How-To Tutorials - Web Development

Our next task in creating the storefront is to create the shopping cart. This will allow users to select the products they wish to purchase. Users will be able to select, edit, and delete items from their shopping cart. Lets get started. Creating the Cart Model and Resources We will start by creating our model and model resources. The Cart Model differs from our previous model in the fact that it will use the session to store its data instead of the database. Cart Model The Cart Model will store the products that they wish to purchase. Therefore, the Cart Model will contain Cart Items that will be stored in the session. Let's create this class now. application/modules/storefront/models/Cart.php class Storefront_Model_Cart extends SF_Model_Abstract implements SeekableIterator, Countable, ArrayAccess { protected $_items = array(); protected $_subTotal = 0; protected $_total = 0; protected $_shipping = 0; protected $_sessionNamespace; public function init() { $this->loadSession(); } public function addItem( Storefront_Resource_Product_Item_Interface $product,$qty) { if (0 > $qty) { return false; } if (0 == $qty) { $this->removeItem($product); return false; } $item = new Storefront_Resource_Cart_Item( $product, $qty ); $this->_items[$item->productId] = $item; $this->persist(); return $item; } public function removeItem($product) { if (is_int($product)) { unset($this->_items[$product]); } if ($product instanceof Storefront_Resource_Product_Item_Interface) { unset($this->_items[$product->productId]); } $this->persist(); } public function setSessionNs(Zend_Session_Namespace $ns) { $this->_sessionNamespace = $ns; } public function getSessionNs() { if (null === $this->_sessionNamespace) { $this->setSessionNs(new Zend_Session_Namespace(__CLASS__)); } return $this->_sessionNamespace; } public function persist() { $this->getSessionNs()->items = $this->_items; $this->getSessionNs()->shipping = $this->getShippingCost(); } public function loadSession() { if (isset($this->getSessionNs()->items)) { $this->_items = $this->getSessionNs()->items; } if (isset($this->getSessionNs()->shipping)) { $this->setShippingCost($this->getSessionNs()->shipping); } } public function CalculateTotals() { $sub = 0; foreach ($this as $item) { $sub = $sub + $item->getLineCost(); } $this->_subTotal = $sub; $this->_total = $this->_subTotal + (float) $this->_shipping; } public function setShippingCost($cost) { $this->_shipping = $cost; $this->CalculateTotals(); $this->persist(); } public function getShippingCost() { $this->CalculateTotals(); return $this->_shipping; } public function getSubTotal() { $this->CalculateTotals(); return $this->_subTotal; } public function getTotal() { $this->CalculateTotals(); return $this->_total; } /*...*/ } We can see that the Cart Model class is fairly weighty and in fact, we have not included the full class here. The reason we have slightly truncated the class is that we are implementing the SeekableIterator, Countable, and ArrayAccess interfaces. These interfaces are defined by PHP's SPL Library and we use them to provide a better way to interact with the cart data. For the complete code, copy the methods below getTotal() from the example files for this article. We will look at what each method does shortly in the Cart Model implementation section, but first, let's look at what functionality the SPL interfaces allow us to add. Cart Model interfaces The SeekableIterator interface allows us to access our cart data in these ways: // iterate over the cartforeach($cart as $item) {}// seek an item at a position$cart->seek(1);// standard iterator access$cart->rewind();$cart->next();$cart->current(); The Countable interface allows us to count the items in our cart: count($cart); The ArrayAccess interface allows us to access our cart like an array: $cart[0]; Obviously, the interfaces provide no concrete implementation for the functionality, so we have to provide it on our own. The methods not listed in the previous code listing are: offsetExists($key) offsetGet($key) offsetSet($key, $value) offsetUnset($key) current() key() next() rewind() valid() seek($index) count() We will not cover the actual implementation of these interfaces, as they are standard to PHP. However, you will need to copy all these methods from the example files to get the Cart Model working. Documentation for the SPL library can be found athttp://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/     Cart Model implementation Going back to our code listing, let's now look at how the Cart Model is implemented. Let's start by looking at the properties and methods of the class. The Cart Model has the following class properties: $_items:An array of cart items $_subTotal: Monetary total of cart items $_total: Monetary total of cart items plus shipping $_shipping: The shipping cost $_sessionNamespace: The session store The Cart Model has the following methods: init(): Called during construct and loads the session data addItem(Storefront_Resource_Product_Item_Interface $product, $qty): Adds or updates items in the cart removeItem($product): Removes a cart item setSessionNs(Zend_Session_Namespace $ns): Sets the session instance to use for storage getSessionNs(): Gets the current session instance persist(): Saves the cart data to the session loadSession(): Loads the stored session values calculateTotals(): Calculates the cart totals setShippingCost($cost): Sets the shipping cost getShippingCost(): Gets the shipping cost getSubTotal(): Gets the total cost for items in the cart (not including the shipping) getTotal(): Gets the subtotal plus the shipping cost When we instantiate a new Cart Model instance, the init() method is called. This is defined in the SF_Model_Abstract class and is called by the __construct() method. This enables us to easily extend the class's instantiation process without having to override the constructor. The init() method simply calls the loadSession() method. This method populates the model with the cart items and shipping information stored in the session. The Cart Model uses Zend_Session_Namespace to store this data, which provides an easy-to-use interface to the $_SESSION variable. If we look at the loadSession() method, we see that it tests whether the items and shipping properties are set in the session namespace. If they are, then we set these values on the Cart Model. To get the session namespace, we use the getSessionNs() method. This method checks if the $_sessionNs property is set and returns it. Otherwise it will lazy load a new Zend_Session_Namespace instance for us. When using Zend_Session_ Namespace, we must provide a string to its constructor that defines the name of the namespace to store our data in. This will then create a clean place to add variables to, without worrying about variable name clashes. For the Cart Model, the default namespace will be Storefront_Model_Cart. The Zend_Session_Namespace component provides a range of functionality that we can use to control the session. For example, we can set the expiration time as follows: $ns = new Zend_Session_Namespace('test');$ns->setExpirationSeconds(60, 'items');$ns->setExpirationHops(10);$ns->setExpirationSeconds(120); This code would set the item's property expiration to 60 seconds and the namespaces expiration to 10 hops (requests) or 120 seconds, whichever is reached first. The useful thing about this is that the expiration is not global. Therefore, we can have specialized expiration per session namespace. There is a full list of Zend_Session_Namespace functionalities in the reference manual. Testing with Zend_Session and Zend_Session_NamespaceTesting with the session components can be fairly diffi cult. For the Cart Model, we use the setSessionNs() method to allow us to inject a mock object for testing, which you can see in the Cart Model unit tests. There are plans to rewrite the session components to make testing easier in the future, so keep an eye out for those updates. To add an item to the cart, we use the addItem() method. This method accepts two parameters,$product