imstool 0.1

A python library for reading and writing content packages.

Introduction

imstool is a python library for reading and writing content packages from a number of open source/proprietary learning management systems, and formal packaging schemes and standards. It is meant to make importing content from other learning applications directly into your python programs possible.

History

Code for this library was originally developed for eduCommons (http://educommons.com) and consists of code written by enPraxis (http://enpraxis.net) as well as code written for the OpenCourseWare Consortium (MIT) and Utah State University under the Center for Sustainable Learning (COSL).

Using the Library

Reading a Package

To read content packages, subclass from the object manager as follows:

from imstool import BaseObjectManager

class MyObjectManager(BaseObjectManager):
    """ Read object metadata and file info and create new objects. """

Create a createObject() method in your object manager class that steps through the objects read by imstool and creates them as needed:

def createObject(self, objDict, zf):
    """ Step through object metadata and create objects. """

    for oid in objDict:
        data = objDict[oid]
        if 'package' == oid:
            pass # This is package metadata
        elif 'Document' == data['type']:
            # Object is a document
        elif 'File' == data['type']:
            # Object is a File
        elif 'Image' == data['type']:
            # Object is an Image
        elif 'Quiz' == data['type']:
            # Object is a quiz/test
        else:
            # Unknown type

To keep things tidy, you may want to break each type out into a separate function in the class:

def createDocument(self, metadata, filedata):
    """ Using metadata in data, create a document """
    ... do some stuff here

and call it from the createObject() method as follows:

elif 'Document' == data['type']:
    if data.has_key('file'):
        filedata = self.readFile(zf, data['file'])
    elif data.has_key('text'):
        filedata = data['text']
    else:
        filedata = ''
    self.createDocument(data, filedata)

Once you have your completed object manager class you can set it up as follows:

from imstool import importPackage
from imstool import readers

nom = MyObjectManager()
format = readers[0]
try:
    za = ZipFile(StringIO(package), 'r')
except BadZipfile, e:
    result = e
else:
    result = importPackage(za, format, nom)

The importPackage method will find the manifest file in the content package, parse out any metadata, and will pass the information on to the object manager class.

You can get format information from the readers object. readers is a list of tuples containing a friendly name and ID for the type of package that is being loaded and parsed. You must include this in the call to importPackage() so that the correct parser will be used.

Writing a Package

(to be written)

Extending imstool to Support Other Formats

(to be written)

Changelog

0.1

• Initial release