Hi all,

My understanding of the module-link importing problem is similar to Simon’s...

Last year, code was contributed to the project which allowed users to directly import pre-formed groups.  Unfortunately, the resulting import facility does not import any module links you’ve associated with the student – as Simon noted, the relevant code that does the association is commented out.

Presumably, the group contributing the new code never noticed this, as they were importing their groups directly and never had to set up any groups in Web-PA from scratch.  I don’t know why it wasn’t picked up by our own testing before inclusion in to the Web-PA trunk code.

The upshot is, since v1.0.0.4, Web-PA OS has not been able to import student details fully.  The original 1.0.0.3 code clearly had some problems with it, and the code-comment from Morgan is correct, there is a bit of a dance with the database indices every time you import data.

As a short term fix, replacing the current  admin/load/simple.php  file with the one from v1.0.0.3 should fix the problems – I’ve performed the same alteration on a test installation, and the student import worked with the module associations.

I’ve attached a copy of that file to this email, so anyone who needs it need not trawl through SourceForge for it.  Using the older version will break the import of groups, so that option on the import page should be ignored – or if you’re feeling adventurous you could replace that page too!

Long term, we’ll have to integrate both sets of code, so we can keep the groups importer, but still provide the traditional students-and-modules functionality too.

--

Paul Newman

----------------------------------------

Web Developer – Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL)

Tel: 01509 227196  (engCETL)

Tel: 01509 225957  (IT Services)

----------------------------------------

From: WebPA Project [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon W Lamb
Subject: Re: WebPA import problem

Hi Everyone,

Just to add to Paul’s e-mail, I’ve had a look at the import code in simple.php.  There appears to be whole section commented out starting:-

/* CHANGED 14/10/09 by Morgan Harris [[log in to unmask]]

            * This was basically the old way of doing things, that had an unfortunate side effect of

            * adding a huge number of indices to the table, and deleting old data when it found it.

            * The new method relies on the existence of a

            *                UNIQUE KEY(`institutional_reference`,`username`)

            * on the `user` table.

            *

On line 180 onwards (the Foreach loop), the code deals with the insertion of the user & module into the user_module table.  However because this whole section of code has been commented, it is not executing this part of the upload routine.  I realise that the insert into users code was changed for efficiency reasons, however has user_module code been commented by accident?

Many thanks,

Simon Lamb
Software Developer
Information and Communication Technology Department (ICTD) || The University of Hull
T. +44 (0) 1482 462076
[log in to unmask]|| www.hull.ac.uk

Customer Support. +44 (0) 1482 462010 || [log in to unmask] || www.hull.ac.uk/help

From: WebPA Project [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul A Chin
Sent: 08 December 2010 16:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: WebPA import problem

Hi Everyone,

My colleague, Simon Lamb, who looks after our WebPA server here at Hull has encountered an apparent bug and wondered if anyone could help:

“I’ve come across a slight issue with the User upload routine, it adds the users to the users table but doesn’t associate them to a module in the user_module table.  Fortunately I’ve been able to get around this for our current student uploads, however I’d like to find out the reason why this is failing.”

I’ve added Simon to this list so if anyone can shed any light on this, or has encountered the problem and solved it, we would like to hear from you. I should add that this is based on the latest release (0.06...)

Thanks

Paul

_______________________________________________

Paul Chin FHEA

Manager

UK Physical Sciences Centre

Higher Education Academy Subject Network

Department of Chemistry

University of Hull Hull HU6 7RX

Direct line: +44 (0)1482 462028

Office Tel/Fax: +44 (0)1482 465418

[log in to unmask] www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci