[LON-CAPA-dev] Suggestion of new author tool: upload of .ZIP files and unzip it in the current work directory in the Construction Space area

[Gerd Kortemeyer]

Ricardo,

Thank you very much for your input. There is actually a bug report 
regarding ZIP files, see

  http://bugs.lon-capa.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659

I have changed the milestone on that enhancement request to "1.1" - I 
had similar experiences trying to teach faculty about having to upload 
ALL files associated with an HTML file.

If you open an account on Bugzilla, you can put yourself on the cc-list 
of the above bug to see what happens.

Please let us know if you would like your machine connected to a 
cluster.

- Gerd.

On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 09:58  PM, Ricardo Luis Kulzer 
wrote:

>     Hello.  
>     I’m a new user of LON-CAPA, and I don’t know many thinks about its 
> code, but I’m investigating it. now.  
>     In our laboratory, we used another e-learning software called 
> TELEDUC (http://teleduc.nied.unicamp.br/teleduc/), very good, but it 
> doesn't bring all the advantages offered by the LON-CAPA.  
>     However, an important feature that is missing in LON-CAPA, and it 
> exists TELEDUC, is a tool that allows to do upload of several files 
> compacted in one only .ZIP file, and allow to unzip the .ZIP file in 
> the server later.   
>     So, when developing a page using some HTML editor like Netscape 
> Composer, we used compact the file .HTML and << many >> images files 
> (.GIF, .JPG) in only one .ZIP file. Soon after, through the WEB 
> interface of TELEDUC, we transfer (upload) the .ZIP file in to the 
> TELEDUC server. Then, the WEB interface provides a new button that 
> allows unzip that file in the server and to publish them as a new 
> Content Page, with the .HTML and images files totally decompressed.
>     I tried to do the same task in LON-CAPA, but it doesn't present 
> this resource. So I needed to do upload of file by file, using the 
> tool Construction Space, and that is a annoying task (upload file by 
> file…).
>     I know that I can use SSH file transfer or Samba, but It’s 
> difficult to teach all this thinks to a Geography teacher, for 
> example, that usually don’t know and don’t like computer a lot. And 
> another advantage is that we don’t need to open smb and ssh ports to 
> every author. He can do all this thinks through http server, in a much 
> more secure way, using the simple and easy Construction Space tool of 
> LON-CAPA.
>     Then I would like to propose to the LON-CAPA development, to 
> create a new tool in the Construction Space area of LON-CAPA, that 
> allows to upload a .ZIP file, and automatically unzip it into the 
> server. Or alternatively, a tool that allows to upload of a whole 
> paste with many files at the same time (like select many files in 
> Windows Explorer using Shift key), without the need of currently file 
> by file upload tool available today in LON-CAPA.  
>     I saw in the TELEDUC code that the function responsible for unzip 
> the .ZIP file in the server after the upload is implemented in PHP. 
> The PHP code is more or less like this:  
>  
> / * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
> * * * *  
>    DescompactarArquivoZip function - Unzip compressed cribs.  
>    Input: $zip - path and name of the zip cribs  
>              $destination - destination path to unzip   
>    Output: true i all ok  
> * /  
> function DescompactarArquivoZip ($zip,$destination)  
> {  
>   $command = " unzip -q -o \"". $zip ". \ " -d \"". $destination ". 
> \"";  
>   system($command,$status);  
>   CreateIndexFile ($destination);  
>   SetPermissions($destination);  
>   return (! $status);  
> }  
>  
>     So, I think it’s not difficult to insert an equivalent function in 
> LON-CAPA code, not in PHP, but in perl, the main LON-CAPA language. It 
> would be enough to add a button in the Construction Space area to 
> allow the upload of .ZIP files. After the upload, the system of the 
> LON- CAPA will be able to automatically unzip the file in the current 
> work directory of Construction Space area, or to show a new option for 
> the .ZIP file that allows unzip it into the server, to be published 
> later.  
>     I await suggestions to implement this new tool. And sorry for my 
> poor English.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Ricardo Luis Kulzer.
>     http://www.decom.fee.unicamp.br/~ricardol/www/
>  
>  
>