Paging is a bit tricky with the Blackboard API, and has caused a few bugs in some of our code.  I'd like to take some time to explain why it's tricky, and to provide a way to avoid the same things I ran into.  Possibly an important note - we are still on 3400.  I'm not sure how much has changed since that version.

Background

Paging is a good thing - it helps the endpoint return a portion of the content, and then provides a place to go and get other content.  The problem is usually around knowing if paging will show up, and pulling data quickly.  Here are a few specific problems

Paging Limits

How many things should you return before you start paging? As it turns out... this question is answered differently from different endpoints:

• Get Users : 100
• Get Courses : 100
• Get CourseMemberships : 200
• Get Groups : 20
• Get Group Memberships : 20
• Get Content Children : 200

So, what if you just want to get more? Most times, you can't.

• Get Users : Paging limit cannot exceed 100.
• Get Courses : Paging limit cannot exceed 100.
• Get CourseMemberships: Paging limit cannot exceed 200.
• Get Groups: Paging limit seems unbound (tried 1000)
• Get Group Memberships : Paging limit seems unbound (tried 1000) 
• Get Content Children: Paging  limit cannot exceed 200. 

Slowness

So, when fetching large amounts of courses, users, or memberships - you can't just bump up the limit. You have to get results, check for the next page, and go grab that.  This can take a long time.  One way to speed that up, is to make the calls asynchronously.  That means - instead of waiting for each call to return, you send calls at the same time and then wait for them all to return and combine them back together.   This is typically harder to code around, but the time savings are fairly drastic.   

To pull 1000 users (or 10 calls based on paging) takes Synchronous 9 seconds, and Asynchronous 2 seconds.  (4.5x)

To pull 2000 users (or 20 calls) takes Synchronous 25 seconds, and Asynchronous 7 seconds.  (3.6x)

To pull 14000 courses takes Synchronous 4 minutes 13 seconds , and Asynchronous 20 seconds.  (12.6x)

Mileage can vary - but usually if you can do it async - you should.  Writing asynchronous scripts can be challenging, and it relies on being able to 'guess' on what comes next.  

Making paging easier

I wanted to make paging easier for those choosing to script in Python.  I've been working through how to do this, both technically, and from a usage standpoint, and came up with the following:

• A single argument : limit : that lets you say exactly how many you want. 
• A sensical default of 100 (to deal with users and courses, in particular).
• An option to get these asynchronously or synchronously.  
• Returned Response containing json with results key, and a paging key IF there are more to get.

Here's what this looks like in code: 

bb = BbRest(url, key, secret)

r = bb.GetUsers(limit = 500) #will get 500 users, with the next page included in response

r = bb.GetCourses(params={'courseId':'MATH'}, limit = 1000) #will return 1000 courses with Math in courseId.

r = bb.GetCourseMemberships(courseId='MATH-20', limit=800) #will return 800 memberships in this course.

r = bb.GetGroupMemberships(courseId='MATH-20', groupId='testGroup', limit=200) #will return 200 memberships in this group.

If there are ever more results than the limit, then the url for the next set of results will be included in the response. All of the above are synchronous.  Here's where things get a little crazy: to make them Asynchronous - you just add sync=False, and then await the response. 

r = await bb.GetUsers(limit = 500, sync=False)

r = await bb.GetCourses(params={'courseId':'MATH'}, limit = 1000, sync=False) 

r = await bb.GetCourseMemberships(courseId='MATH-20', limit=800, sync=False) 

r = await bb.GetGroupMemberships(courseId='MATH-20', groupId='testGroup', limit=200)

The json returned is the exact same.  You may be asking "Why would I ever want to do synchronous then?". For now - there's no good reason.  If Bb ever goes to cursor based paging, then Synchronous may be the only way to page.  Hopefully - that change will come with more flexibility on the limits. 

Drawbacks

All calls like this (ending in s or Children, specifically) have a default limit of 100.  That means the following will only return 100 results, even though the endpoint returns 200 by default.

r = bb.GetContentChildren(courseId='MATH-20',contentId='_62839_1')

Also - this does not reduce the number of API calls.  To get 10000 users, you need to do 100 calls. There's no way around that currently.  This library, and this solution just make the logic of it easier.  

