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.

-- Mike Gage

The procedure is essentially this:

  • Set up an initial demonstration course (call it say 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 files are part of the standard "modelCourse" often used to create a new course. I add other set definition files depending on the audience.
  • 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 dump_course_data_from_course script described below in this directory. Be careful not to wrap lines while creating the file. Change permissions to 755. When you are done webwork_masters should look something like:
127 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters %  chmod 755 dump_course_data_from_course
128 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters %  ls -l
-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/
  • 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
  • You can use the last line of the output from dump_course_data_from_course to construct a webwork_masters/mirror_maa_courses script that looks like
#!/bin/tcsh
foreach file (101 102 103 104 105 106 107)
./with_this_data_update_course maa$file
end
  • Give the file executable permissions and 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
  • Alternatively you can type in the contents of the mirror_maa_courses directly on the command line

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
cat ./database_template | sed s/maa99/$1/ >>tmp
sudo -H mysql    <tmp
rm tmp

Contents of dump_course_data_from_course

Warning : The first three lines of this script MUST be edited for local use
139 hosted2 ~/webwork_masters % cat dump_course_data_from_course
#!/bin/tcsh
# run this script in a directory such as  maa_data  to collect data for restoring a webwork set
#
setenv COURSESDIRECTORY /opt/webwork/courses
setenv  MYSQLDUMP /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump
setenv  WEBWORKDAEMON wwhttpd    # "user name" for the webwork server

echo "dumping data from $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1"
echo "it is a good idea to empty the course html/tmp directory first"
echo "This script should be run in the directory receiving the data: e.g. maa_data"

if (! -e $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1) then
    echo "Can't find course directory at |$COURSESDIRECTORY/$1|"
    exit
 endif
 
sudo -H mysqldump webwork $1_key $1_password $1_permission $1_problem \
$1_problem_user $1_set  $1_set_locations $1_set_locations_user $1_set_user \
$1_setting $1_user  >database_template
 
 
#FIXME  get this to dump all tables using * somehow

#create  script "with_this_data_update_course" to update one course
# this script should be stored in the same directory as maa_data

cat <<END_FILE >./with_this_data_update_course
#!/bin/tcsh
 
setenv COURSESDIRECTORY  $COURSESDIRECTORY
setenv WEBWORKDAEMON $WEBWORKDAEMON

if (! -e \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1) then
 addcourse \$1  --db-layout=sql_single --users=../adminClasslist.lst --professors=admin 
 echo "Created course directory at \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1"
endif


echo "Updating \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1\n"
sudo cp course.conf  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/course.conf
sudo cp simple.conf  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/simple.conf
#cp hide_directory  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/hide_directory

sudo rm -rf  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/templates
sudo rm -rf  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/html
sudo cp -RPpi -f templates  \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/templates
sudo cp -RPpi -f html \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1/html

sudo chown -R \$WEBWORKDAEMON \$COURSESDIRECTORY/\$1

echo "Updating database for \$1\n"
./restore_course_database \$1

END_FILE

# get data from the model course directory 
rm -rf html
rm -rf templates
cp -RPpi $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1/templates .

cp -RPpi $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1/html      .
cp $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1/course.conf .
cp $COURSESDIRECTORY/$1/simple.conf .

#create restore_course_database script

cat <<END_FILE  >./restore_course_database
#\!/bin/sh
echo "use webwork;" >tmp
cat ./database_template | sed s/$1/\$1/ >>tmp
sudo -H mysql    <tmp
rm tmp    
END_FILE

chmod +x with_this_data_update_course restore_course_database

# this snippet will print a bunch of course numbers 
 perl -e 'foreach $i (101..120){print $i;print " ";} print "\n"'
 
##you can insert it into a file webwork_masters/mirror_maa_courses

# #!/usr/bin/tcsh
# foreach file (101 102     )
# sudo -H .with_this_data_update_course $file
# end

## and run it from within the data directory (e.g. maa_data)
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