• AVOIR
• Chisimba
• Chisimba used as a portal
• Chisimba used as an online presentation system
• Chisimba used in eLearning
• And of course, used as a blog on this site

The controller is in the root of the module, and is named controller.php. Templates may be of three kinds: content, layout, and page. In general, we do not need to touch page or layout templates, only the content templates.

Use case: You want to return some data for an Ajax call, so you can do something with it in Javascript and insert it into the page. You need to return only the required data without any of the user interface components or webpage components that Chisimba normally renders.

Lets say that you have a module called dosomething. You are calling for a user name through an Ajax call. The URL you are calling from within your Ajax code might be something like:

http://localhost/index.php?module=dosomething&action=getname

which you expect to return just the name, say Derek Keats.

Using the standard appoach, without suppressing all the user interface elements, you will get data that are unusable in Ajax. You need to suppress all that using a custom page template.

The Controller for your module would have a method __getname()
which would do something like:

public function __getname()
{
    $str = "Derek Keats";
    $this->setVarByRef("str", $name);
    $this->setPageTemplate('ajax_template.php');
    return "ajax_tpl.php";
}

Note that there are two templates used here, the custom page template, ajax_template.php and the content template ajax_tpl.php. Within your module, you must have a templates directory, and inside it you must have one called page, and one called content. That is,

dosomething/templates/page/ajax_template.php
dosomething/templates/content/ajax_tpl.php

The file ajax_template.php should contain only

<?php
echo $this->getLayoutContent();
?>

The file ajax_tpl.php should contain only

<?php
echo $str;
?>

That is it. Any data can be returned for use by Ajax calls in this way.

The FLOSSInclude project http://www.flossinclude.org/ is a European commission (EC) funded project and aimed to build on the corpus of FLOSS research that the EC had built up. The study also built on the highly successful FP5 FLOSSPols project http://www.flosspols.org/ and the FP6 FLOSSWORLD project http://www.flossworld.org/. The FLOSSInclude study was a more focused study than its predecessors and focused more on regional FLOSS initiatives and FLOSS needs within the target regions. The reports and data collected on the project will be used to be a European Commission roadmap on FLOSS research and possibly shape future FLOSS policy in Europe and elsewhere.

The major areas addressed by the FLOSSInclude study were the following:

• Analysis of available data to identify key problem areas and areas of blocked potential for FLOSS in the target regions. Dissemination and networking, to identify and federate local and regional initiatives
• Requirements analysis, to show with concrete cases the specific technical, business and socio-political needs for the growth of FLOSS use, deployment and development in target regions
• Validation and pilots, to ensure that FLOSS solutions, tools and services can be cost-effective and practical
• Prepare a cooperation roadmap, supported by regional initiatives, concrete cases for clearly identified requirements, with solution areas proposed that have been validated through pilots.

FLOSSInclude in Africa was represented by the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana. Both Nic Appleby and Enver Ravat gave presentations on the case study “e-learning and Kewl 3.0: the implementation of web 3.0 advanced technologies”). The case study explored e-learning at UWC and included a range of issues from e-learning structures to development problems of the world class, locally developed e-learning platform (Kewl 3.0) to the challenges faced by the e-learning team at implementing a sound e-learning policy at UWC and placing University of the Western Cape at the vanguard of e-learning innovation in South Africa. It also documented the use of e-learning outside of the University within the regional context. For more information on the case study and project please mail Enver Ravat (at eravat2@gmail.com).

Participants-Keen-To-Learn, originally uploaded by Paul Mungai.

I bet this is the only software framework where programmers get a free Vuvuzela!

Le Vuvuzela, originally uploaded by wesleynitsckie.

The guys at UWC created a Chisimba vuvuzela to take to OSCON. If this doesn't get attention, nothing willl!

Currently, the fields are stored in user paramters (MENU: user | user configuration). The plan is to move this to triplestore as soon as triplestore has a user interface (no planned timeline, no list response to query). The following fields will generate the business card:

ABOUT ME:
tagline

SOCIAL NETWORKING:
africatorurl
deliciousurl
diggurl
facebookurl
flickrurl
friendfeedurl
googleurl
identicaurl
linkedinurl
mutiurl
operaurl
picasaurl
qikurl
slideshareurl
technoratiurl
twitterurl
youtubeurl

ADDRESSES:
addr_home
ddr_city_home
addr_city_work
addr_postalcode_home
addr_postalcode_work

MAP:
latitude
longitude

PHONE:
phone_home
phone_work
phone_cell

TAGS:

tags
   separated by a dash -
   e.g. geek-elearning-chisimba-php

WEBSITES:
homepage

Happy experimenting!

