Comparison to TinCan launch information

[dcollien]

Other sources of information refer to a different (simpler? perhaps less ideal?) launch strategy for configuring the LRS endpoint and the statements to send.

e.g. https://github.com/RusticiSoftware/launch/blob/master/lms_lrs.md and https://articulate.com/support/article/Implementing-Tin-Can-API-to-Support-Articulate-Content#launching-public-content

both refer to launching content by passing the query-string variables:

• endpoint
• auth
• actor
• registration
• activity_id etc. to directly configure the use of the API

Whereas this project's approach passes in query-string variables:

• xAPILaunchKey
• xAPILaunchService
• (optional) encrypted to retrieve the configuration from the launch service (which query string parameters to use here took me a long time to work out - perhaps this could be better documented in this project's README as well?)

Is this launch strategy set to replace the aforementioned other approach? Or do both need to be implemented as alternate ways to perform a launch?

[vbhayden]

Morning dcollien.

This project was the brainchild of the previous head of ADL's engineering and may not line up with other methods of launching content.

The approach you cite above is very close to the launch paradigm we're using for this year's TLA demonstration, where an activity ID is passed as a query parameter to format the future xapi statements.

To answer your question, this project, while functional, is a bit dated and is not an attempt to replace other paradigms -- only to show an alternative implementation.

[dcollien]

Thanks for the context vbhayden,

If this is indeed the situation is there anywhere that has a more up-to-date, or commonly used specification for how to pass configuration parameters to xAPI activities launched from another platform? I.e. any consensus on the way forward, or is this a fragmented space that is still maturing?

Having multiple published alternatives (without deprecation) would seem to make it more difficult to build and support transportable content in a learning platform/LMS, but in the mean time - if there is no clear direction as of yet, it looks like I’ll be in the unfortunate place of implementing support for:

• this launch method, to support packages using the accompanying xAPIWrapper JavaScript library (and it seems to be a quite flexible and easy to implement approach)
• the aforementioned to support any packages using the Rustici/Articulate method
• continual adaptation to support any required variation as per the future development of the TLA or CMI5, etc