and $qty. The $product parameter must be an instance of the Storefront_Resource_Product_Item class, and the $qty parameter must be an integer that defines the quantity that the customer wants to order. If the addItem() method receives a valid $qty, then it will create a new Storefront_Resource_Cart_Item and add it to the $_items array using the productId as the array key. We then call the persist() method. This method simply stores all the relevant cart data in the session namespace for us. You will notice that we are not using a Model Resource in the Cart Model and instead we are directly instantiating a Model Resource Item. This is because the Model Resources represent store items and the Cart Model is already doing this for us so it is not needed. To remove an item, we use the removeItem() method. This accepts a single parameter $product which can be either an integer or a Storefront_Resource_Product_Item instance. The matching cart item will be removed from the $_items array and the data will be saved to the session. Also, addItem() will call removeItem() if the quantity is set to zero. The other methods in the Cart Model are used to calculate the monetary totals for the cart and to set the shipping. We will not cover these in detail here as they are fairly simple mathematical calculations. Cart Model Resources Now that we have our Model created, let's create the Resource Interface and concrete Resource class for our Model to use. application/modules/storefront/models/resources/Cart/Item/Interface.php interface Storefront_Resource_Cart_Item_Interface { public function getLineCost(); } The Cart Resource Item has a very simple interface that has one method, getLineCost(). This method is used when calculating the cart totals in the Cart Model. application/modules/storefront/models/resources/Cart/Item.php class Storefront_Resource_Cart_Item implements Storefront_Resource_Cart_Item_Interface { public $productId; public $name; public $price; public $taxable; public $discountPercent; public $qty; public function __construct(Storefront_Resource_Product_Item_ Interface $product, $qty) { $this->productId = (int) $product->productId; $this->name = $product->name; $this->price = (float) $product->getPrice(false,false); $this->taxable = $product->taxable; $this->discountPercent = (int) $product->discountPercent; $this->qty = (int) $qty; } public function getLineCost() { $price = $this->price; if (0 !== $this->discountPercent) { $discounted = ($price*$this->discountPercent)/100; $price = round($price - $discounted, 2); } if ('Yes' === $this->taxable) { $taxService = new Storefront_Service_Taxation(); $price = $taxService->addTax($price); } return $price * $this->qty; } } The concrete Cart Resource Item has two methods __construct() and getLineCost(). The constructor accepts two parameters $product and $qty that must be a Storefront_Resource_Product_Item_Interface instance and integer respectively. This method will then simply copy the values from the product instance and store them in the matching public properties. We do this because we do not want to simply store the product instance because it has all the database connection data contained within. This object will be serialized and stored in the session. The getLineCost() method simply calculates the cost of the product adding tax and discounts and then multiplies it by the given quantity. Shipping Model We also need to create a Shipping Model so that the user can select what type of shipping they would like. This Model will simply act as a data store for some predefined shipping values. application/modules/storefront/models/Shipping.php class Storefront_Model_Shipping extends SF_Model_Abstract { protected $_shippingData = array( 'Standard' => 1.99, 'Special' => 5.99, ); public function getShippingOptions() { return $this->_shippingData; } } The shipping Model is very simple and only contains the shipping options and a single method to retrieve them. In a normal application, shipping would usually be stored in the database and most likely have its own set of business rules. For the Storefront, we are not creating a complete ordering process so we do not need these complications. Creating the Cart Controller With our Model and Model Resources created, we can now start wiring the application layer together. The Cart will have a single Controller, CartController that will be used to add, view, and update cart items stored in the Cart Model. application/modules/storefront/controllers/CartController.php class Storefront_CartController extends Zend_Controller_Action { protected $_cartModel; protected $_catalogModel; public function init() { $this->_cartModel = new Storefront_Model_Cart(); $this->_catalogModel = new Storefront_Model_Catalog(); } public function addAction() { $product = $this->_catalogModel->getProductById( $this->_getParam('productId') ); if(null === $product) { throw new SF_Exception('Product could not be added to cart as it does not exist' ); } $this->_cartModel->addItem( $product, $this->_getParam('qty') ); $return = rtrim( $this->getRequest()->getBaseUrl(), '/' ) . $this->_getParam('returnto'); $redirector = $this->getHelper('redirector'); return $redirector->gotoUrl($return); } public function viewAction() { $this->view->cartModel = $this->_cartModel; } public function updateAction() { foreach($this->_getParam('quantity') as $id => $value) { $product = $this->_catalogModel->getProductById($id); if (null !== $product) { $this->_cartModel->addItem($product, $value); } } $this->_cartModel->setShippingCost( $this->_getParam('shipping') ); return $this->_helper->redirector('view'); } } The Cart Controller has three actions that provide a way to: add: add cart items view: view the cart contents update: update cart items The addAction() first tries to find the product to be added to the cart. This is done by searching for the product by its productId field, which is passed either in the URL or by post using the Catalog Model. If the product is not found, then we throw an SF_Exception stating so. Next, we add the product to the cart using the addItem() method. When adding the product, we also pass in the qty. The qty can again be either in the URL or post. Once the product has been successfully added to the cart, we then need to redirect back to the page where the product was added. As we can have multiple locations, we send a returnto variable with the add request. This will contain the URL to redirect back to, once the item has been added to the cart. To stop people from being able to redirect away from the storefront, we prepend the baseurl to the redirect string. To perform the actual redirect, we use the redirector Action Helper's gotoUrl() method. This will create an HTTP redirect for us. The viewAction() simply assigns the Cart Model to the cartModel View property. Most of the cart viewing functionality has been pushed to the Cart View Helper and Forms, which we will create shortly. The updateAction() is used to update the Cart Items already stored in the cart. The first part of this updates the quantities. The quantities will be posted to the Action as an array in the quantity parameter. The array will contain the productId as the array key, and the quantity as the value. Therefore, we iterate over the array fi nding the product by its ID and adding it to the cart. The addItem() method will then update the quantity for us if the item exists and remove any with a zero quantity. Once we have updated the cart quantities, we set the shipping and redirect back to the viewAction. >> Continue Reading Creating a Shopping Cart using Zend Framework: Part 2

In this article, we take a turn from work I hand out to students to look at how to manage online work that they hand to me. Currently, in my Backyard Ballistics course, I set two major end-of-course projects: A poster on energy sources A PowerPoint presentation to the group on how energy is transferred when objects are sent flying through the air Both tasks are graded separately. For me, the final project has always been a major headache: PowerPoint presentations go missing. Students claim they have emailed me files that never reach me. The school technician is wary of students bringing in work on memory sticks because of the threat of viruses. Marking the posters involves me having to make notes on paper, and having a system to associate those notes with digital photographs of the posters stored elsewhere. I want a system that allows me to manage student submissions in one self-contained tool—one that can be used to exchange files between my students and me without having to resort to other, far less reliable, means. Also, wouldn't it be good to have a tool that allows us to comment (and include photographs, videos—in fact any digital file we liked) and grade work all under one umbrella? Added to that, my course specification also demands that I grade students on key skills: numeracy, literacy, and the use of ICT. And that's not something I specifically set a project for. I need a way of grading students on those aspects of their work separate from any specific project. That's another headache. That may seem like a lot to worry about, but (as you've probably already heard) by converting to Moodle, we can easily find answers to all of these issues, and more. So let's get on with it, and make a start with converting my poster project and PowerPoint assignments to Moodle... Converting Projects and Assignments Moodle provides four types of assignment activity, and they well match any kind of project that you are likely to set for your students. Turn editing on, go to any topic, and click on the Add an activity list. In this list, you will see the four different assignment types Moodle supports. They are: Offline activity—If your student projects can't be uploaded into Moodle because the student submission isn't electronic (just like my poster project), then you can manage grades and your notes on the students' work using this kind of assignment type. Online text—Students are going to be creating the assignment submission using the text editor built into Moodle. That's the one we've been using to create our course so far. Upload a single file—Does what it says on the tin. Students can only upload one file. Advanced uploading of files—Students can upload more than one file. As a teacher, you can also use Moodle as a mechanism for exchanging files between students, instead of using email (unreliable) or a memory stick (virus risk). Don't be afraid to have a look at these assignment types now. With editing turned on, click on Add an activity... and select any of the assignment types. That way you can get a feel for the kinds of settings we'll be dealing with before we start. Remember: if, while you are trying out different assignment types, you mistakenly add an assignment to your course, you can easily delete it by clicking on the delete icon next to the assignment name. How to Structure Converted Projects and Assignments Online For larger projects or assignments, it is often preferable to have a self-contained topic containing the actual assignment itself, together with any supporting materials. You could include exemplars (e.g. work from previous years) and give students the opportunity to discuss them together. Having the assignment, and all of the supporting materials, in a single topic means I can hide the assignment from students until it is time for them to attempt it. To demonstrate how this would be done, firstly we need to add a new topic to our course, and then we can add in an assignment activity... Adding a New Topic to a Course I'm going to add a new topic to my course specifically for my student projects. Then, I'm going to hide that topic until we have covered the course. I'm going to do the same with my projects and the support materials associated with them. You don't have to treat assignments in this way: as you work through the settings for a Moodle assignment, you'll notice that you can specify a time period that those assignments are available for (it's a setting we'll talk about shortly). I've decided that I want to ensure that my students focus on the preliminary work before they start attempting any assignments by completely hiding them from students. Time for Action – Add a Topic to a Course and Hide It Return to your course front page and choose Settings from the Administration block. Scroll down to the number of weeks/topics setting and change the number in the drop down-list to add another topic to your course: At the bottom of the page, press the Save changes button. That's it, we're done—and now there's a new empty topic at the end of your course. For the moment, I want to hide this topic from students. Click on the eye icon on the right-hand side to hide the topic: It depends on your theme but, to show that a topic is hidden, two grey bars are shown on the left- and right-hand sides of the topic: What Just Happened? We've now got a new, empty topic added to our course. I don't want students to be able to view the assignment until we are all ready, so I've hidden this topic from them for now. Which Assignment Type? For the purpose of my project I'm only going to be looking at two different assignment activity types—but by looking at those two we'll gain the skills and confidence to be able to use all four quite happily. Converting a Project to Moodle Example 1 – Using an Offline Assignment The first project—the poster project—is going to be converted to use the Offline activity assignment type. I'm going to use Moodle to manage student grades and to organize my notes and comments on their work. Let's see how easy it is to add an Offline activity... Time for Action – Add an Offline Activity Assignment Make sure you still have editing turned on. In the topic you want to add your new assignment to (in my case my new, hidden topic) click on Add an activity... and choose Offline activity from the list. You're now taken to the Editing assignment page. Give your assignment a name. Enter in a brief description of the task in the Description box. Don't worry if the box looks a bit small. We can include all of the supporting materials in the topic together with the assignment activity itself on the course front page: Use the Grade setting to specify the maximum grade you are going to give for this assignment. I'm going to leave the Grade setting at 100 (meaning I can grade this assignment out of 100). Maybe your assignment forms part of an overall mark and you need to mark it out of less. You could choose to mark your assignment in this way. You can even choose to create your own custom grades (e.g. A, B, C, D, E, or F), which we learn how to do later on in this article. Choose when you want the assignment to be available. I want to hide both the assignment and the supporting resources and materials, so this option is redundant. I do have the option of disabling this setting so this is what I'm going to do, in this instance. If you aren't hiding the assignment, the Available from and Due date settings are a useful way of preventing students handing work to you before you are ready: That's it! We're done. Press the Save and return to course button. A new assignment has just been added to the course: What Just Happened? Converting my poster project to Moodle was as easy as adding an Offline assignment activity to my Backyard Ballistics course. Click on the assignment now to see what happens. You'll see a screen displaying the task you've just set, and in the top right-hand corner you'll see a No attempts have been made on this assignment link: Click on that link now. You'll be taken to a list of students who are enrolled on your course. If you don't have any students enrolled on your course, then this is what you will see: I don't yet want students enrolled on my course until I know it is set up to be just how I want it. The solution is to introduce a "control student" on our course, and later in this article we'll see how. Before we do that, I'm going to think about the second assignment I need to convert—where students are required to produce a PowerPoint presentation.

