Tuesday 9 July 2013

GSoC 2013: End of Week 3 of Coding Period

Week 3 of the Coding Period of GSoC 2013 got over on Monday, 8th July 2013. After almost getting done with the first of the three major milestones for the project, this week was devoted mainly to a bit of testing, getting rid of the major bugs and the overall code improvement and optimization.

Firstly, there was a major bug in the plugin I had developed. It was working only on export of just the forum posts and not on other modules like exporting glossaries, chat sessions, etc. This point had for some strange reason just got out of mind while finalizing the Milestone 1. It was a minor bug and I have fixed it now.

So, this week I mainly tested out the plugin for different export conditions and the plugin was working well after the above bug fixing. I'm still to test the plugin in a couple of contexts like Database Activities, but I guess this plugin shouldn't come up with any problem in those tests. But I'll test them out soon and fix the bugs if any.

Also, I have now improved the code and have tried to follow the Moodle coding guidelines as much as possible. Now most of the code is according to the coding guidelines and I also optimized a couple of minor things in the code. So, this basically looks like a more finished piece of code for Milestone 1 of the project.

Now, I'll be proceeding for Milestone 2 of the project. As mentioned in the project doc, Milestone 2 would enable the user to export the attachments to their Evernote accounts. For a start, I've been successful in developing some sample test codes for enabling the users to export it to their Evernote accounts. So, I think I'll be ready with some raw code for the plugin as soon as by the end of next week.

So, my next week would be devoted to developing the exporting of the attachments feature for the plugin. More updates and progress about this in the next week!

Cheers!

Wednesday 3 July 2013

GSoC 2013: End of Week 2 of Coding Period

Week 2 of the Coding Period of GSoC 2013 got over on Monday 1st July, 2013. And it gives me great pleasure to notify people that I've made a pretty good progress with regards to my project of developing a Moodle Portfolio Plugin for Evernote.

Till the end of last week, I had made a very basic portfolio plugin which was just creating a basic plain text note in Evernote in the default notebook of the user and with a predefined title of the note. Also, there were some problems in the portfolio which saw clashes with the Moodle Evernote Repository. I have now taken care of some of these issues.

The portfolio plugin now has the feature where the user can select the notebook he wants the note to be created. Also, the user now has the flexibility to define the note title for the note. And one of the most nice features is that the notes now retain some of the font effects of the exports instead of just the plain text notes that were created before. Although Evernote API doesn't support any CSS or style statements, I have tried to retain some of the Font effects by converting the CSS to the HTML format. And I am trying to retain as many font effects as possible by the above method.

But, I've still not arrived at a solution where the Portfolio API of Evernote doesn't clash with the Moodle Evernote Repository. I tried hard to counter the problem, but I am currently out of any feasible idea. The only solution now is to disable the Evernote Repository for the Evernote Portfolio plugin to work. It creates a hell lot of mess if you don't disable the Evernote Repository before enabling the Portfolio plugin. I hope to find a good solution soon.

As of now, I think I've completed the Milestone 1 as specified on the project wiki page. I'll now proceed to Milestone 2 after making some slight changes to the code.

Unfortunately, I just forgot to give the link of my project repository before on Github. The Github link is:
https://github.com/thatsvishalhere/evernote

I would be glad to receive feedback if somebody tests out this repository!

Cheers!