Sakai XWiki Integration: A Technical Perspective

Adam Hocek, Marist CollegeUdaya Ghattamaneni, Marist College

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SETTING THE COURSEAnd now here’s a…

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Initial Steps

• Project initiated by rSmart• Input from Academic Technology @ Marist• Wiki Capabilities

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Goals and RequirementsDesired Features Description

WYSIWYG Editor Toggle between WYSIWYG and markup modes.Support FCKeditor, RTEditor, other

Permissions Users and Group managementSite and page level permission controlGranularity: e.g. comments

Tagging Structured and unstructured tagging

Namespaces Allow pages with same name

Better change tracking Versioning and rollback

Import and Export Content

Integration with other Sakai tools Resources, Gradebook, Assignments

External links External URLs with inline or reference file/ images

Improved Table/Grids/Graphics Tables: sortable, filtered columns, function support, dynamic ajax loading

Search Improved and integrated search across sakai & wiki

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Evaluation and Selection

• Improve rWiki• Identify a wiki (looked at over a dozen wiki products)

• Integration (loose versus tight)

• Source code development language

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Iterative Process• Resulted in selecting XWiki • Met key feature requirements• Good support• Java, with REST and RPC options

• Loose integration• Uses XWiki rendering engine within iFrame• Sakai driven users, groups and roles• Reasonable set of tool functionality needed• Customization

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REACHING OUTAnd now here’s a…

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Engaging others

• Sent & Reviewed Evaluation Document with rSmart

• Started a confluence page on Sakai• Notified Sakai List groups• Notified XWiki developers

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DEVELOPMENT PROCESSAnd now here’s a…

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A RESTful Approach

We choose REST:

• XWiki REST API provides access to all resources and to creating and managing users and permissions.

• Easy to develop and flexible

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Site-level Users, Roles, Permissions

• Tool allows explicit pushing of Sakai Users to XWiki

• Set permissions for Sakai Roles• Add new XWiki users• Add new Roles/Group

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Site Configuration Menu

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Page-level Permission

• Set page permissions (XWiki) for roles and groups (Sakai)

• Exposes XWiki’s more granular permissions

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Page Configuration Menu

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Wiki Pages

• Select and work with a Wiki page• Exposes as little or as much XWiki

functionality as desired• Uses stylesheets and velocity to skin pages• Can expose edit page, comments,

annotations, attachments, history and more

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Wiki Pages

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Manage Wiki Pages

• Add, Edit, or Delete pages• Uses FckEditor

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Manage Wiki Pages Menu

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REVISITING DEVELOPMENTAnd now here’s a…

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Too RESTful

Getting user permissions requires…

XWiki Tool

XWiki

getAllUsers

AllUsers

Iterate thru All Users getUserPermissions

UserPermissions

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Too RESTful

Similarly, for a given page’s objects …

XWiki Tool

XWiki

getPageObjects

PageObjects

Iterate thru Objects

getObjectAccessRights

ObjectAccessRights

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RPC

• Decided to use XWiki RPC• Improved performance• Two RPC clients (XWiki and Apache)• RPC support waning

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Testing

• Built and deployed with Sakai 2.7.1 and rSmart-CLE-2.7.1

• One server running Sakai, XWiki, MySQL• Academic Technology performed initial

tests (ongoing)

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MOVING ON…And now here’s a…

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Other Enhancements

• Sakai group aware• FckEditor v.s. XWiki Editor• Configuration properties

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Current State

Getting it out there:• Updates made to Confluence• Submit to Contrib• Inform community

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Next Steps

• Add support for Sections• Additional Testing• Consider Integration with other tools (e.g.

Assignments)• CkEditor• Integrated Search between Sakai & XWiki• Internationalization• SPI Layer

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Future Considerations

• Collaborative editing• Semantic search, tagging, views

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References

Adam Hocek : Adam.Hocek@marist.edu

Confluence: https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SAKDEV/XWiki+Integration

XWiki: http://xwiki.org