One final drawback : I am flawed.  There's probably something broken.  I've tested, and I will give a special shout out to Brett Stephens, who broke a lot of things and told me about them before you had to see it.  Try it out, let me know, and I'll try to fix it. 

Hope this helps make paging just a little easier for everyone.

-Matt

As a reminder, effective June 30, 2019, Blackboard will transition Blackboard Open Content to maintenance support mode. Effective December 31, 2019 Blackboard will end the availability of Blackboard Open Content for all Blackboard clients.

As noted in the previous support bulletin, most of the content creation functionality included in Open Content can be achieved using the native functionality of the LMS. For the content sharing and updating functionality currently not available in the LMS, Blackboard is researching potential options to partner with third party vendors to address the functionality gaps. 

We would like your feedback in determining the features that are most important to our users. Please complete this survey to rank the functionalities you believe are most important.

Thank you for your feedback!

If there are any additional questions please reach out to Brad Koch and Jeannine Richardson.

Hey All! The Bb developers and admins community is awesome. Sometimes, though, we need quick answers or interactive discussion with our peers - like in the middle of an upgrade gone wrong.

We can build on the power of the community by having a Slack workspace for Blackboard. Your friendly developer experience team at Blackboard is building a Slack workspace for just that purpose. If you can't install Slack on your work computer, you will still be able to use the mobile app. Slack features great controls for quiet hours and snoozing notifications, getting notified for specific keywords, and topic-specific channels. Hit the link below to join up. When you do, go to the #introductions channel and say hi.

Join Bb Techies

Drop in when you get a chance.

Overview:

I wrote a python library that makes consuming Blackboard REST really easy. It's very alpha, but I'm going to work on creating a three part series for the community and this is part 0.  Here's the easiest way to get started, though this does assume you have Python installed already.  Feel free to use virtual environments, I'm skipping them in this post.

pip install bbrest
pip install jupyterlab 
jupyter lab

bbrest is my library.

jupyterlab is an interactive REPL library that is mainly used for data science, but works well for our purposes.

Running 'jupyter lab' launches an interactive command line at http://localhost:8888/lab

Click the Python 3 icon to launch a Jupyter Notebook and then run the following commands:

from bbrest.bbrest import BbRest
url, key, secret = "your_url", "your_key", "your_secret"
bb = BbRest(url=url, key=key, secret=secret)

You now have a bb connection, which will do the following for you:

1. Get your version of Bb and only expose the REST calls you have access to.

2. Keep your session alive, automatically renewing if it expires.

3. Make some APIs way easier to use.

Here are some quick examples, for more, visit GitHub - mdeakyne/BbRest: Blackboard REST APIs... for humans?

#Session management
bb.expiration() #will print a human readable expiration time.
bb.calls_remaining() #will print your total calls, and call limit.

#Help with APIS
bb.User<tab> #will list calls with user
bb.GetUser(<tab>) #will list required parameters (userId=)
help(bb.GetUser) #will list documentation from Blackboard Explore APIs

#Convenience
bb.GetUser(userId='test_user') #will default to userName for users
bb.GetCourse(courseId='ENG-202') #will default to courseId for courses

bb.GetUser(userId='externalId:202020') #Can still use other specifications with : 

Currently, documentation is a little sparse, but you can get up and running in Python with 3 lines of code!

Here's a quick preview of the upcoming 3 part series:

1. REST Scripting in Python with Jupyter Lab. (Full REST setup guide)

2. REST App in Python in Flask.

3. LTI in your Flask, restricting access.

Hopefully, this library helps you out.  I'm happy to take feedback.

-Matt

Hello and Welcome!

It's been awhile since I did a post, and I just got back recently from DevCon18. I was asked by several peers about if I have ever tried to do an Item Analysis over multiple courses. As a matter of fact, I have! A few years ago I was tasked to see if we can do an IAQ on an English Skills test. My first response was to have the instructors just run the builtin IAQ from with in the course. The response from that was that they wanted it from all English courses from lower level and higher level course (ENC1101 - ENC1102). The test they were using was exactly the same in every course: Name of the test, questions, answers. An exact copy. This was a really good start as I got a chance to manually review the test to know: How many questions? How many answers for each question? What types of questions there are? etc...

Once I have mapped that out I got a really good understanding of what to do when trying to collect this data. At first, the request was to know the grades of each student for this report. Ok, done. I mapped out the db tables pulled in the grades. Then, the request got bigger. They wanted to know what the student chose! Well that is a completely different approach. the original thought was that I assumed that they would look at the final scores and calculate that based of the points of each question to get a idea of the test overall and then review it further. Nope!

So now here comes the SQL Query and hopefully I will be able to break down the key parts:

SELECT 
     CM.COURSE_ID,
     CASE
          WHEN INSTR(CM.COURSE_NAME, 'INTERNET') > 0 THEN 'Internet'
          ELSE 'Face To Face'
     END COURSE_TYPE,
     T.SOURCEDID_ID AS TERM_CODE,
     T.NAME AS SEMESTER,
     U.BATCH_UID AS STUDENT_ID,
     REGEXP_REPLACE(
          REGEXP_SUBSTR(U.STUDENT_ID, '^\([[:alnum:]]+\)')
          ,'\(|\)'
          ,''
     ) COHORT,
     U.LASTNAME,
     U.FIRSTNAME,
     GM.TITLE ASSESSMENT,
     QRD.POSITION QUESTION_POSITION,
     TRIM(QAD.TITLE) QUESTION_TITLE,
          QAD.CHOICE_0,
          QAD.CHOICE_1,
          QAD.CHOICE_2,
          QAD.CHOICE_3,
     CASE QRD.STUDENT_RESPONSE
          WHEN '0' THEN QAD.CHOICE_0
          WHEN '1' THEN QAD.CHOICE_1
          WHEN '2' THEN QAD.CHOICE_2
          WHEN '3' THEN QAD.CHOICE_3
          ELSE QRD.STUDENT_RESPONSE
     END STUDENT_RESPONSE,
     QRD.CORRECT,
     A.SCORE,
     GM.POSSIBLE POINTS_POSSIBLE,
     GM.TOOL_COMPUTED_POINTS MANUAL_GRADE_OVERRIDE,
     CASE A.STATUS
          WHEN 3 THEN 'IN_PROGRESS' 
          WHEN 4 THEN 'SUSPENDED' 
          WHEN 6 THEN 'NEEDS_GRADING'
          WHEN 7 THEN 'COMPLETED' 
          WHEN 8 THEN 'IN_MORE_PROGRESS'
          WHEN 9 THEN 'NEEDS_MORE_GRADING'
     END STATUS
FROM 
     BBLEARN.COURSE_MAIN CM,
     BBLEARN.GRADEBOOK_MAIN GM,
     BBLEARN.GRADEBOOK_GRADE GG,
     BBLEARN.COURSE_USERS CU,
     BBLEARN.USERS U,
     BBLEARN.ATTEMPT A,
     (WITH xmlResultData
          AS (SELECT 
               PARENT_PK1,
               QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1,
               PK1,
               POSITION,
               BBMD_GRADE CORRECT,
               XMLTYPE(DATA, nls_charset_id('AL32UTF8')) data
               FROM BBLEARN.QTI_RESULT_DATA)
     SELECT
          x.PARENT_PK1,
          x.QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1,
          x.PK1,
          x.POSITION,
          x.CORRECT,
          REGEXP_REPLACE(
             NVL(x.data.EXTRACT('/item_result/response/response_value/text()').getStringVal(),
             x.data.EXTRACT('/item_result/response/response_value/formatted_text/text()').getStringVal())
             ,'<|p>|/', '') STUDENT_RESPONSE
     FROM xmlResultData x) QRD,
     (WITH xmlData
      AS (SELECT
               qad.PK1,
               qad.PARENT_PK1,
               qad.DESCRIPTION,
               qad.POSITION,
               XMLTYPE(qad.DATA, nls_charset_id('AL32UTF8')) data
           FROM BBLEARN.QTI_ASI_DATA qad)
     SELECT
          x.PK1,
          x.PARENT_PK1,
          x.POSITION,
          x.DESCRIPTION TITLE,
          TRIM(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                  REGEXP_REPLACE(
                      x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[1]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal(),
                      '"|'|<|p>|/',
                      ''
                  ),
               '[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',
               ' '
            )
          ) CHOICE_0,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[2]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_1,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[3]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_2,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[4]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_3
FROM xmlData x) QAD,
     BBLEARN.COURSE_TERM CT,
     BBLEARN.TERM T
WHERE CM.PK1 = GM.CRSMAIN_PK1
     AND GM.PK1 = GG.GRADEBOOK_MAIN_PK1
     AND CU.PK1 = GG.COURSE_USERS_PK1
     AND U.PK1 = CU.USERS_PK1
     AND A.QTI_RESULT_DATA_PK1 + 1 = QRD.PARENT_PK1
     AND QAD.PK1 = QRD.QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1
     AND CM.PK1 = CT.CRSMAIN_PK1
     AND T.PK1 = CT.TERM_PK1
     AND GG.PK1 = A.GRADEBOOK_GRADE_PK1
     AND CU.ROLE = 'S'
     AND REGEXP_LIKE(GM.title, '^M\w+\s+English Skills Test\s+#[1|2|3].*$')
     AND GM.title NOT LIKE '%Final%'
     AND T.SOURCEDID_ID >= 20163
     AND REGEXP_LIKE(CM.COURSE_ID, '^ENC110(1|2)-\d{6}$')
     AND ROWNUM<=100
ORDER BY CM.COURSE_ID, U.BATCH_UID, GM.TITLE, QRD.POSITION ASC;

