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Braden MacDonald

braden@opencraft.com

Breaking up & reusing course content:

How we built LabXchange using Open edX and Blockstore

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Overview

Vision for LabXchange

Demo of LabXchange

Why build on Open edX?

LabXchange architecture (overview)

Open edX APIs we use

What we built separately

The end result

How you can build with Blockstore

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Vision for LabXchange

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Why build on Open edX?

Adapters for content - XBlocks!

Reuse content from edX courses

Scalable

Open source

Existing relationship with Harvard

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Challenges with Open edX

Focused on courses

Requires registration & enrollment

Limited search, no tagging

Limited social features

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LabXchange Architecture

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LabXchange

backend

LabXchange

frontend

edX.org��LMS+Studio�+ plugins

Blockstore

Discourse

React

TypeScript

REST API

OpenAPI

Django

Kubernetes

Open edX

REST API

ElasticSearch

MySQL

proprietary

open source

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Open edX APIs we use

and you can too!

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Single Sign-On

Uses edx-auth-backends (GitHub / PyPI)

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User account/profile API

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Content Libraries v2

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Content Libraries v2

get_library (lib_key)

library_exists (lib_key)

create_library (org_id, collection_uuid, slug, title, description="")

delete_library (lib_key)

add_block_to_library (lib_key, block_type, slug, parent_block=None)

get_library_block_olx (block_key)

set_library_block_olx (block_key, new_olx)

commit_library_changes (lib_key)

get_library_block (block_key)

delete_library_block (block_key)

get_library_blocks (lib_key)

get_library_block_assets (block_key)

get_library_block_asset_file (block_key, filename)

set_library_block_asset_file (block_key, filename, content)

Defined in edx-platform/openedx/core/djangoapps/content_libraries/urls.py

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Content Libraries v2: OLX API

set_library_block_olx (block_key, new_olx)

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XBlock runtime REST API

render_block_view (block_key, view_name)

render_block_view_studio (block_key, view_name)

get_xblock_metadata (block_key, extra_fields=None)

get_xblock_children (block_key: UsageKey)

get_block_handler_url (block_key, handler_name, use_cached_handler_url=False)

get_block_handler_url_studio (block_key, handler_name)

call_block_handler (block_key, handler_name, method='get', **kwargs)

call_block_handler_studio (block_key, handler_name, method='get', **kwargs)

Defined in edx-platform/openedx/core/djangoapps/xblock/rest_api/urls.py

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XBlock Sandbox

HTML file served from unique domain, e.g.�https://d4f3crotqjvv0.cloudfront.net

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Anonymous Access

During create_library:

�{� ...

"allow_public_learning": true�}

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OLX Export API

Open edX OLX REST API Plugin

https://github.com/open-craft/openedx-olx-rest-api��Usage:�https://studio/api/olx-export/v1/xblock/:block_id/

�JSON response with:

OLX (XML)
Static files (images, PDFs, etc.)

<OLX/>

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Pathways Plugin

“Pathway” as a new learning context.

REST API methods:

create_pathway
get_pathway_data
set_pathway_draft_data
publish_pathway_changes
delete_pathway

Opaque key: “lx-pathway:”

github.com/open-craft/lx-pathway-plugin

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Custom XBlocks

Assignment XBlock�
Case Study XBlock�
Document XBlock�
Image XBlock�
Simulation XBlock�
Narrative XBlock�
Audio XBlock