IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.

NOTICE: 1EdTech will be moving Caliper to private repositories on June 17, 2023. Access to the repositories will be available for 1EdTech Contributing Members and Affiliates. We encourage you to get involved in 1EdTech to support the Caliper work and get certified for Caliper.

caliper-net

The Caliper Analytics® Specification provides a structured approach to describing, collecting and exchanging learning activity data at scale. Caliper also defines an application programming interface (the Sensor API™) for marshalling and transmitting event data from instrumented applications to target endpoints for storage, analysis and use.

caliper-net is a reference implementation of the Sensor API™ written in .NET.

Branches

master: stable, deployable branch that stores the official release history. develop: unstable development branch. Current work that targets a future release is merged to this branch. Tags

caliper-net releases are tagged and versioned MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH[-label] (e.g., 1.1.0). Pre-release tags are identified with an extensions label (e.g., "1.2.0-RC01"). The tags are stored in this repository.

Contributing

We welcome the posting of issues by non IMS Global Learning Consortium members (e.g., feature requests, bug reports, questions, etc.) but we do not accept contributions in the form of pull requests from non-members. See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

Getting Started

First, instantiate a new Caliper Sensor, specifying a sensor ID (used to distinguish the source of events), then register a Caliper endpoint where events will be sent to.

NOTE: The sensor object should be created once and reused when sending events over the course of an application lifetime.

using ImsGlobal.Caliper;
...
var sensor = new CaliperSensor( "my-sensor-id" );
string endpointId = sensor.RegisterEndpoint(
    new CaliperEndpointOptions( "https://caliper.example.edu/events" )
);

Then create an event:

using ImsGlobal.Caliper.Entities.Agent;
using ImsGlobal.Caliper.Entities.Media;
using ImsGlobal.Caliper.Events;
using ImsGlobal.Caliper.Events.Media;
using NodaTime;
...
var mediaEvent = new MediaEvent( Action.Paused ) {
	Actor = new Person( "https://example.edu/user/554433" ),
	Object = new VideoObject( "https://example.com/super-media-tool/video/1225" ),
	Target = new MediaLocation( "https://example.com/super-media-tool/video/1225" ) {
        CurrentTime = 710
    },
	EventTime = Instant.FromUtc( 2015, 9, 15, 10, 15, 0 ),
	EdApp = new SoftwareApplication( "https://example.com/super-media-tool" ) {
        Name = "Super Media Tool"
    }
};

Finally, send the event to the registered endpoint through the sensor:

bool success = await sensor.SendAsync( mediaEvent );

Sending a batch of events

You can send multiple events in one call to the Caliper endpoint:

var events = new List<Event>();
events.add( event1 );
events.add( event2 );
events.add( event3 );

sensor.SendAsync( events );

Sending events to multiple endpoints

You can register multiple endpoints with the sensor to send the same events to all registered endpoints:

var sensor = new CaliperSensor( "my-sensor-id" );
string endpoint1 = sensor.RegisterEndpoint( new CaliperEndpointOptions( "https://caliper.example.edu/events" ) );
string endpoint2 = sensor.RegisterEndpoint( new CaliperEndpointOptions( "https://analytics.vendor.com/caliper" ) );

var @event = ...
sensor.SendAsync( @event ); // this event will be sent to both registered endpoints

Sending events to one endpoint but not another

If you registered multiple endpoints, but want to send some events to some endpoints but not others, pass the endpoint ID during the SendAsync call:

// register multiple endpoints as above

var @event = ...
sensor.SendAsync( @event, endpoint1 ); // this event will be sent to endpoint1 only

Describing entities

The sensor provides a Describe() method to send entity descriptions to the Caliper endpoint:

var entity = new VideoObject( "https://example.com/super-media-tool/video/1225" ) {
    Name = "American Revolution - Key Figures Video",
    AlignedLearningObjectives = new [] { 
        new LearningObjective( "https://example.edu/american-revolution-101/personalities/learn" )
    },
    Duration = 1420,
    Version = "1.0",
    DateCreated = Instant.FromUtc( 2015, 8, 1, 6, 0, 0 ),
    DateModified = Instant.FromUtc( 2015, 9, 2, 11, 30, 0 )
};

sensor.DescribeAsync( entity );

Supported Metric Profiles

• Base MP
• Session MP
• Reading MP
• Annotation MP
• Assignable MP
• Assessment MP
• Assessment Item MP
• Outcome MP
• Media MP

Building

Requirements

• .NET Framework 4.5
• (optional) Visual Studio 2013

From Visual Studio

• Open the ImsGlobal.Caliper.sln solution in Visual Studio
• Select the desired build configuration: Debug or Release
• Build the ImsGlobal.Caliper project

From the Command Line

> cd caliper-net
> msbuild ImsGlobal.Caliper.sln

By default this will use the Debug build configuration. To use the Release build configuration:

> msbuild ImsGlobal.Caliper.sln /property:Configuration=Release

The build output will be under .\src\ImsGlobal.Caliper\bin\Debug or .src\ImsGlobal.Caliper\bin\Release, depending on the chosen build configuration.

Running Tests

> cd caliper-net
> .nuget\nuget.exe install NUnit.Runners -Version 2.6.4 -OutputDirectory packages
> packages\NUnit.Runners.2.6.4\tools\nunit-console.exe ^
    /config:Debug ^
    /framework:net-4.5 ^
    test\ImsGlobal.Caliper.Tests\bin\Debug\ImsGlobal.Caliper.Tests.dll

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3. See the LICENSE file for details. For additional information on licensing options for IMS members, please see the NOTICE file.

©2018 IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Trademark Information - http://www.imsglobal.org/copyright.html