We have added a new feature! The iLite Mobile Moodle now shows all the attempts made in a quiz and scows all the scores for all the attempts in a specific quiz.

As you can see in this image, this shows you all the courses that iLite Mobile Moodle has.

Select the course “French in Moodle”.

As depicted in this image, all the quizzes for “French in Moodle” are displayed.

Select the quiz “Basics”.

As you can see by the above image, there were two attempts on the quiz “Basics” with the date and the score.

- Kirsten

We have added to additional features to Mobile, they are My Profile and My Grades.

My Profile

Shows a list of your details, your name, User ID, email, city, country and when you first and last accessed the site.

My Grades

This shows a list of all the courses that you are registered for. When you select a course, it shows the quiz and the grade obtained for that quiz.

http://www.ilite.co.za/mlearn/ (mary, password)

Mobile is only available to clients who host with iLite. For more information please contact me and I will gladly assist.

- Kirsten

Visit iLite to download the 7 day trial version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard.

There are some funky new additions to the Dashboard which include the multi-lingual support, improved User search functionality and the Course Relationship Map.

The Course Relationship Map is something completely unique to the Dashboard. As you can see in the image below, we can see that the Course – iLite Dashboard, has 8 Users. We can also see that 5 of the 8 Users have a small (+) sign below them. This indicates that they are enrolled in other Courses. By clicking on the (+) sign, we expand a 3rd level, which shows the Courses that this User has enrolled for. Hover over the icon to view the Course name.

You may be wondering what is the purpose of the Relationship map, well it is to help you see what Courses the Users are doing at a glance. If a Course has prerequisites, you can view if they have been met simply by calling up the Relationship map.

- Kirsten

It is exciting times here at iLite. We have just finish developing the interface for the iPhone. What happens here is that this interface extracts your data from Moodle and allows you to view it on your iPhone.

Visit http://www.ilite.co.za/i/ to have a look at this component. Please play around and send any feedback or comments that you may have to me at kirsten@ilite.co.za

Username:  ian

Password:  password

- Kirsten

We have just recently identified the need to create a number of courses that have other courses as prerequisites.

So for example you need to do Courses A, B and C, but you must do them in that order. If a User tries to do Course B before having done Course A, the User is notified that Course A is a prerequisite, and is then given a link to go and do Course A.

I checked Moodle, but did not find such a solution. If anyone knows of such a solution, please let me know.

I have a possible solution, and will be posting the code here in a few days time.

Sean

Moodle Mobile

A while ago we were working on a mobile solution for Moodle. One of the problems we faced was getting the images to load. Well, that problem has been solved, and we also managed to add a Flash lite quiz to one of our course (Whales). So if you are keen to see what we have been up to take a look at http://www.ilite.co.za/mlearn/ (mary, password)

Basically it works as follows. In Moodle we created a category called Mobile. Any course in this category will be available when you log into the mobile site. We did not do anything to Moodle, but instead opted to write a little PHP to format the content for a small screen. We used a small work-around for the images and Flash file. Getting the results from Flash written back to Moodle is on our wish list. It’s easy enough to do, but getting our developer to sit down and do it is the problem. Maybe more stick and less carrot is what is needed.

Mobile Login screen	Menu
Whales - Overview screen	Whales - content

Where are looking for a few beta testers for our Moodle dashboard application. If there are any of you out there running Moodle 1.9 and would like to deploy and test the dashboard, drop us a mail.

UserID to view the demo dashboard:

Username: mary
Password: password

Requirements:

1. Basic knowledge of PHP. You will have to update the config file, and copy some folders to the root of your server. The Dashboard uses the PHP files to access the Moodle DB and return data. This is only a READ, and nothing will be touched, modified or changed in your DB.
2. A userID

What to do:

1. Copy the PHP folder to your server
2. Copy the Flash folder to your server
3. Create an ID at iLite (or we can send you one)
4. Update the config.php file with your Moodle details

How the Dashboard works.
The Dashboard uses the PHP files on your server to retrieve the data from your Moodle database. AMFPHP is used, which gives us a little more performance. Use the icons at the top to navigate between the different screens.

If you would like more information, or have some ideas about how we can improve it, please drop me a mail at kirsten@ilite.co.za

If your idea is good enought, we’ll use it and give you a copy of the Dashboard free.

All that we would like from you is a little feedback on how the Dashboard is preforming. Things you do like and things you don’t like. Information like the OS you are using, the number of users and courses you have and whether you are using SCORM Activities.

Kirsten

After a long process of development we are finally at a point where we can showcase a demo!

Log into http://www.ilite.co.za/eDash/#

User name:   james

Password: password

Remember guys, feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

- Kirsten

I am working on a Flex application that needs to call a Stored Procedure using PHP. This proved to be a real challenge, and since I could not find a lot of information on how it was done, I thought that I would post it here. It might not be the best way of doing it, but it works for me.
The code is at the bottom so you can scroll down and skip the next bit out, I would.

For those of you that are still reading… wow! The library application required you to login into it using your domain username. This was passed to the application in the URL (http:\\mylibrary\index.php#username=MyGroup\Sean). When the application loads, it takes the username, passes it to a PHP page on the server that calls the MSSQL Stored Procedure and returns the users details.

The first step for me was to install the correct DLL’s and switch on the MSSQL extension. This proved to be quiet easy on WAMP, but a real pain on XAMPP. For some reason I could not get the extensions to register. My testing server runs WAMP, and the production server runs XAMPP. It was really annoying when it worked on WAMP but not XAMPP. Anyway, the problem was the DLL’s, so if you get a white screen, look there first.

