OutOfMonkeyland Tutorial

WeBWork stores cookies in your computer for authentication purposes. So, the first thing to do is to choose a file where the cookies are going to be stored. This can be done with the function set_cookies_file as follows

set_cookies_file("path-to-file");

If you do not call this function, the default value of the cookies file is /tmp/cookies.txt. Which will work fine in GNU/Linux but not in other operating systems. So, on Windows or MAC you will have to call this function and select a cookies file.

If the file does not exist already it will be created. If the file already exists it is going to re-write it.

Sometimes there are problems with the connection ir with the server. Many of the functions in this library try several times to perform an action before flagging an error. The number of trials by default is three. If you would like to change this there is the function set_number_of_trials.

set_number_of_trials(10);

This would change the number of trials to 10. You can use any positive integer instead of 10.

The function create_course can be used to create a new course. It should be called in the following way

create_course(root_url,
              course_id,
              username,
              password,
              course_title,
              institution_name,
              initial_user_id,
              password,
              first_name,
              last_name,
              email,
              template_course,
              database_layout);

All the parameters should be passed as a string. Each of the parameters that appear in this function correspond to the ones that are asked for you when you click the Add course link in the course administration of WeBWork.

database_layout is optional. If it is not given, the value "sql_single" is assumed.

There are functions for deleting, archiving and unarchiving. They all receive the same arguments.

delete_course(root_url,course_id,username,password);
archive_course(root_url,course_id,username,password);
unarchive_course(root_url,course_id,username,password);

Please notice that archive_course will rewrite existing archived courses with the same name.

You can do this by calling the function

put_file_on_file_manager(root_url,course_id,username,password,file_to_upload)

file_to_upload should be a string with the path of a file that you want to put in the file manager.

The following function

import_students(root_url,course_id,username,password,filename,replace_students)

imports students from a existing .lst file from the file manager. filename is the name of the .lst file. If $replace_students is true, it will import the students with the option "replacing any existing users and adding any new users". If it is false, it will replace no existing users. It this variable is not given it will be considered false.

This

assign_all_assignments(root_url,course_id,username,password)

will assign all the existing assignments to the students registered in the course.

send_email(root_url,
           course_id,
           username,
           password,
           recitation,
           email_text,
           main_email,
           response_file)

This will send an e-mail with the students in the given recitation. main_email is an e-mail is an e-mail where students having problems logging in can write to get help. email_text can contain the variables that are recognized by WeBWork (like FN, LOGIN, SID, etc), and it can also contain the variable $course_id, that has the name of the course. Thus an example of a valid value for email_text is

'Dear $FN,

   You can access WeBWork at

   https://university.com/webwork/$course_id/.

   Your login information is:
   user: $LOGIN
   password: $SID

Best Regards,

   The WeBWork team.'

The variable response_file is optional. If it is given, it should be a filename. The answer from WeBWork of the request will be written in this file. This can be used to check if the e-mail was actually send. This file can be opened with a browser in order to see it nicely formatted.

import_assignments(root_url,course_id,username,password,assignment_lists)

This function imports assignments to the course. It works with assignments that are already in the importer. The value of assignment_lists should be a referenced lists with the names of the assignments to be imported, e.g. ["Assignment-1.def","Assignment-2.def","Assignment-3.def"].

The following function

get_all_assignments(root_url,course_id,username,password)

returns an array with the names of all the assignments in the course.

The following function

set_dates(root_url,course_id,username,password,assignments_and_dates)

can be used to set the dates of a course.dates should be a reference to an array. Each element of the array should be another reference to an array that has the form: ["Assignment name","open date","due date","answer date"]. This function will set the dates for each assignment

download_grades(root_url,course_id,username,password,filename,avoid_pattern)

This function downloads the grades from $course_id to the file $filename. $avoid_pattern is a regular expression for those sets one does not want to download. If avoid_pattern is not given it will download grades for all the sets.

It is possible to tell the program to add the messages to a queue from the library Thread::Queue instead of the standard output. To do this there is the function set_messages_queue.

set_messages_queue(queue);

where queue is a Thread::Queue object. When this function is called the output messages will be passed to queue instead of being printed on the standard output.