My First Building Block Presented By Tracy Engwirda 28 September, 2005.

My First Building Block

Presented By Tracy Engwirda28 September, 2005

Overview

• Background• Planning

– UI Integration– Which APIs

• Package Structure• Manifest Structure• Security Framework• UI Taglibs• Building Blocks Manager• .. and more

Terminology

• Building Blocks Program– All development and integration with Blackboard products

• Building Blocks Framework– The set of patterns and objects that allow interaction with all of

Blackboard’s products

• Building Blocks API– The Java and .NET interfaces

• Building Blocks Manager– The management interface for Building Blocks

• Building Block– An application that relies on the Building Blocks API

• Blackboard Enabled– A quality assurance and testing program for Building Blocks

Terminology

• Building Block Types – Plug-in

• Stand alone• Communicate only with Learning System

– Bridge• Communicates with external server(s) and

Learning System• Will not function without external server

Planning

• What are you project goals?

• What are the application requirements?

• How are you going to build your application?– JSP? Servlet? Web Service?

• Where are you going to “hook” your application?

• Which APIs are you going to use?

Planning

• Where are you going to hook your application into Blackboard?

UI Entry Points

• New Course Tool

• New Course Communication Tool

• New Control Panel Tool

• New System Admin Tool

• New Portal Module

• New Content Type

• New User Tool

Entry Points

• Programmatic Entry Points– Specified in bb-manifest.xml

• Manual Entry Points– System Administrator created

Course Tool

<link>

<type value="tool"/>

<name value="Sample Tool"/>

<url value="tool_1/tool.jsp" />

<description value="The description of Sample Tool." />

<icons>

<listitem value="/images/icon.gif"/>

</icons>

</link>

Course ID is passed to page

Course Communication Tool

<link>

<type value="communication"/>

<name value="Sample Communication Tool"/>

<url value="communication_1/tool.jsp" />

<description value="The description of Sample Communication Tool." />

<icons>

<listitem value="images/icon.gif"/>

</icons>

</link>


Course Control Panel

<link>

<type value="course_tool"/>

<name value="Sample Control Panel Tool"/>

<url value="control_panel_1/tool.jsp" />

<description value="The description of Control Panel Tool." />

<icons>


</icons>

</link>


System Admin Panel

<link>

<type value="system_tool"/>

<name value="Sample Admin Panel Tool"/>

<url value="admin_panel_1/tool.jsp" />

<description value="The description of Control Panel Tool." />

<icons>


</icons>

</link>

Nothing passed to page

Content Type

<content-handler>

<name value="Sample Content"/>

<handle value= "resource/x-bbgs-sample"/>

<http-actions>

<create value="handler/create.jsp"/>

<modify value="handler/modify.jsp"/>

<remove value="handler/remove.jsp"/>

</http-actions>

<icons>

<toolbar value="/images/add_ch1.gif"/>

<listitem value="/images/icon.gif"/>

</icons>

</content-handler>

Course ID and Container ID are passed to page

Portal Module

<module-defs>

<module-type ext-ref="smpl-module" title="Sample Module Type" uicreatable="true">

<jsp-dir>module</jsp-dir>

<jsp>

<view>view.jsp</view>

<admin>admin.jsp</admin>

</jsp>

</module-type>

</module-defs>

Nothing is passed to page

User Tool

<link>

<type value="user_tool"/>

<name value="Sample User Tool"/>

<url value="user_tool_1/tool.jsp" />

<description value="The description of User Tool." />

<icons>


</icons>

</link>

Nothing passed to page

Custom Tab

• System admin can change the location of a tab to point to a Building Block

Custom Course Link

• System admin or course instructor change add a Building Block to the course navigation area

Hidden Link

• A page does not need to be in the manifest in order to be loaded.

Planning

• Which APIs are you going to use?

API Capabilities

• Building Blocks APIs– Announcement (read and write)– Calendar (read and write)– Content (read and write)– Gradebook (read and write)– Session (read and write)– File system (read and write)– *User (read)– *Course (read)– *Membership (read)– .. And Many, many more!

API Capabilities

• How to write to User/Course/Membership? Event APIs

• Event APIs use a similar data model to the Building Block APIs but has a different security model. Data object naming conventions match IMS structure of snapshot data.