Once that was working, I tested the PHP code, making sure that it returned values correctly. The PHP code is for AMFPHP.  It took a fair bit of testing to get it to work. In hind-site it might have been easier to do it in plain old vanilla PHP, but since the rest of the site is AMFPHP, I stuck to that route.

Part of the problem was the slash (\) in the username, and knowing how to escape it properly.

Once I got the data back from PHP, I moved on to the Flex side. Here the hardest part for me was how to read the URL and how to get the username from it. The code comes straight out of the help file, so for once Copy/Paste was an option.

I know it is not much, but I hope it helps.

Sean

Solution:

Make a few changes to your php.ini file.
allow_call_time_pass_reference = on
extension=php_mssql.dll (enable this extension)
extension=ntwdblib.dll

Place the php_mssql.dll file in the php extensions folder. Mine I placed in the php\ext folder.
Place the ntwdblib.dll file in the Windows\System32 folder

PHP Code to call the Stored Procedure – using AMFPHP:
//login.php
methodTable = array(
“byName” => array(
“description” => “User details by NAME”,
“access” => “remote”,
)
);
}

function byName ($username) {

$myServer = “myserver”;
$myUser = “myUser”;
$myPass = “myPassword”;
$myDB = “myDatabase”;

$s = @mssql_connect($myServer, $myUser, $myPass)
or die(“Couldn’t connect to SQL Server on $myServer”);

$d = @mssql_select_db($myDB, $s)
or die(“Couldn’t open database $myDB”);

//$username = $_GET['username'];

$partA = substr($username, 0,6);
$partB = substr($username, 6);
$username = $partA.”\\”.$partB;

$query = mssql_init(“GetEmployeeDetailsFromUsername”, $s);

mssql_bind($query , “@Username”, $username, SQLVARCHAR, FALSE, FALSE, 57);
mssql_bind($query, “@EmployeeNo”, &$Userno, SQLINT4, TRUE, FALSE);
mssql_bind($query, “@FirstName”, &$First, SQLVARCHAR, TRUE, FALSE, 50);
mssql_bind($query, “@LastName”, &$Last, SQLVARCHAR, TRUE, FALSE, 50);
mssql_bind($query, “@Email”, &$Email, SQLVARCHAR, TRUE, FALSE, 100);

mssql_bind($query, “RETVAL”, &$SQL_Count, SQLINT2);
$result = mssql_execute($query, FALSE);

echo $return = “”.$Userno.”".$First.”".$Last.”".$Email.”\n\r”;

return ($return);

}
}
?>

The code for the Flex file: (I have trimmed the code to only show the bit for the Stored Procedure)

<![CDATA[

import com.LoginUsername;

import mx.managers.BrowserManager;
import mx.managers.IBrowserManager;
import mx.utils.URLUtil;

private var bm:IBrowserManager;

[Bindable]
public var username:String;

private function init(e:Event):void
{
//Get Users
bm = BrowserManager.getInstance();
bm.init(“”, “Library”);

var o:Object = URLUtil.stringToObject(bm.fragment, “#”);
username = o.username;

fullname.text = username;

dispatchEvent(new LoginUsername(username));

}

[Event(name="LoginUsername", name="flash.events.Event")]

//Login.mxml

[Event(name="LoginDetails", name="flash.events.Event")]

//LoginUsername.as
package com
{
import flash.events.Event;

public class LoginUsername extends Event
{
public var uname:String;

public static const LOGINUSERNAME:String = “LoginUsername”;

public function LoginUsername(username:String)
{
super(LOGINUSERNAME, true, true);
uname = username;
}

override public function clone():Event
{
return new LoginUsername(uname);
}

}
}

Time fly’s…Can you believe that we are heading into the middle on the first month of 2009. I thought to myself that I have all the time in the world to get down and write a paragraph or two about what is happening, and then I look again and the month is almost finished. I wonder to myself, how did that happen and where did all the time go too.

We ended 2008 off with a bang and are very happy with the results that iLite has achieved during the year. Now our focus shifts towards the new year and how we can make more of an impact and push ourselves further. We have a couple of projects that need to be completed within the first three months of this year. One of them being a new version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard.

We have been playing with various options for the iLite Moodle Dashboard for a while now, and seeing which way we would like to take the application. We know that our existing clients are due for an upgrade, and are eagerly awaiting the new version. So we have a deadline, and hopefully the project plan runs smoothly and we are ready to roll version 2 out the door.

Wazzok is another project that needs to come to an end now. Sean has been building this site since the end of December and it has taken a lot of energy, endurance and perserverance on his part to roll this one out. We are hoping to have this one done by the end of January at the latest and hopefully pursuing more avenues that this project will deliver.

For me, the beginning of a new year entails the start of a busy season. Yes its tax time again, and I will need to get everything sorted out so that we can start off the new financial year on a positive note.

What makes this time of year even more interesting, is that we only have about 70 days until the start of the formula one season and a very important decision needs to be made regarding our progress forward with our signature Mobile Application. We will be putting together a mobile version of the F1 application, but this year we are taking a different approach.  We are going to let loose an application that is not a Flash Application, but rather a PHP based application/website that can be used by all Mobile users and not just the Symbian devices that we usually develop for.

This is an interesting time at iLite and I will be posting blogs on upcoming events as the transpire. So stay tuned and you will be amazed at all that we accomplish in 2009. I hope that you are as excited about the prospects that this year will bring as we at iLite are.

-Kirsten