WHAT THE?????

Seriously, that took awhile to compose. So, a quick little story. So after I started poking around the database tables I came across the QTI_ASI_DATA table. This is the table that houses the assessments. Yep, old Angel users, this is the same type of table but slightly different. So after following the foreign key trails I ended up at the QTI_RESULT_DATA. I came across this DATA field with a CLOB. I first ignored it. I poke around more but could not find the responses from each question.....So I started reaching about the CLOB data type and turns out if you extract that data, you get an xml snapshot of the test response from a particular attempt! So with some good ole hacker'y I managed to extract the data out!

Breakdown, from the top

Getting the Choices

CASE QRD.STUDENT_RESPONSE
     WHEN '0' THEN QAD.CHOICE_0
     WHEN '1' THEN QAD.CHOICE_1
     WHEN '2' THEN QAD.CHOICE_2
     WHEN '3' THEN QAD.CHOICE_3
     ELSE QRD.STUDENT_RESPONSE
END STUDENT_RESPONSE,

This above snippet show how to provide the multiple choice 'choices'. This helps knowing the max amount of possible choices in the test. I am pulling from my aliased QRD (QTI_RESULT_DATA) table then mapping it to the QAD aliased table. This allowed me to build the test back into my result data set!

But how to get the data out of the CLOB?

     (WITH xmlData
      AS (SELECT
               qad.PK1,
               qad.PARENT_PK1,
               qad.DESCRIPTION,
               qad.POSITION,
               XMLTYPE(qad.DATA, nls_charset_id('AL32UTF8')) data
           FROM BBLEARN.QTI_ASI_DATA qad)
     SELECT
          x.PK1,
          x.PARENT_PK1,
          x.POSITION,
          x.DESCRIPTION TITLE,
          TRIM(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                  REGEXP_REPLACE(
                      x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[1]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal(),
                      '"|'|<|p>|/',
                      ''
                  ),
               '[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',
               ' '
            )
          ) CHOICE_0,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[2]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_1,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[3]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_2,

          TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(
               REGEXP_REPLACE(
                   x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[4]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringVal()
                   ,'"|'|<|p>|/'
                   , ''
               )
          ,'[' || CHR(10) || CHR(13) || ']',' ')) CHOICE_3
FROM xmlData x) QAD,

So this is done the cast a selected data set as xml, then telling it to extract the data via an xpath. I have some convenience trim and replace functions to help clean up the extract data as it is xml with html entities. This helped when exporting this data set to an csv file to be imported into Excel.

