a backend cloud storage such as Azure SQL DB. It also provides support for scheduled tasks and push notification. But for what you're after (producing a JSON file), you may find it easier to go with Azure Web Sites or Azure Cloud Services (PaaS). Azure Web Sites has a model that you'll likely find easier and with the free/shared tiers, provides a lower cost point for many models. If you want something that gives you a bit more control, then Cloud Services might be a good alternative as well. But given the simple example you've provided, you should be able to accomplish this fairly quickly using Web Sites.
I have a PHP web application, I need to integrate SCORM with my application.I know that there is cloud option for integrating SCORM. But our requirement is that saving course details into our local DB.
Please help me.
You have a couple options for integrating SCORM content into standalone (web or otherwise) applications.
One is SCORMCloud (www.scorm.com), which gives you an integration API. They have PHP based plugins for both WordPress and Drupal, which you can use as a guide.
SCORMCloud has a couple of methods based whereby you can bring your learner data back into your database.
When a course launch is finished, SCORMCloud will redirect back to your website. At that point, you can hit the SCORMCloud API and fetch the results of your launch, and write that back to your database.
Our company (www.aura-software.com) produces an application integration framework for cloud based elearning sources (Vimeo, SCORMCloud, TinCan LRSs) called Bright CloudConnect. Depending on what your integration requirements were, it can perform the same functions and a few others. Enabling trackable elearning in existing applications is Bright's primary function.
Story is that I need to make my website act as Identity Provider (read: IDP). Website itself is on Zend platform. Idea is making a IDP controller by which Service Providers (read: SP) contacts IDP. As it must be part of the website, I would need to include some extension, which could be easily used for responding SAML requests from SP.
I have found list of PHP extensions from:
https://wiki.surfnetlabs.nl/display/OSP/RFC+-+OpenSAMLphp,+a+new+PHP+library+for+SAML+2.0+support
All of these extensions have little documentation or are too complex. For example I haven't found a way to use SimpleSamlPHP in my application and also extracting useful code out of it looks very time consuming (which I really don't have anymore). Also I find all of them hard to implement into website.
I have been googling and checking github for days now, trying to find easy way to use some library (right now I'm trying to implement Lasso, which seems reasonable, but unfortunately lacks good examples / information how to use it as IDP).
Any kind of criticism, ideas, help or tutorial/code examples would be useful.
I wrote a guide about how deploy on an open source software (Tiki-wiki) an IdP using simplesamlphp, and how to connect the IdP to google or salesforce. Take a look:
https://github.com/pitbulk/tiki-saml/blob/master/doc/tiki_wiki_as_idp.rst
SimpleSAMLphp seems intimidating at first but it can handle all the SAML responses for you.
Have you looked at creating custom authentication module - http://simplesamlphp.org/docs/stable/simplesamlphp-customauth
You can tie this module to your existing login mechanism pretty easily.
Check out PingFederate and the PHP Integration Kit from Ping Identity. Alternatively there is the Agentless Integration Kit (instead of PHP) which allows you to integrate using a RESTful API call to the PingFed server instead of embedding any PHP libraries.
HTH,
Ian