CoffeeScript.kdlecture

An example implementation of a lecture for KodeLectures.kdapp

KodeLectures is an app that lives on Koding.com, allowing people to create and view lectures with interactive features. This repository is supposed to show how a lecture is strctured.

Structure

The current terminology for KodeLectures.kdapp is as follows:

• The basic unit is a Course.
• Each Course can contain any number of Lectures
• A Lecture can contain a variety of things, such as embedded Media, files, assignments and so on.

The Course

A course has a title, a description and the lectures it contains. It is the encapsulating unit for any number of lectures that the author wants to unite under a particular topic.

TODO: include course difficulty

The Lecture

A lecture has a title and a plethora of values that contain media or text. Please check the manifest.json reference for further information.

manifest.json

The main file of a Koding Lecture is the manifest.json file. You will find an example in this repository. Valid options are:

Course level values

• title: The title of your Course, e.g. How not to write production code
• description: A short description of the Course, e.g. This will teach you to avoid common mistakes when working with large codebases
• path: Filename of the Course, in this very case it's CoffeeScript.kdlecture
• lectures: An array of objects, each representing a Lecture
• author: Your name, as a string, e.g. Frodo Baggins

Lecture level values

General Information

• title: The title of the Lecture. It is wise to enumerate the lectures here, e.g. 'Lecture 01: How to open a Text Editor'
• summary: A short text to show in the in-Lecture overview bar, e.g. 'Common mistakes when using git'

Origin Information

• originType: How the course can/should be impoorted, here it would be git.
• originUrl: The source where this course can be found.

####Text

• codeHint: This is a badly named text for the solution for the assignment. Use markdown here at your leisure.
• codeHintText: This text should give the user a clue how to solve the assignment. Use markdown here.
• taskText: The text containing instructions for finishing the assignment for this particular lecture. Again, markdown is supported.
• lectureText: The actual text of the lecture. Any explaining should be done here. markdown is supported.

Embedded Media

• embedType: If a video should be embedded into the lecture, specify a type.
  • Currently supported: "youtube"
• videoUrl: The URL that should be embedded. Make sure it is an embeddable URL.

####Assignment-specific options

• expectedResults: This is highly experimental. Specify a String or an Object (w.i.p.) to test against for automatic assignment checking.
  • TODO: implement ruleset-support, implement regex support.
• submitSuccess: Message to show to the user when the submitted code was correct
• submitFailure: Message to show to the user when the submitted code falls short of expectedResults checking
• language: The programming language to be used in the editor.
  • Currently supported: coffee, javascript, ruby, python, basically anything the Ace editor supports.
• code: Code to show when the lesson starts.
  • Please note: this is legacy logic, right now a file needs to be present in the .kdlecture directory. That file will then be loaded initially.

####Preview-related options

• previewType: WIP feature to use different preview types.
  • Currently supported:
    • code-preview - Will execute the command in execute and return the result as a string
    • execute-html - Will show an iframe pointing to the file in previewPath, symlinked to the public koding webserver at a unique URL
    • terminal - Will show a koding WebTerm terminal and pass the input from the file into the terminal when code is submitted
• previewPath: Used with the execute-html preview type
• execute: The command to be executed when the user submits his code, e.g. "coffee lecture01.coffee -n"
  • WARNING: this code will run inside the users virtual machine (for now). Please make sure not to go haywire and execute malicious commands.
  • as a note to users: until we have an approval process, treat every .kdlecture as potentially intrusive code. Please check the manifest.json file carefully!
• files : An array of files that belong to the lecture, e.g. ["lecture01.coffee"]
  • for now, the first file will be shown. Further features are w.i.p.