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Configuring LMS Backends

Richie can be connected to one or more OpenEdX Learning Management Systems (LMS) for a seamless experience between browsing the course catalog on Richie, enrolling to a course and following the course itself on the LMS.

It is possible to do the same with Moodle or any other LMS exposing an enrollment API, at the cost of writing a custom LMS handler backend.

Prerequisites​

This connection requires that Richie and OpenEdX be hosted on sibling domains i.e. domains that are both subdomains of the same root domain, e.g. richie.example.com and lms.example.com.

OpenEdX will need to generate a CORS CSRF Cookie and this cookie is flagged as secure, which implies that we are not able to use it without SSL connections.

As a consequence, you need to configure your OpenEdX instance as follows:

FEATURES = {
    ...
    "ENABLE_CORS_HEADERS": True,
    "ENABLE_CROSS_DOMAIN_CSRF_COOKIE": True,
}

CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS = True
CORS_ALLOW_INSECURE = False
CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST: ["richie.example.com"]  # The domain on which Richie is hosted

CROSS_DOMAIN_CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN = ".example.com"  # The parent domain shared by Richie and OpenEdX
CROSS_DOMAIN_CSRF_COOKIE_NAME: "edx_csrf_token"
SESSION_COOKIE_NAME: "edx_session"

Configuring the LMS handler​

The LMSHandler utility acts as a proxy that routes queries to the correct LMS backend API, based on a regex match on the URL of the course. It is configured via the RICHIE_LMS_BACKENDS setting. As an example, here is how it would be configured to connect to an Ironwood OpenEdX instance hosted on https://lms.example.com:

RICHIE_LMS_BACKENDS=[
    {
        "BASE_URL": "https://lms.example.com",
        # Django
        "BACKEND": "richie.apps.courses.lms.edx.EdXLMSBackend",
        "COURSE_REGEX": r"^https://lms\.example\.com/courses/(?P<course_id>.*)/course/?$",
        # ReactJS
        "JS_BACKEND": "openedx-hawthorn",
        "JS_COURSE_REGEX": r"^https://lms\.example\.com/courses/(.*)/course/?$",
        # Course runs synchronization
        "COURSE_RUN_SYNC_NO_UPDATE_FIELDS": [],
        "DEFAULT_COURSE_RUN_SYNC_MODE": "sync_to_public",
    },
]

The following should help you understand how to configure this setting:

BASE_URL​

The base url on which the OpenEdX instance is hosted. This is used to construct the complete url of the API endpoint on which the enrollment request is made by Richie's frontend application.

BACKEND​

The path to a Python class serving as LMS backend for the targeted LMS.

  • Type: string
  • Required: Yes
  • Value: Richie ships with the following Python backends (custom backends can be written to fit another specific LMS):
    • richie.apps.courses.lms.edx.EdXLMSBackend: backend for OpenEdX
    • richie.apps.courses.lms.base.BaseLMSBackend: fake backend for development purposes

COURSE_REGEX​

A Python regex that should match the course syllabus urls of the targeted LMS and return a course_id named group on the id of the course extracted from these urls.

  • Type: string
  • Required: Yes
  • Value: for example ^.*/courses/(?P<course_id>.*)/course/?$

JS_BACKEND​

The name of the ReactJS backend to use for the targeted LMS.

  • Type: string
  • Required: Yes
  • Value: Richie ships with the following Javascript backends (custom backends can be written to fit another specific LMS):
    • openedx-dogwood: backend for OpenEdX versions equal to dogwood or eucalyptus
    • openedx-hawthorn: backend for OpenEdX versions equal to hawthorn or higher
    • openedx-fonzie: backend for OpenEdX via Fonzie (extra user info and JWT tokens)
    • dummy: fake backend for development purposes

JS_COURSE_REGEX​

A Javascript regex that should match the course syllabus urls of the targeted LMS and return an unnamed group on the id of the course extracted from these urls.

  • Type: string
  • Required: Yes
  • Value: for example ^.*/courses/(.*)/course/?$

DEFAULT_COURSE_RUN_SYNC_MODE​

When a course run is created, this setting is used to set the value of the sync_mode field. This value defines how the course runs synchronization script will impact this course run after creation.

  • Type: enum(string)
  • Required: No
  • Value: possible values are manual, sync_to_draft and sync_to_public
    • manual: this course run is ignored by the course runs synchronization script
    • sync_to_draft: only the draft version of this course run is synchronized. A manual publication is necessary for the update to be visible on the public site.
    • sync_to_public: the public version of this course run is updated by the synchronization script. As a results, updates are directly visible on the public site without further publication by a staff user in Richie.

COURSE_RUN_SYNC_NO_UPDATE_FIELDS​

A list of fields that must only be set the first time a course run is synchronized. During this first synchronization, a new course run is created in Richie and all fields sent to the API endpoint via the payload are set on the object. For subsequent synchronization calls, the fields listed in this setting are ignored and not synchronized. This can be used to allow modifying some fields manually in Richie regardless of what OpenEdX sends after an initial value is set.

Note that this setting is only effective for course runs with the sync_mode field set to a value other then manual.

  • Type: enum(string)
  • Required: No
  • Value: for example ["languages"]

Technical support​

If you encounter an issue with this documentation or the backends included in Richie, please open an issue on our repository.

If you need a custom backend, you can submit a PR or open an issue and we will consider adding it.

Last updated on by jbpenrath