API Capabilities

• Event APIs– Person (User)– Group (Course / Organization) – Membership– Catalog Category– Catalog Link– Data Source Key

Planning

• Installation

Installation

• Only system administrators can install

• No restart required with Bb 6

• Must confirm Building Block permissions

• Often requires configuration

• Installation is through the Building Blocks Manager

• Heart of the Blackboard Platform

• Controls security, permissions, and availability

• Manages the “hook points” within the UI

• Handles deployment

Building Block Manager

Blackboard Platform(LS/TS/CP)

DB

File System

Content

Gra

debook

An

no

un

cem

en

ts

Use

r

Course

Mem

bership

Calenda

r

Persistence

Plugin

Security

Session

TagLib (UI)

Building Blocks ManagerAPI Wrappers & Convenience Methods

Data Integrity Enforcement

User Interface H

ooks / Availability

Context P

assing

Security &

Manifest C

ontrols

Deploym

ent & T

racking


Structure of Building Blocks

Building Block = Webapp

• A Building Block is a Java Web Application (webapp) with one extra file

• The extra file is bb-manifest.xml

Directory Layout

Shared via web

Hidden from web

Package Format

• A webapp is a zip file with a specific directory structure

• WinZip, PkZip, Java’s Jar utility, or Ant will all create the correct package

• Even though it is a zip file, the extension does not matter (.zip, .war, .bb will all work)

WEB-INF

• Hidden from web

• Contents– web.xml– bb-manifest.xml– Config directory– Classes directory– Lib directory

Config Directory

• Hidden from web

• Only accessible by the Building Block

• Can contain anything– One option for storing your application data.

• No size limit

Custom Code and Libraries

• Classes– Stored in WEB-INF\classes

• Jars– Stored in WEB-INF\lib– Automatically on classpath via custom

classloader

Manifest Structure

• bb-manifest.xml– Set of directives the developer provides

• Building Blocks Configuration• Application Definitions

– Content Handlers– UI Links– Portal Modules

• Security Declarations

• Let’s Take a Look…

bb-manifest.xml File<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><manifest> <plugin> <name value= "Blackboard Link Checker"/> <handle value= "link-checker"/> <description value= "This plugin is for checking and disabling external links in Blackboard."/> <version value= "2.0.4"/> <requires> <bbversion value="6.0.0"/> </requires> <vendor> <id value="bb"/> <name value="Blackboard Research and Development"/> <url value="http://www.blackboard.com/" /> <description value="Blackboard Research and Development Team" /> </vendor> <http-actions> <config value="admin/config.jsp"/> <remove value="admin/remove.jsp"/> </http-actions> <application-defs> <application handle="linkchecker" type="course" use-ssl="false" name="Link Checker" can-allow-guest="true" small-icon="" large-icon="">

bb-manifest.xml File <application-defs> <application handle="linkchecker" type="course" use-ssl="false" name="Link Checker“> <description lang="en_US">Link Checker tool installed with the Link Checker Plugin</description> <links> <link> <type value="course_tool"/> <name value="Link Checker"/> <url value="links/checklinks.jsp" /> <description value="Checks and disables links in Blackboard." /> <icons> <listitem value="images/link-logo.gif"/> </icons> </link> </links> </application> </application-defs> <permissions> <permission type="persist" name="Content" actions="modify"/> <permission type="attribute" name="user.authinfo" actions="get"/> <permission type="socket" name="*" actions="connect"/> </permissions> </plugin></manifest>

Security Framework

• Security must be explicitly declared in the bb-manifest.xml file.

• XML Format corresponds closely with the format for Standard Java policy files

• Security will be enforced by the JVM

UI Taglibs

• XML style tags that can be placed on a jsp page.

• Blackboard supplies two sets of taglibs– bbUI for making pages fit in with the

product– bbData for giving pages context and virtual

installation information

• Specify your own in web.xml

More information• Building Blocks Website

http://www.blackboard.com/developers/

– Building Blocks Catalog– Software Development Kit (SDK)

• Blackboard Developer Network (BbDN)http://behind.blackboard.com/

– Learning System Developer License– Communities, Knowledge Base, Code Snippets, White

Papers, Beta Software

• Other Community Resources– Open Source User Group and BBUG forums http://www.bb-

opensource.org/

Why Start from Scratch?

• Start with a sample Building Block

• Reuse existing code

• Customize to meet your needs

Let’s take a look at some real code…

Enough of the theory!

Questions?

My First Building Block Presented By Tracy Engwirda 28 September, 2005.

Documents

Transcript of My First Building Block Presented By Tracy Engwirda 28 September, 2005.