How Assignments Look to a Student I've logged out and then logged back in as student John Smith. As far as offline assignments are concerned, they are carried out in the real world. In that instance, Moodle is used to manage grades and notes. If I click on my Offline assignment, I just see a description of the assignment: My second assignment requires students to upload a file. In the next section, we experience a little of what life is like as a Moodle student when we try uploading a project submission to Moodle. Taking the Student's Point of View—Uploading a Project File It is a very good idea to see what we are expecting our students to do when we ask them to upload their project work to us online. At the very least, when we ask students to upload their project work to Moodle, we need to know what we are talking about in case they have any questions. If you don't have a student login or you are still logged in as yourself and have asked a colleague to check that your assignment is working correctly, it's a good idea to take a good look over their shoulder while they are running through the following steps. Together, let's run though what a student must do to upload a file to us... Time for Action – Uploading a File to an Assignment I only have one computer to work from, so the first thing to do is for me to log out and log back in as my pretend student "John Smith". If you have the luxury of having two computers next to each other then you can log in as yourself on one and your pretend student on the other at the same time. You might have two different browsers (e.g. Firefox and Internet Explorer) installed on the same computer. If so you can log into one as a teacher and the other as a student. Don't try to log in as two different people on the same computer using the same browser—it doesn't work. Now that you are logged in as a student... Return to the course main page and click on the Advanced uploading of files assignment you added earlier. You will be presented with the following page: The top half of the page is our description of the assignment. The second half allows us to upload a file and, because I configured the activity such that students could include comments with their submission, has an area allowing us to add a note. Students can browse for files and upload them in exactly the same way as we upload our teaching materials to the course files area. If they want to add a note, then they need to press on the Edit button (at the bottom of the previous screenshot). Click on the Browse... button now. The File upload dialog is displayed. This allows us to select a file to upload. You can choose any for now, just to prove the point. I've quickly created a text file using Notepad called example_submission.txt. Select the file you want to upload and press the Open button. The name of the file is now displayed in the box: Press the Upload this file button. You will now see the file listed in the Submission draft box: Repeat this process for your other project files. To add a note to go along with the submission, I can press the Edit button at the bottom of the page. Try leaving a note now. (If your assignment has been configured so that students are prevented from leaving a note, you won't have this option.) If I am happy that this is the final version of the project and I want to send it for marking, then I can press the Send for marking button at the bottom of the page. Pressing this stops me from uploading any more files: That's it. We're done: What Just Happened? It was easy for us to convert our assignments to Moodle. Now, we've seen how easy it is for students to convert to using Moodle to hand in their assignment submissions. Now, we've actually got a piece of work to mark (albeit a pretend piece), I am ready to start marking. Before moving on to the next section, make sure you are logged in as yourself rather than as a student. Marking Assignments Managing student grades and the paperwork associated with student submissions is one of my biggest headaches. By converting to Moodle, I can avoid all of these problems. Let's see how easy it is to mark assignments in Moodle. Marking Offline Assignments My Offline assignment, the poster project, is being carried out in the real world. Currently, I take a digital photograph of the poster and record my comments and grades on separate pieces of paper. Let's see how I can convert this to Moodle... Time for Action – Mark an Offline Assignment From the course front page, click on your Offline assignment. Click on the No attempts have been made on this assignment/View 0 submitted assignments link in the top right-hand corner of the page. You are now taken to the Submissions page. I've only got one student enrolled on my course—the pretend student my admin put on my course for me—so this is what I see: To grade John Smith's work, I need to click on the Grade link, found in the Status column. The Feedback dialog is displayed: I can use this dialog to comment on a student's work. At this point, I could include a photograph of the poster in the comment, if I wanted to (or I could get the students to take photographs of their posters and then to upload the images as part of an online submission).

