Contrib: Skin Manager

Lead(s): Jaeques KoemanRoland Groen

Description:

The Skin manager tool allows site administrators to install and manage skins in a Sakai instance. Skins are uploaded in the portal as .zip archives that contain graphics and style sheets. The tool displays all the skins in use throughout the Sakai instance and indicates which sites use a particular skin. Skins may be revised by uploading a new archive and it is possible to revert to earlier versions of a skin. This strongly simplifies the skin installation process: no longer access to the file system of the sakai instance is needed.

Key features

Inspect, install, update and delete skins on a sakai instance. Skins can be uploaded using a zip file format, which is verified on upload. A skin archive keeps track of the skins by including the installation history of the skins in the archive, so every version of the installed history is available for reversion. Never lose any skin-data.

Skins as zip files: ease of install

A standard structure for zip files makes it easy to install skins. No system-administrator is needed to install skins on a Sakai installation. For a detailed description of the zip upload file, see the help documentation provided with the skin.

Skin archive: access to all skins ever installed on the system

Over time, skins get updated and modified. The skin archive keeps track of every skin that exist within the instance. This way, the tool is capable of restoring skins from the archive. The skin archive automatically synchronizes with the file system, and restores missing skins if a new Sakai installation overwrites the skin directory. The skin archive is available from the details page. To revert to previous versions of the skin, the edit permission is required.

Use

The initial need for the skin manager came from the problem that we needed to physically install every new skin and every update of an existing skin on the file system of the Sakai server. The skin manager strongly simplifies the skin installation process, and thereby the skin design process. Graphic designers can easily create a zip file and upload it. The upload verifies and cleans the contents of the zip files, providing feedback on the correctness of the file. The tool archives all installed skins, also the updated ones, so you can always roll back to a previous version.

The main page displays all installed skins.
Skins can be uploaded by the new page.
The details page displays the files of the skin, and the sites that use the skin.
The update page enables you to upload a new version of the same skin.
The history page enables to view the history record of the skin, and allows you the revert to a specific version. Furthermore, any version of the skin can be downloaded as skin archive.
The delete page confirms skin deletion.

Skin Manager Installation

The Sakai Skin manager comes as source distribution, this distribution needs to be build from within the Sakai source tree.

Prerequisites

This manual assumes that you are familiar with installing, building, and running Sakai. You must be familiar with the concepts in the Sakai installation guide, which can be found at:

• 2.2.1 Installation Guide
• 2.3.1 Installation Guide
• 2.4.0 Installation Guide

Of course, you need a Sakai installation to use this Sakai tool.

Installing from source

Downloading the source

The sakai skin manager depends on the edia-sakai-utils, both the skin manager and the dependent util project can be found at the following locations:

project	sakai 2.4.x	sakai 2.5.x
edia-sakai-utils	2.4.x	2.5.x
edia-sakai-skin-manager	2.4.x	2.5.x

Running the build on sakai 2.4.x

Both projects downloaded above should be placed in the source root of Sakai. If you run an entire build on Sakai, it will automatically be part of that build. But if the source tree has already been build, it can be build individually by running a build in the following order:

1. edia-sakai-utils
2. edia-sakai-skin-manager

Of course, to do the build the Sakai target needs to be be used:

maven sakai

Maven 1.x and ibiblio Note: the ibiblio repository has been restructured, and maven 1.x on *nix has trouble understanding the http return code 301 (moved permanently). For that reason, it might be necessary to add the following to the maven.repo.remote property in the build.properties located in the home dir: http://repo1.maven.org/maven/

Running the build on sakai 2.5.x (M2)

Both projects downloaded above should be placed in the source root of Sakai. The project can be added to the main build by adding them as a module to the root pom.xml, but they can also be run individually in the following order:

1. edia-sakai-utils
2. edia-sakai-skin-manager

Database

Database support

database installation

The Sakai skin manager makes use of one table, which is mapped by hibernate. Sakai needs to be started with the

auto.ddl=true

set in the sakai.properties on the first run of the skin manager to let hibernate create the required table for you.

Changelog

• 0.9.0 (First beta release)
  • UPDATE: use the tool session instead of the http session for storing the spring webflow state
  • UPDATE: layout update, conforming to the sakai layout.
• 0.0.5
  • UPDATE: Fixed some dependencies, no functional changes
• 0.0.4
  • UPDATE: Ported to & tested on Oracle 10g, for existing installations see skinmanager_0_0_3-0_0_4_mysql_conversion.sql for updating.
  • BUGFIX: Cleanup of temp files when running update
  • UPDATE: Error handling now more robust, error conditions handled properly
• 0.0.3
  • REQUEST: Sort skin names, large quantities of skins are hard to manage without sorting
  • UPDATE: .classpath file references generic JRE container
  • BUGFIX: Hibernate mapping did not result in right column type in MySQL. Manifestation of this bug is the inability to upload files larger than 64KB.

• 0.0.2
  • UPDATE: Removed spring webflow et. al. from shared lib and moved into web app libs
  • UPDATE: Javadoc
  • UPDATE: Spring configuration update

License

The Sakai skin manager is open source and free to use, it is distributed with a LGPL license.

Copyright (C) 2007 Edia Educatie Technologie

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the 
terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software 
Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A 
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with 
this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin 
Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA