[Using Sakai] Portable links to tools

[Andrew Petro]

> What's the best way to obtain the URLs for [tools in the context of a particular worksite]? Can one simply open the tool in a browser and copy the path from the browser's address field?

Yes.  The URL displayed when you click a page in the (typically left-hand) page listing in the context of a particular worksite will include the identifier both for that worksite and for the page within the worksite.

For example,

http://testdrivesakai.com/portal/site/611f18b2-53ce-442a-0019-4c17fe360888/page/e54d84e6-e89e-412c-00c7-bd1931ef48a3

This hyperlink identifies the page with unique identifier e54d8... within the worksite with unique identifier 611f18...

> 2. These links have to be portable. In other words, when copying the web page from the prototype site (a project worksite) to the production site (a course worksite), the links have to point to the respective tools in the course worksite rather than to the tools in the original, project worksite used to design the course. Does Sakai have something like relative addresses for this purpose? Is there a better way to address this problem? 

As I understand it:

While this is an understandable requirement, it is not technically feasible to have such URLs in Sakai without customizations to the Sakai software to be more featureful in these respects.

Sakai does not have something like relative addresses for this purpose.  For instance, one tool cannot present a link <a href="../gradebook"/> to link to the gradebook in the context of the selected worksite.  

Such a scheme of more friendly and portable URLs would have some advantages in the ability to portably link from one tool to another.

It's feasible to implement this with custom development.  For instance, a sufficiently clever filter for re-writing URLs could remember the most recently requested site identifier, intercept requests for "http://<sakaisite>/portal/tool-in-current-site-context/gradebook", look up the page identifier for the gradebook tool in the context of the most recently requested site, and generate the necessary URL.  No doubt tweaking would be required to get this to perform and to deal with edge cases, but it conceptually seems feasible to develop...

Best wishes,

Andrew

Andrew Petro
Software Developer
Unicon, Inc.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Marshall Feldman" <marsh at uri.edu>
To: sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2009 6:28:41 AM GMT -07:00 U.S. Mountain Time (Arizona)
Subject: [Using Sakai] Portable links to tools


Hello, 

In a prototype website for a course I'm teaching this fall, I have designed a web page to act as a home page and portal. The page resides in "Resources/Web" and has links to other web pages that reside in this directory and its subdirectories. Since I use relative paths, this presents no problem. 

However, the page also needs to have links to various Sakai tools, such as the course calendar and discussion board. As such, I have two questions: 


    1. What's the best way to obtain the URL's for such tools? Can one simply open the tool in a browser and copy the path from the browser's address field? Or, is there a better method? 
    2. These links have to be portable. In other words, when copying the web page from the prototype site (a project worksite) to the production site (a course worksite), the links have to point to the respective tools in the course worksite rather than to the tools in the original, project worksite used to design the course. Does Sakai have something like relative addresses for this purpose? Is there a better way to address this problem? 

Thanks very much. 

-- 

Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD 
Director of Research and Academic Affairs 


Center for Urban Studies and Research 
The University of Rhode Island 
email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces) Contact Information: 

Kingston: 

202 Hart House 
Charles T. Schmidt Labor Research Center 
The University of Rhode Island 
36 Upper College Road 
Kingston, RI 02881-0815 
tel. (401) 874-5953: 
fax: (401) 874-5511 

Providence: 

206E Shepard Building 
URI Feinstein Providence Campus 
80 Washington Street 
Providence, RI 02903-1819 
tel. (401) 277-5218 
fax: (401) 277-5464 

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