The actual part is here:

     (WITH xmlData
      AS (SELECT
               qad.PK1,
               qad.PARENT_PK1,
               qad.DESCRIPTION,
               qad.POSITION,
               XMLTYPE(qad.DATA, nls_charset_id('AL32UTF8')) data
           FROM BBLEARN.QTI_ASI_DATA qad)

The WITH <alias> AS SELECT statement is what does the casting of the DATA field by the use of XMLTYPE. The major key note here is the charset! This took me awhile to find but this is what helps in extracting the data out.

Now onto the fancy stuff

     (WITH xmlResultData
          AS (SELECT 
               PARENT_PK1,
               QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1,
               PK1,
               POSITION,
               BBMD_GRADE CORRECT,
               XMLTYPE(DATA, nls_charset_id('AL32UTF8')) data
               FROM BBLEARN.QTI_RESULT_DATA)
     SELECT
          x.PARENT_PK1,
          x.QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1,
          x.PK1,
          x.POSITION,
          x.CORRECT,
          REGEXP_REPLACE(
             NVL(x.data.EXTRACT('/item_result/response/response_value/text()').getStringVal(),
             x.data.EXTRACT('/item_result/response/response_value/formatted_text/text()').getStringVal())
             ,'<|p>|/', '') STUDENT_RESPONSE
     FROM xmlResultData x) QRD,

Same as with QAD, we need to do the same for QRD.

x.data.EXTRACT('/item/presentation/flow/flow/response_lid/render_choice/flow_label[1]/response_label/flow_mat/material/mat_extension/mat_formattedtext/text()').getStringValue(),

The extract method is what allows you to use the xpath to drill down to the data you what to show. You can get more information here: IMS Question & Test Interoperability v1.2 QTILite Specification | IMS Global Learning Consortium on the QTI IMS1.x Specification.

Getting the data across multiple courses.

WHERE CM.PK1 = GM.CRSMAIN_PK1
     AND GM.PK1 = GG.GRADEBOOK_MAIN_PK1
     AND CU.PK1 = GG.COURSE_USERS_PK1
     AND U.PK1 = CU.USERS_PK1
     AND A.QTI_RESULT_DATA_PK1 + 1 = QRD.PARENT_PK1
     AND QAD.PK1 = QRD.QTI_ASI_DATA_PK1
     AND CM.PK1 = CT.CRSMAIN_PK1
     AND T.PK1 = CT.TERM_PK1
     AND GG.PK1 = A.GRADEBOOK_GRADE_PK1
     AND CU.ROLE = 'S'
     AND REGEXP_LIKE(GM.title, '^M\w+\s+English Skills Test\s+#[1|2|3].*$')
     AND GM.title NOT LIKE '%Final%'
     AND T.SOURCEDID_ID >= 20163
     AND REGEXP_LIKE(CM.COURSE_ID, '^ENC110(1|2)-\d{6}$')
     AND ROWNUM<=100
ORDER BY CM.COURSE_ID, U.BATCH_UID, GM.TITLE, QRD.POSITION ASC;

Now, usually I always tend to do LEFT JOINS, they tend to be more accurate and time efficient. But, the data being pull has some oddities in such that; not all choice would the same amount of choices. I believe this example I lucked out and they all ended up with the same amount. Obviously, you will need to modify the GM.TITLE, TERM (if applicable), and the COURSE_ID to match  your specific need. Note: REMOVE ROWNUM , I left this in this example as when you are running tests, you want to make sure that you start off with minimal results then increase when you are more confident in your results. Once completed, remove the rownum to get all.

Conclusion

I would like to thank you for sticking through this blog post and that if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via community!

Thanks,

Mike

In an upcoming hackathon at Grand Valley State University students will be asked to innovate and code for Blackboard Learn. In addition to REST API category, a basic HTML category of the competition will use Community Engagement modules.  A new app was created to encourage development of the modules without the need to grant access to a Blackboard Learn system.

While there are a few ways to run the Blackboard Learn system for free or almost without cost, the new wizard makes the development and debugging easy.

This is the app:

Community System: HTML Module Wizard

I had a support case recently to check the Custom Parameters being send from Learn via LTI.  My normal go to is http://ltiapps.net as this works great for testing LTI both as a consumer and provider.

