[Using Sakai] Assignment attachments

[Zhen Qian]

That is right. The attachment url will always have the site_id inside. 

However, if you look at the attachment folder in Resources tool, the
attachment resources are displayed under site names (site name when the
site folder was created). So if the site gets renamed afterwards, and you
are looking down the attachment folder for that new site name, you won't be
able to find it. All attachments created after site renaming still go into
the folder named after the old site name, because the site id is unchanged.


Just verified this on nightly. So I guess this might be a problem for
attachment look up after site renaming. 

Thanks, 

- Zhen 

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:20:01 -0400, John Leasia  wrote: I don't think it
is site name in an attachment's URL, I think it is site_id. The site_id
doesn't change on a rename of the site. For example, 

/attachment/SITE_ID/Assignments/ASSIGNMENT_ID/FILE_NAME

John

 Sean Keesler wrote:

I don't know if the site has been renamed. I haven't maintained
the
site and there isn't a history of previous site names for me to look
through.

It sounds as if you are saying that if the site was created and some
assignments turned in and THEN the site was renamed, that the
resources attachments folder would have the original site name...and
its pretty tough to figure out what that folder name used to be
(unless you actually made the change yourself).

It seems to me that if the purpose of the naming the resource
attachment folder with the name of the site is to make it easy to find
files, renaming the site would need to rename the resource attachment
folder too...

Sean Keesler
130 Academy Street
Manlius, New York 13104 USA
315-663-7756
sean.keesler at threecanoes.com [1]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Zhen Qian  [2] wrote:

Sean:

My comments below:

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:21:55 -0400, Sean Keesler
 [3] wrote:

I have a question about the workings of Resources and assignments.

I know of an implementation that for some reason seems to have
a lot
of "lost" assignment submissions. Reportedly, the students are getting
their receipts, but faculty are often not able to find the files. The
IT group has taken a shine to going into Admin Workspace and using the
Resources tool to drill down through the "attachments > {Class Name} >
Assignments > {Name of file} > {Name of file}" to seek out these
"missing assignments'.

Ignoring the fact that this shouldn't be necessary at all....

Assignments tool, along with many other tools (e.g. Announcement,
Syllabus), uses FilePicker and hence the addAttachmentResource() function
of ContentHostingService for uploading attachment resources.

You can check BaseContentService for the implementation of the above
function. Basically the routine will create the attachment folder and
insert attachment at proper place. Every attachment added will get a
unique
parent folder, with the url structure similar to the
following:

/attachment/9e8b3ef2-0e5c-4aa0-9289-dd18079b3b56/Syllabus/e94d2485-4089-4eb3-b3a3-71568b0c614c/

In order to make attachment file lookup more easier, human-readable folder
names have been assigned to the folders, so the above folder path will
look
like:

/attachment/SITE_NAME/Syllabus/ATTACHMENT_FILE_NAME/ATTACHMENT_FILE_NAME

This is just an interpretation of the attachment path. However, I don't
know why the last containing folder's display name should be as same as
the
actual file name. Or whether this extra folder is necessary at all as you
suggested above.

There is one class that doesn't seem to have a folder in the
"attachments" section of resources, even though students have turned
in assignments in that class with file attachments.

Is that pretty normal? How is that supposed to work?

Has the site ever been renamed in the past and student submitted
assignment
attachment when the site was still using the old name? According to the
addAttachmentResource, the "site
title" section for the attachment url was
created with site name at that time, see below:

 ....
 String siteCollection = ATTACHMENTS_COLLECTION + siteId +
Entity.SEPARATOR;
 try
 {
 checkCollection(siteCollection);
 }
 catch (Exception e)
 {
 // add this collection
 ContentCollectionEdit siteEdit = addCollection(siteCollection);
 try
 {
 String siteTitle = m_siteService.getSite(site).getTitle();

siteEdit.getPropertiesEdit().addProperty(ResourceProperties.PROP_DISPLAY_NAME,
siteTitle);
 }
 catch (Exception e1)
 {

siteEdit.getPropertiesEdit().addProperty(ResourceProperties.PROP_DISPLAY_NAME,
site);
 }
 commitCollection(siteEdit);
 }
...

Thanks,

- Zhen

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-- 

-------------------------------
Software
Developer
University of Michigan
734-647-6343
-------------------------------
 

Links:
------
[1] mailto:sean.keesler at threecanoes.com
[2] mailto:zqian at umich.edu
[3] mailto:sean.keesler at threecanoes.com
[4] mailto:sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
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