CreateDemoCourses

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Creating (and refreshing) "maa101" demo courses from the command line

These command scripts allow you to restore exact clones of a model course, including the templates directory and the original database. I use these to restore maa101 demo courses to their original state after they have been experimented with by instructors learning the capabilities of WeBWorK

The scripts are fragile -- they will need to be tweaked to conform to the directory structure of your WeBWorK installation and perhaps to the command line shell that you are running. This is particularly true of dump_course_data_from_course which has constants at the top which need to be initialized. We welcome any additions or modifications that will make these scripts more robust.

The procedure is essentially this:

• Set up an initial demonstration course (call it maa99) with the appropriate users, (instructors and students ) and the desired homework assignments present. For example I create instructors profa, and profb, import the usual collection of practice users using the demoCourse.lst file. I import the "Orientation" homework set and I have available the setDemo.def and setMAAtutorial.def files so that instructors can practice importing sets. These sets are in the standard "modelCourse" often used to create a new course. I add other set definition files depending on the audience.

• Create the courses maa101, maa102, maa103, etc. from the admin page by hand using maa99 as a model. While this could be automated I have usually found it easy enough to do this just once by hand.

• In your own directory on the command line create a subdirectory (I call mine webwork_masters)and in that create a subdirectory called maa_data. Place the scripts described below in this directory.

When you are done webwork_masters should look something like:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 gage  user   2558 Jan 17 15:35 dump_course_data_from_course*
drwxrwxr-x  4 gage  user    512 Jan 17 15:35 maa_data/
-rwxrwxr-x  1 gage  user    126 Jan 17 14:37 mirror_maa_courses*

• cd to maa_data and run the dump_course_data_from_course script The result should look like:

129 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters % cd maa_data

130 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters/maa_data % ../dump_course_data_from_course maa99
dumping data from /opt/webwork/courses/maa99
it is a good idea to empty the course html/tmp directory first
This script should be run in the directory receiving the data: e.g. maa_data
101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 

• Checking the maa_data directory should yield:

131 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters/maa_data % ls -l
total 68
-rw-r--r--  1 gage  user   3322 Jan 17 15:35 course.conf
-rw-rw-r--  1 gage  user  55161 Jan 17 15:35 database_template
drwxr-xr-x  3 gage  user    512 Jan 28  2010 html/
-rwxrwxr-x  1 gage  user    117 Jan 17 15:35 restore_course_database*
-rw-r--r--  1 gage  user    213 Jan 17 15:35 simple.conf
drwxrwxr-x  8 gage  user    512 Apr  9  2010 templates/
-rwxrwxr-x  1 gage  user    789 Jan 17 15:35 with_this_data_update_course*

• As a test you can restore one course

132 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters/maa_data % ./with_this_data_update_course maa107
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa107\n
Updating database for maa107\n

• Construct a webwork_masters/mirror_maa_courses script that looks like

#!/bin/tcsh
foreach file (maa101 maa102 maa103 maa104 maa105 maa106 maa107)
./with_this_data_update_course $file
end

• Now execute it from the webwork_masters.maa_data directory:

133 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters/maa_data % ../mirror_maa_courses 
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa101\n
Updating database for maa101\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa102\n
Updating database for maa102\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa103\n
Updating database for maa103\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa104\n
Updating database for maa104\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa105\n
Updating database for maa105\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa106\n
Updating database for maa106\n
Updating /opt/webwork/courses/maa107\n
Updating database for maa107\n

Additional information

The contents of webwork_masters/with_this_data_update_course is approximately:

#!/bin/tcsh
echo "Updating /opt/webwork/courses/$1\n"
cp maa_data/course.conf /opt/webwork/courses/$1/course.conf
rm -rf /opt/webwork/courses/$1/templates
cp -RPpi -f maa_data/templates /opt/webwork/courses/$1/templates
echo "Updating database for $1\n"
echo "You need to use sudo -H ./mirror_one_maa_course to run load the data"
./restore_course_database $1

Warning :

The tables dumped, dropped and restored need to be updated in these scripts as more features and tables are added to the webwork database.

• The contents of webwork_masters/restore_course_database is approximately

#!/bin/sh
echo "use webwork;" >tmp
echo "drop table \`$1_key\`;" >>tmp
echo "drop table \`$1_password\`;" >>tmp  
echo "drop table \`$1_permission\`;" >>tmp  
echo "drop table \`$1_problem\`;" >>tmp  
echo "drop table \`$1_problem_user\`;" >>tmp  
echo "drop table \`$1_set\`;" >>tmp
echo "drop table \`$1_set_user\`;" >>tmp
echo "drop table \`$1_user\`;" >>tmp   
cat maa_data/database_template | sed s/maa99/$1/ >>tmp   
mysql    <tmp
rm tmp