In my case I wanted to test using SSL and have a go with NodeJS.

Borrowing some of the code from the Signup List B2-to-REST Migration it was simple to create my first LTI tool with NodeJS just to return the values passed in the LTI Body. The project is attached here.

app.js

/*jshint sub:true*/
var https = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var lti = require('ims-lti');
var _ = require('lodash');
var bodyParser  = require('body-parser');
//I got the key I got the secrete #Urban Cookie Collective

var ltiKey = "mykeyagain";
var ltiSecret = "mysagain";

app.engine('pug', require('pug').__express);

app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());

app.set('view engine', 'pug');

//Setup a POST endpoint to take anything going to /launch_lti
app.post('/launch_lti', function(req, res, next){

  req.body = _.omit(req.body, '__proto__');
      if (req.body['oauth_consumer_key']===ltiKey){
          var provider = new lti.Provider(ltiKey, ltiSecret);
         //Check is the Oauth  is valid using the LTI plugin for NodeJS.
              provider.valid_request(req, function (err, isValid){
                  if (err) {
                  console.log('Error in LTI Launch:' + err);
                  res.status(403).send(err);
                  
                  }
                  else {
                  if (!isValid) {
                    console.log('\nError: Invalid LTI launch.');
                    res.status(500).send({ error: "Invalid LTI launch" });
                     } 
                  else {
                      //User is Auth so pass back when ever we need. in this case we use pug to render the values to screen
                      res.render('start', { title: 'LTI SETTINGS', CourseID: 'CourseID: '+req.body['context_id'], userID: 'UserID: '+req.body['user_id'], UserRole: 'Course Role: '+req.body['roles'], FulllogTitle: 'Full Log: ', Fulllog: JSON.stringify(req.body) });
            }}
       });
    }
  else {
      console.log('LTI KEY NOT MATCHED:');
      res.status(403).send({ error: "LTI KEY NOT MATCHED" });      
  }

});

//Setup the http server, When delyed locally this will run on port 5000, when deployed on Heroku it will assign a port and add SSL
var server = https.createServer(app).listen(process.env.PORT || 5000, function(){
  console.log("https server started");
});

I then deployed this to heroku so It would add SSL and is available for anyone to test.

Tool URL: https://porttestsupport.herokuapp.com/launch_lti

Key: mykeyagain

Secrete: mysagain

Add this to Learn as a course tool and when clicked it will give you the full Parameter list sent to the LTI tool.  This is the output from a Test Student.

Hello everyone! I made a comment in a post a while back about using JS Hacks to override some CSS rules that the new 2016 Theme enforces. I have a few people ask me about this and I though this would be a good opportunity to write up a small post about it.

Why won't my custom theme stick!

If you are using the new 2016 theme, you may have notice that some things are very opinionated and you want to change some things. So you download the theme and start hacking away at the CSS files. You finally re-upload your theme and....the rules are not sticking!!! What gives?!?!

How do I overcome this issue?

Well what is happening is that there is a them1.css file that is being injection during the page render time. Since the last rule set wins when it comes to css, your beautiful css rules are now squashed by Blackboard! Bummer!

Conquering the CSS Takeover!

Well, there is another way! You can make all the css rules that are being squashed, into another css file. Then you can place either as an attachment via JS Hacks, or what I have done is place this file in the Content Collection and made it publicly available. Now I can copy this URI path and use it in my diabolical plan to take over the world! Blackboard!

Here is the JS Hack:

<!--

    your.blackboard.com = your instance of Blackboard Learn

    CC_FOLDER = is just a folder created in the Content Collection

    your_theme1 = the id you wish you give your element

 -->

<script type="text/javascript">

// https://your.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/institution/CC_FOLDER/theme/theme1.css

    Event.observe(document,"dom:loaded", function() {

        //Your javascript goes here.

        // console.log($$('head')[0])

        $$('head')[0].insert({

            bottom: new Element('link', {

                href: '/bbcswebdav/institution/CC_FOLDER/theme/theme1.css',

                type: 'text/css',

                rel: 'stylesheet',

                id: 'your_theme1'

            })

        });

    });

</script>