[Building Sakai] Sakai's External Integration

[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Raj,

Basic LTI doesn't work on the concept of specific URL's, it uses a key, which could be a uri like 'sakai.somewhere.edu.au' but could be anything, like 'steve'. What happens is your external application would form up a request with the data it needs, sign it, then send it. You get back a URL which you can use to render tools directly. This is the basic concept. Your external application is then a Basic LTI consumer, talking to the Sakai Basic LTI producer. 

However, it sounds like you might want to use the web services to request snippets of data from Sakai. What do you mean by 'add or remove URLs to/from a specific course. '
Do you want to add a Web Content tool to a site that has a URL attached? If so, you want the SakaiScript.addNewPageToSite and addNewToolToPage services-  and one to add the URL to the tool.

You also want to look at the SakaiLogin.login method to get a session for a user, and the SakaiScript.checkSession service to check it is still active.

cheers,
Steve


On 26/01/2011, at 10:49 AM, Raj Muthusamy wrote:

> Thanks Chuck and Steve.
>  
> I went through the notes you have pointed out. Good resources.
>  
> The Basic LTI option is the right option.  However, it may not fit well for my requirement. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Using Basic LTI, I can register a URL (e.g. www.mywebsite.com\content.htm) and let it pass specific parameters to this external website. In my requirement, I do not have a constant URL. It varies with different content ID (e.g. www.mywebsite.com?contentid=1) each time I post a URL. Please let me know if I can register a varying URL through  the Basic LTI tool provider. Also, I cannot pre-register these URLs. The URLs should be dynamically generated by the external web app and sent to the Sakai Courses by calling a Web Service method.
>  
> Later, when clicked, the URLs should pass user details to the external web app to make sure the request is coming from Sakai and the user is already logged into Sakai.
>  
> The external application that I’m working with is .NET based. If there are Web Services, I could call from the .NET application to add or remove the links to/from Sakai. I couldn’t find existing web services that add or remove URLs to/from a specific course. Are you suggesting I should write a new Web Service following these examples?
>  
> If Basic LTI provider can support this varying URL requirement, I would like to go with that. Otherwise, please help me finding or writing the right Web Services to achieve this functionality.
>  
> Thanks,
> Raj
>  
>  
> From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Steve Swinsburg
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 9:48 PM
> To: Sakai-Dev Developers
> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Sakai's External Integration
>  
> Hi Raj,
>  
> I echo Chuck's comments and would use Basic LTI for this. Whilst this can be done via web services, its no where near as elegant or portable. THat said however, if you only want a few pieces of information, the web service can give you what you are after.  
>  
> Read over the doc that Chuck sent about the Basic LTI provider in Sakai. 
>  
> For web services, you want to look at the webservices module in the Sakai source tree. Find a file called SakaiScript.jws and SakaiLogin.jws. They contain the methods you need to call.
>  
> Also, take a look here:
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/WEBSVCS/How+to+use+the+Sakai+Web+Services
>  
> The awesome portlet that Chuck mentions is here:
> https://wiki.jasig.org/display/PLT/Sakai+connector+portlet
>  
> This embeds entire tools from Sakai into an external system, in this case, uPortal.
>  
> cheers,
> Steve
>  
> On 25/01/2011, at 4:19 PM, csev wrote:
> 
> 
> Raj,
>  
> These services exist. Here is some sample code that might give you some patterns:
>  
> https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/portlets/trunk/sakai-dash/
>  
> https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/portlets/trunk/sakai-launch/
>  
> The code might be a little old.  Here is some more documentation you might find helpful:
>  
> https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/reference/trunk/docs/architecture/sakai_charon.doc
>  
> You might also be interested in using Basic LTI to do this with a simple shared secret instead of web services, making sessions, etc - it is more secure and performs better and has much cleaner security.
>  
> https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/basiclti/trunk/basiclti-docs/resources/docs/sakai_basiclti_provider.doc
>  
> And Steve Swinsberg is the master of using this - he has a uPortal portlet somewhere that does this retrieve/launch completely awesomely.   His stuff is much more modern than the portlets I wrote a whlie back.
>  
> Also Lance Speelmon has done a masterful job in using Basic LTI Provider in Sakai CLE to plug it into Sakai OAE.
>  
> Many choices :)
>  
> /Chuck
>  
> On Jan 24, 2011, at 6:20 PM, Raj Muthusamy wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Sakai Developers,
>  
> I’m new to Sakai and exploring various options. I have to integrate Sakai with an external web application. Here is what I’m trying to do.
> -          Call Sakai’s Web Services to pull list of available Courses and publish dynamic URLs (that will launch an external web app) into selected Courses.
> -          When the URL is clicked, pass user name (encrypted) to the external app through QueryString.
> -          Call another Web Services method on Sakai server to make sure the user’s session is still valid to achieve SSO integration.
>  
> Please let me know if there are Web Services already available to perform these tasks above. Any examples and/or documentation would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Thanks,
> Raj
>  
>  
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