15/365 - mLearning with Chisimba, originally uploaded by paulscott56.

Paul Scott shows the login screen for Chisimba's mLearning skin. The mLearning skin was developed for use of UWC's eLearning site on mobile phones.

Following on from the idea of dynamic canvases, I have made it possible for Chisimba to render an entire template based on functionality of Chisimba that we call blocks. There are two types of blocks in Chisimba, narrow blocks and wide blocks. Narrow blocks work on the side columns of 2 and 3 column layout, and wide blocks work on the middle area of 1, 2 and 3 column layout.

To use blocks to make a template, it may be necessary to use output buffering. To do this, add the following to the top of the template:

<?php
ob_start();
?>

Then add the following to the bottom of the template:

<?php
// Get the contents for the layout template
$pageContent = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$this->setVar('pageContent', $pageContent);
?>

You then need a layout template in your module that contains:

<?php
$objBlocks = $this->getObject('blockfilter', 'dynamiccanvas');
$pageContent = $this->getVar('pageContent');
$pageContent = $objBlocks->parse($pageContent);
echo $pageContent;
?>

In your controller, for methods that will render the block-based dynamic canvas, you need to ensure that you enable the layout template using:

$this->setLayoutTemplate('demo_layout.php');

For this to work, you need a version 3.0+ skin, and you need to use the Chisimba Canvas layout, which is as follows:

<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region1"></div>
<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region3"></div>
<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region2"></div>

Note that Canvas_Content_Body_Region2 is the middle, but needs to be presented last in order for the columns to float and align correctly.

For 2-column layouts this would be:

<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region1"></div>
<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region2"></div>

Blocks are inserted using JSON syntax as follows:

 {
    "display" : "block",
    "module" : "modulename",
    "block" : "blockname",
    "blocktype" : "blocktype",
    "titleLength" : "titlelength",
    "wrapStr" : 0|1,
    "showToggle" : 0|1,
    "hidden" : "value,
    "showTitle" : 0|1,
    "cssClass" : "cssClass",
    "cssId " : "cssId"
 }

Thus, adding the above block to the left column in such a template would consist of including it in the Canvas_Content_Body_Region1 div as follows:

<div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region1">

 {
    "display" : "block",
    "module" : "modulename",
    "block" : "blockname",
    "blocktype" : "blocktype",
    "titleLength" : "titlelength",
    "wrapStr" : 0|1,
    "showToggle" : 0|1,
    "hidden" : "value,
    "showTitle" : 0|1,
    "cssClass" : "cssClass",
    "cssId " : "cssId"
 }

</div>

Everything except display, module and block are optional. A template made up in this way might look like:

<?php
ob_start();
$objFix = $this->getObject('cssfixlength', 'htmlelements');
$objFix->fixThree();
?>

<div id="threecolumn">
    <div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region1">
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "dynamiccanvas",
            "block" : "test1"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "canvas",
            "block" : "selecttype"
        }
    </div>
    <div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region3">
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "dynamiccanvas",
            "block" : "test2"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "security",
            "block" : "login"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "blocks",
            "block" : "wrapper"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "blocks",
            "block" : "table"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "filemanager",
            "block" : "userfiles"
        }
    </div>
    <div id="Canvas_Content_Body_Region2">
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "userdetails",
            "block" : "userdetails"
        }
        {
            "display" : "block",
            "module" : "dynamiccanvas",
            "block" : "nonexistentblock"
        }
        {
            "display" : "externalblock",
            "server" : "http://localhost/ch/",
            "module" : "dynamiccanvas",
            "block" : "thirdtest",
            "showTitle":0
        }
        {
            "display" : "externalblock",
            "server" : "http://localhost/ch/",
            "module" : "canvas",
            "block" : "canvasviewer"
        }
    </div>
</div>

<?php
// Get the contents for the layout template
$pageContent = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$this->setVar('pageContent', $pageContent);
?>

Note that the lines

$objFix = $this->getObject('cssfixlength', 'htmlelements');
$objFix->fixThree();

are there to equalize the columns. This need will shortly be removed.

For a working example of this, see the dynamiccanvas module.