Specifying Custom Grades Currently, I'm marking my projects out of 100 but, as I mentioned previously, that's not how they are graded. According to the syllabus, I can only give students one of four grades: Distinction, Merit, Pass, and Referral. So how do you specify your own grades? Let's learn how to do that now. Time for Action – Create a Custom Grade Scale Return to your course front page and look for Grades in the Administration block: Click on Grades and you'll be taken to the Grader report page. We are now in the Moodle grade book. I'm not going to worry too much about all of the features in the grade book for the moment—but while you are there you might like to spend a little time having a look. As with anything else in Moodle, you can't do any damage by doing something by mistake. At the top left of the page, you will find a list of view options: From the list select Scales. You're now taken to the scales page. We need to add a new scale, so press the Add a new scale button in the center of the page. On the following page, give your new scale a name and in the Scale box you can specify the possible grades contained in your new scale. Separate the grades with commas—no spaces. Make sure you specify the grades in order of increasing value: You don't have to worry about a description. Are the grades you are specifying here used for grading in other courses? If you tick the Standard scale box then your scale will be made available to teachers on all courses. When you are done, press the Save changes button. Your new scale is listed on the scales page. Because I didn't make my new scale a standard scale, it's listed as a custom scale: What Just Happened? I don't give students a numerical grade for the Backyard Ballistics projects. The syllabus requires a qualitative grade, but luckily the system makes it easy to import my own custom grade scales. All I need to do now is modify my two assignment activities to use the new scale. That only involves a few clicks, so let's do that now... Time for Action – Grading Using a Custom Scale Return to your course front page and click on the update icon next to the assignment you want to change to use your new custom scale. The Editing assignment page is displayed. Scroll down to the Grade drop-down list. Click on the list. Scroll up if you need to, because the custom scale we want to use will be towards the very top: With the new grading scale selected, scroll down to the bottom of the page and press the Save and return to course button. That's it. You will now be able to grade your project using your new scale. What Just Happened? We've just modified the assignment to use our new grading scale. All that remains now is to demonstrate how you use it. Now that we are back at the course front page, click on the link to the assignment itself to display the assignment's main page (displaying the description of the task we've set). Click on the View submitted assignments link in the top right-hand corner of the page to take you to the Submissions page. Choose a student and down in the Status column click on the Grade link. If you've already marked that student then the link will say Update: Click on the link to open the Feedback dialog. Click on the Grade list at the top right-hand corner of the page to display the grades you can give to this piece of work. The grades listed are the ones from our new custom grade scale: More Uses for Moodle Assignments We aren't limited to using the four assignment activities just for major projects. Here are some more ideas on using the assignment activity to convert your current teaching over to Moodle... Include an online text assignment for discursive tasks, for example writing a short story or for short essay homework tasks. If you're able to display the submissions page of a single file assignment to the class during teaching time, keep refreshing the page as homework is submitted. You'll quickly find that there'll be a race on to be the first to hand their homework in. You could easily turn that into a game for younger students. Use an Offline activity to manage the grades of any task you set for your students—homework handed in on paper, for example. You don't have to confine yourself to just projects. On that last point, there is another way of managing grades directly. We've already been briefly into the Moodle Grader report when we set up our custom scale. Let's revisit that page to see how we can set up custom grading items. Grading Students on Core Competencies Often, as educators, we need to grade assignments on core competencies, otherwise known as key skills or goals. That certainly applies to my syllabus: A percentage of the final grade for my course includes marks for numeracy, literacy, and the use of ICT. Because we are converting to Moodle, and in Moodle-speak, the competencies that I am grading are called "outcomes", in this final section, we learn how to specify the core competencies we need to grade, and how we can then grade students on them. There are pros and cons of converting to Moodle, specifically: I can choose to enable outcomes on a per assignment basis, but you can't use the default numeric grading scale to grade outcomes, only standard and custom grading scales (like my custom Backyard Ballistics scale that I created in Time for action – Create a Custom Grade Scale).

Problem This article, as stated in Introduction, is all about adding the Blogging feature to our site. This will handle creating and managing a post. It will also handle sending alerts to your friends' filter page. And finally we will handle creating a friendly URL for your blog posts. Here we are making our first post to our blog: Once our post is created, we will then see it on the Blogs homepage and the My Posts section. From here we can edit the post or delete it. Also, we can click into the post to view what we have seen so far. The following screenshot shows what one will see when he/she clicks on the post: I have the blog post set up to show the poster's avatar. This is a feature that you can easily add to or remove. Most of your users want to be able to see who the author is that they are currently reading! Also, we will add a friendly URL to our blog post's pages. Design The design of this application is actually quite simple. We will only need one table to hold our blog posts. After that we need to hook our blog system into our existing infrastructure. Blogs In order for us to store our blog, we will need one simple table. This table will handle all the standard attributes of a normal blog post to include the title, subject, page name, and the post itself. It has only one relationship out to the Accounts table so that we know who owns the post down the road. That's it! Solution Let's take a look at the solution for these set of features. Implementing the database Let's take a look at the tables required by our solution. Blogs The blogs table is super simple. We discussed most of this under the Blogs section. The one thing that is interesting here is the Post column. Notice that I have this set to a varchar(MAX) field. This may be too big for your community, so feel free to change it down the road. For my community I am not overly worried. I can always add a UI restriction down the road without impacting my database design using a validation control. After that we will look at the IsPublished flag. This flag tells the system whether or not to show the post in the public domain. Next to that we will also be interested in the PageName column. This column is what we will display in the browser's address bar. As it will be displayed in the address bar, we need to make sure that the input is clean so that we don't have parsing issues (responsible for causing data type exceptions) down the road. We will handle that on the input side in our presenter later. Creating the relationships Once all the tables are created, we can then create all the relationships. For this set of tables we have relationships between the following tables: Blogs and Accounts Setting up the data access layer To set up