google / appengine_xblock_runtime

XBlock Runtime for Google App Engine

A library that provides an XBlock runtime environment which uses the Google App Engine datastore.

Release Notes

• 2013-12-16: Change Datastore entities to persist data in JSON blobs. NOTE: This is incompatible with previous versions.
• 2013-12-10 and 2013-11-05: Upate the version of XBlock
• 2013-10-24: Initial relaese.

Dependencies

In addition to App Engine itself, this relies on edX's XBlock project.

Running the example application locally

The library is bundled with a simple App Engine application which enables a user to:

• Install a XBlock usage from a snippet of XML
• View and interact with the given XBlock

To run the application on common Linux distributions, execute:

sh ./scripts/run_example.sh

This will install all the dependencies and start the server. If this script cannot be run on your platform, follow the steps below:

1. Download the XBlock repo from GitHub into the examples/lib/ folder. For consistency, you should check out commit 2daa4e541c1613a703262c9dcd6be9c1928b1299.
2. In the examples/lib/XBlock folder, execute: python setup.py egg_info
3. In the examples/lib/XBlock/thumbs folder, execute: python setup.py egg_info
4. Create a folder examples/lib/appengine_xblock_runtime and copy appengine_xblock_runtime and setup.py into it.
5. In examples/lib/appengine_xblock_runtime execute: python setup.py egg_info
6. Start the App Engine development server in the examples/ folder: PATH_TO_GAE_SDK/dev_appserver.py .

Running the example application on production App Engine

To install on production App Engine, follow the steps above and then:

1. Create a new application on App Engine (https://appengine.google.com/) with a name that matches the application name in app.yaml (e.g. 'xblock-example')
2. Deploy with the command $APP_ENGINE_SDK/appcfg.py update .

Running tests

To run the tests on common Linux distributions, execute:

sh ./scripts/tests.sh

If this script cannot be run on your platform, follow the steps in Examples. Ensure that the following packages are on your `PYTHONPATH:

• The App Engine SDK
• WebOb (available the `lib folder in the App Engine SDK)
• XBlock

To run the test suite: nosetests tests

Using this library in your own App Engine app

To use the library in a Google App Engine application, you should follow these steps:

1. Create a lib/ folder in your application.
2. Download the XBlock repo from GitHub into your lib/ folder.
3. In the lib/XBlock folder, execute: python setup.py egg_info
4. Download this runtime package into your lib/ folder.
5. In the lib/appengine_xblock_runtime folder, execute: python setup.py egg_info
6. Register the two packages by including in your application code: pkg_resources.working_set.add_entry( path_to_XBlock ) and pkg_resources.working_set.add_entry( path_to_this_pkg )