Question: Should xAPI be prevented from listening on any initialisation error

[dancgray]

If I'm reading the code correctly any error on initialisation prevents the event listeners being setup but allows the user to continue without any visible warning. The users progress would not be sent to the LRS. This seems far from ideal.

For example, on initialisation, if the LRS returns an HTTP error when xAPI requests the state the value for isInitialised is set to false. Which prevents the listeners being setup but with only a console warning.

My question is, should the user be given a more explicit warning that their progress will not be tracked and are all initialisation errors of equal importance for xAPI tracking?

[brian-learningpool]

Displaying a warning to the user under such circumstances is configurable. There's a _lrsFailureBehaviour configuration attribute. By default they should actually be shown.

See: https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-xapi/blob/master/properties.schema#L288-L310 https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-xapi/blob/master/js/adapt-contrib-xapi.js#L1579

[dancgray]

Thanks @brian-learningpool. I think something in our course must have been preventing/hiding that alert.

Is there any appetite for optionally making the warning none closable for initialisation failures only?

[brian-learningpool]

Hi @dancgray, I guess we could, but I would prefer it if this was tied to a new option of some kind, so we have something like:

• ignore
• show
• block(?)

[dancgray]

Thanks @brian-learningpool, that sounds ideal, adding the option to _lrsFailureBehaviour.

Also the way the error alert is setup at the moment (event with the notify _isCancellable set) it will get dismissed due to the wait timer.

Presumably I will have to trigger xAPI's showError after the page has loaded?

Apologies for the questions, I'm not that familiar with the wait process.

[oliverfoster]

closed as stale