the data access layer follow the steps mentioned next: Open the Fisharoo.dbml file. Open up your Server Explorer window. Expand your Fisharoo connection. Expand your tables. If you don't see your new tables try hitting the Refresh icon or right-clicking on tables and clicking Refresh. Then drag your new tables onto the design surface. Hit Save and you should now have the following domain objects to work with! Keep in mind that we are not letting LINQ track our relationships, so go ahead and delete them from the design surface. Your design surface should have all the same items as you see in the screenshot (though perhaps in a different arrangement!). Building repositories With the addition of new tables will come the addition of new repositories so that we can get at the data stored in those tables. We will be creating the following repository to support our needs. BlogRepository Our repository will generally have a method for select by ID, select all by parent ID, save, and delete. We will start with a method that will allow us to get at a blog by its page name that we can capture from the browser's address bar. public Blog GetBlogByPageName(string PageName, Int32 AccountID){Blog result = new Blog();using(FisharooDataContext dc = _conn.GetContext()){result = dc.Blogs.Where(b => b.PageName == PageName &&b.AccountID == AccountID).FirstOrDefault();}return result;} Notice that for this system to work we can only have one blog with one unique page name. If we forced our entire community to use unique page names across the community, we would eventually have some upset users. We want to make sure to enforce unique page names across users only for this purpose. To do this, we require that an AccountID be passed in with the page name, which gives our users more flexibility with their page name overlaps! I will show you how we get the AccountID later. Other than that we are performing a simple lambda expression to select the appropriate blog out of the collection of blogs in the data context. Next, we will discuss a method to get all the latest blog posts via the GetLatestBlogs() method. This method will also get and attach the appropriate Account for each blog. Before we dive into this method, we will need to extend the Blog class to have an Account property. To extend the Blog class we will need to create a public partial class in the Domain folder. using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;namespace Fisharoo.FisharooCore.Core.Domain{ public partial class Blog { public Account Account { get; set; } }} Now we can look at the GetLatestBlogs() method. public List<Blog> GetLatestBlogs(){ List<Blog> result = new List<Blog>(); using(FisharooDataContext dc = _conn.GetContext()) { IEnumerable<Blog> blogs = (from b in dc.Blogs where b.IsPublished orderby b.UpdateDate descending select b).Take(30); IEnumerable<Account> accounts = dc.Accounts.Where(a => blogs.Select(b => b.AccountID).Distinct().Contains(a.AccountID)); foreach (Blog blog in blogs) { blog.Account = accounts.Where(a => a.AccountID == blog.AccountID).FirstOrDefault(); } result = blogs.ToList(); result.Reverse(); } return result;} The first expression in this method gets the top N blogs ordered by their UpdateDate in descending order. This gets us the newest entries. We then add a where clause looking for only blogs that are published. We then move to getting a list of Accounts that are associated with our previously selected blogs. We do this by selecting a list of AccountIDs from our blog list and then doing a Contains search against our Accounts table. This gives us a list of accounts that belong to all the blogs that we have in hand. With these two collections in hand we can iterate through our list of blogs and attach the appropriate Account to each blog. This gives us a full listing of blogs with accounts. As we discussed earlier, it is very important for us to make sure that we keep the page names unique on a per user basis. To do this we need to have a method that allows our UI to determine if a page name is unique or not. To do this we will have the CheckPageNameIsUnique() method. public bool CheckPageNameIsUnique(Blog blog){ blog = CleanPageName(blog); bool result = true; using(FisharooDataContext dc = _conn.GetContext()) { int count = dc.Blogs.Where(b => b.PageName == blog.PageName && b.AccountID == blog.AccountID).Count(); if(count > 0) result = false; } return result;} This method looks at all the blog entries except itself to determine if there are other blog posts with the same page name that are also by the same Account. This allows us to effectively lock down our users from creating duplicate page names. This will be important down the road when we start to discuss our pretty URLs. Next, we will look at a private method that will help us clean up these page name inputs. Keep in mind that these page names will be displayed in the browser's address bar and therefore need not have any characters in them that the browser would want to encode. While we can decode the URL easily, this conversation is more about keeping the URL pretty so that the user and search engine spiders can easily read where they are at. When we have characters in the URL that are encoded, we will end up with something like %20 where %20 is the equivalent to a space. But to read my%20blog%20post is not that easy. It is much easier to ready my-blog-post. So we will strip out all of our so called special characters and replace all spaces with hyphens. This method will be the CleanPageName() method. private Blog CleanPageName(Blog blog){ blog.PageName = blog.PageName.Replace(" ", "-").Replace("!", "") .Replace("&", "").Replace("?", "").Replace(",", ""); return blog;} You can add to this as many filters as you like. For the time being I am replacing the handful of special characters that we have just seen in the code. Next, we will get into the service layers that we will use to handle our interactions with the system.

For the purpose of this article we will clone the already existing Teacher Blog and create the Student Blog. Setting Up the Student Blog To create the student blog, we need to do two things: Give users in the student role permissions over the blog post content type. Clone the teacher_blog view, and edit it to display student blog posts. Assigning Permissions To allow students to blog in the site, we need to allow users in the student role the ability to create blog posts. Click the Administer | User management | Roles link, or navigate to admin/user/roles. Click the link to edit permissions for the student role. Navigate down to the section for the node module. Select the options for create blog_post content, delete own blog_post content, and edit own blog_post content. Click the Save permissions button to save the settings. Students can now blog in the site. Clone the Teacher Blog Now that students have the ability to create blog posts, we now need to create a central place where people can read these posts. We have already set up this structure for the teacher blog; cloning this pre-existing view will allow us to quickly replicate this structure for the student blog. To begin, click the Administer | Site building | Views link, or navigate to admin/build/views. Scroll down to the teacher_blog view and click the Clone link. Change the view name to student_blog; change the view description to All posts to be displayed in the Student blog; change the View tag to student. Click the Next button to continue. In the default settings, we want to change the User: Roles filter. As shown in the following screenshot, you can verify that you are editing the Defaults as indicated by Item 1; to edit the User: Roles filter, click the link as indicated by Item 2; and to edit the Title, click the link indicated by Item 3. Change the User: Roles setting to student; this will only select content posted by users in the student role. Change the Title setting to Student blog. As we add more content types (audio, video, and images) we will need to revisit this view to update the Node:Type filter. At this stage, this filter only