WebLearn Blog

Entity Broker is a REST web service interface to Sakai. It is self-documenting, see https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/direct/describe, but as you will see, some of the documentation is somewhat lacking.

I stumbled across a blog post that Damion Young’s made about WebLearn (Sakai’s) Entity Broker, he has very kindly filled is some of the missing pieces of the jigsaw.

It is entirely possible to write useful utilities using a combination of JavaScript, HTML and calls to Entity Broker, indeed, this is how the original Mobile Oxford offered a mobile interface to WebLearn. (The current Mobile Oxford no longer offers such an interface.)

Some of the most recent WebLearn utilities / dashboards have been written in JavaScript, examples,

• Batch Update Utility (Source code: batch-update-sites.js and batch-manage-sites.html) – this allows one or more users to be added, deleted or replaced over multiple sites all at once and also allows customised branding of sites

• Recorded Lectures Dashboard (Source code: lti-tools.js and recorded-lectures.html) – this JavaScript has actually been wrapped up and packaged as a fully fledged tool so it can be placed in every user’s home area (‘My Home’)

• Anonymous Submissions Dashboard – this gives an overview of all upcoming formal essay submissions (Source code: anonymous-submissions.js and anonymous-submissions.html)

• Medical Sciences’s Sleep Medicine Online Course

• The Biomedical Sciences portal page

• Entity Broker source code: https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai/tree/master/entitybroker/core-providers/src/java/org/sakaiproject/entitybroker/providers