selects blog posts and bookmarks. Then, as shown in the following screenshot, click the Page link (indicated by Item 1) to change the settings for the Page display for this view. We need to edit both of the options under Page settings (indicated by Item 2). We also need to edit the Header (indicated by Item 3) in the Basic settings. Under Page settings, change the Path to student-blog, and change Menu to Normal: Student blog. Under Basic settings, edit the Header to read Hello! You are viewing posts from the student blog. Enjoy your reading, and comment frequently. Click the Save button to save the view. All student blog posts are now visible at http://yoursite.org/student-blog. Getting Interactive Now that students can create blogs in the site, you have the ability to foster dialogue within your class. The easiest way, of course, is simply through commenting. Students have the rights to comment on assignments, and on teacher and student blog posts. However, students might also want to reference other pieces of content in their work. In this section, we will set up a mechanism that will keep track of when one post within the site references another post within the site. This way, people can see when exchanges are occurring about different posts, and it provides another way (in addition to comment threads) for people to hold discussions within the course. Seeing Who's Discussing What Within the site, we will want to see who is discussing what posts. In web parlance, this is referred to as a backlink. Fortunately, the Views module comes with a means of tracking backlinks by default. We will clone and customize this existing view to get exactly the functionality we want. The process of cloning this view includes the following steps: The default backlinks view needs to be enabled and cloned. In the cloned view, the different displays need to be edited: In the Default display, Fields need to be added to the view, the Arguments need to be adjusted, and the Empty text needs to be deleted. As the new view will only generate a block, the Page display should be removed. In the Block display, the Items per page needs to be increased, the More link needs to be removed, and the Block settings needs to be changed. Then, once the new view has been saved, the block created by this view needs to be enabled. Enabling and Cloning the Backlinks View To get started, click the Administer | Site building | Views link, or navigate to admin/build/views. As shown in the following screenshot, enable the default backlinks view. Once we have enabled the backlinks view, we want to clone it. So, we click the Clone link. Change the View name to conversations, and change the View description to Cloned from default "backlinks" view; displays a list of nodes that link to the node, using the search backlinks table. The View tag can be left blank. Click the Next button, which brings us to the Edit page for the view. Editing the Default Display As shown in the following screenshot, we will make four main edits to this view. We will add Fields, adjust the Arguments, delete the Empty text, and remove the Page display. To add Fields, click the + icon as indicated, in the preceding screenshot, by Item 1. Add three fields: Node: Post Date; Node: Type; and User: Name. Click the Add button, and then configure the new fields to your preferences. Next, edit the Arguments by clicking the Search: Links to link as indicated in the preceding screenshot by Item 2. We will edit the argument handling as shown in the following screenshot: Select the options to only validate for Blog posts and Bookmarks. Additionally, check the option for Validate user has access to the node. These argument settings confirm that we are only checking for backlinks on Blog posts and Bookmarks. As we add more content types (for audio, video, and images) we will need to update this view to check for backlinks on these additional content types as well. Click the Update button to store these changes. Then, we will remove the Empty text by clicking the Filtered HTML link as indicated by Item 3 in the screenshot just above the preceding one. Delete the existing empty text string, and click the Update button to store the changes. Deleting the empty text makes it so the view will not be displayed if the view returns no content. Although this would not be useful on a Page display, it is useful for a Block display, as this hides the block when there is nothing to show.

Binding When it comes to programming, the two most commonly used features are CFAJAXProxy and binding. The binding feature allows us to bind or tie things together by using a simpler technique than we would otherwise have needed to create. Binding acts as a double-ended connector in some scenarios. You can set the bind to pull data from another ColdFusion tag on the form. These must be AJAX tags with binding abilities. There are four forms of bindings, on page, CFC, JavaScript, and URL. Let's work through each style so that we will understand them well. We will start with on page binding. Remember that the tag has to support the binding. This is not a general ColdFusion feature, but we can use it wherever we desire. On Page Binding We are going to bind 'cfdiv' to pull its content to show on page binding. We will set the value of a text input to the div. Refer to the following code. ColdFusion AJAX elements work in a manner different from how AJAX is written traditionally. It is more customary to name our browser-side HTML elements with id attributes. This is not the case with the binding features. As we can see in our code example, we have used the name attribute. We should remember to be case sensitive, since this is managed by JavaScript. When we run the code, we will notice that we must leave the input field before the browser registers that there has been a change in the value of the field. This is how the event model for the browser DOM works. <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText"></cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="{myText}"></cfdiv> Notice how we use curly brackets to bind the value of the 'myText' input box. This inserts the contents into 'div' when the text box loses focus. This is an example of binding to in-page elements. If the binding we use is tied to a hidden window or tab, then the contents may not be updated. CFC Binding Now, we are going to bind our div to a CFC method. We will take the data that was being posted directly to the object, and then we will pass it out to the CFC. The CFC is going to repackage it, and send it back to the browser. The binding will enable the modified version of the content to be sent to the div. Refer to the following CFC code: <cfcomponent output="false"> <cffunction name="getDivContent" returntype="string" access="remote"> <cfargument name="edit"> <cfreturn "This is the content returned from the CFC for the div, the calling page variable is '<strong>#arguments.edit#</strong>'."> </cffunction></cfcomponent> From the previous code, we can see that the CFC only accepts the argument and passes it back. This could have even returned an image HTML segment with something like a user picture. The following code shows the new page code modifications. <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText"></cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="cfc:bindsource.getDivContent({myText})"></cfdiv> The only change lies in how we bind the cfdiv element tag. Here, you can see that it starts with CFC. Next, it calls bindsource, which is the name of a local CFC. This tells ColdFusion to wire up the browser page, so it will connect to the CFC and things will work as we want. You can observe that inside the method, we are passing the bound variable to the method. When the input field changes by losing focus, the browser sends a new request to the CFC and updates the div. We need to have the same number of parameters going to the CFC as the number of arguments in our CFC method. We should also make sure that the method has its access method set to remote. Here we can see an example results page. It is valid to pass the name of the CFC method argument with the data value. This can prevent exceptions caused by not pairing the data in the same order as the method arguments. The last line of the previous code can be modified as follows: <cfdiv bind="cfc:bindsource.getDivContent(edit:{myText})"></cfdiv> JavaScript Binding Now, we will see how simple power can be managed on the browser. We will create a standard JavaScript function and pass the same bound data field through the function. Whenever we update the text box and it looses focus, the contents of the div will be updated from the function on the page. It is suggested that we include all JavaScript rather than put it directly on the page. Refer to the following code: <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText"></cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="javascript:updateDiv({myText})"></cfdiv><script> updateDiv = function(myEdit){ return 'This is the result that came from the JavaScript function with the edit box sending "<strong>'+myEdit+'</strong>"'; } </script> Here is the result of placing the same text into our JavaScript example. URL Binding We can achieve the same results by calling a web address. We can actually call a static HTML page. Now, we will call a .cfm page to see the results of changing the text box reflected back, as for CFC and JavaScript. Here is the code for our main page with the URL binding. <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText"></cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="url:bindsource.cfm?myEdit={myText}"></cfdiv> In the above code, we can see that the binding type is set to URL. Earlier, we used the CFC method bound to a file named bindsource.cfc. Now, we will bind through the URL to a .cfm file. The bound myText data will work in a manner similar to the other cases. It will be sent to the target; in this case, it is a regular server-side page. We require only one line. In this example, our variables are URL variables. Here is the handler page code: <cfoutput> 'This is the result that came from the server page with the edit box sending "<strong>#url.myEdit#</strong>"'</cfoutput> This tells us that if there is no prefix to the browse request on the bind attribute of the <cfdiv> tag, then it will only work with on-page elements. If we prefix it, then we can pass the data through a CFC, a URL, or through a JavaScript function present on the same page. If we bind to a variable present on the same page, then whenever the bound element updates, the binding will be executed. Bind with Event One of the features of binding that we might overlook its binding based on an event. In the previous examples, we mentioned that the normal event trigger for binding took place when the bound field lost its focus. The following example shows a bind that occurs when the key is released. <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText"></cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="{myText@keyup}"></cfdiv> This is similar to our first example, with the only difference being that the contents of the div are updated as each key is pressed. This works in a manner similar to CFC, JavaScript, and URL bindings. We might also consider binding other elements on a click event, such as a radio button. The following example shows another feature. We can pass any DOM attribute by putting that as an item after the element id. It must be placed before the @ symbol, if you are using a particular event. In this code, we change the input in order to have a class in which we can pass the value of the class attribute and change the binding attribute of the cfdiv element. <cfform id="myForm" format="html"> This is my edit box.<br /> <cfinput type="text" name="myText" class="test"> </cfform><hr />And this is the bound div container.<br /><cfdiv bind="{myText.class@keyup}.{myText}"></cfdiv> Here is a list of the events that we can bind. @click @keyup @mousedown @none The @none event is used for grids and trees, so that changes don't trigger bind events. Extra Binding Notes If you have an ID on your CFForm element, then you can refer to the form element based on the container form. The following example helps us to understand this better. Bind = "url:bindsource.cfm?myEdit={myForm:myText}" The ColdFusion 8 documents give the following guides in order to specify the binding expressions. cfc: componentPath.functionName (parameters) The component path cannot use a mapping. The componentPath value must be a dot-delimited path from the web root or the directory that contains the page. javascript: functionName (parameters) url: URL?parameters ULR?parameters A string containing one or more instances of {bind parmeter}, such as {firstname}.{lastname}@{domain} The following table represents the supported formats based on attributes and tags: Attribute Tags Supported Formats Autosuggest cfinput type="text" 1,2,3 Bind cfdiv, cfinput, cftextarea 1,2,3,5 Bind cfajaxproxy, cfgrid, cfselect cfsprydataset, cftreeitem 1,2,3 onChange cfgrid 1,2,3 Source cflayoutarea, cfpod, cfwindow 4

Getting Started with Podcasts To create a podcast, you will need: A mp3 file A place to store the mp3 file At the risk of stating the obvious, a good podcast requires thought and planning before you make the actual recording. Later in the article, we will discuss some of these general mechanics. But, from a technical perspective, once you have your audio file, you can upload it to your Drupal site, and you will have published a podcast. Audio Module The Audio module supports the playback of audio files that have been uploaded to your site. To install this module, we will also need to install two helper modules required by the Audio module: the getID3() and Token modules. In this section, we will cover installing the Audio module, as well as the getID3() and Token modules. Install the getID3() Module Download the getID3() module from http://drupal.org/project/getid3, and upload it to your sites/all/modules directory . Do not, however, enable the module, as we need to install an additional piece of code described as follows. Install the getID3() Libraries The getID3() libraries are a tool that automatically extract information about audio files. These libraries don't require you to do any additional work; rather, they detect information that can be used by the Audio module. Download the getID3() libraries from http://getid3.sourceforge.net/. Unzip these libraries onto your hard drive. As shown in the preceding screenshot, the libraries include some demo and helper files, in addition to the readme and license files. The only files we need are contained in the getid3 directory. The getid3 directory is the only directory that you need to upload to your website. Then, use your FTP client to connect to your web server, and navigate to sites/all/modules/getid3. Upload the getid3 directory into sites/all/modules/getid3 as shown in the following screenshot: Once the module and the libraries have been uploaded to your site, enable the getID3() module by clicking the Administration | Site building | Modules link, or by navigating to admin/build/modules. Following these instructions the path to your getID3() library is sites/all/modules/getid3/getid3. If needed, this path can be adjusted at Administer | Site configuration | getID3(), or admin/settings/getid3. Install the Token Module Download the Token module from http://drupal.org/project/token, and install it. Once this module has been uploaded to your site, enable it by clicking the Administration | Site building | Modules link, or by navigating to admin/build/modules. The Token module is a helper module, and its functionality will be largely invisible to the end user. The Token module supplies pieces of text, or tokens, which can be used by other modules. The Audio module relies on the Token module and the getID3() module to help automatically generate titles and other information for audio files. Install and Enable the Audio Module Download the audio module from http://drupal.org/project/audio. Upload the module to your sites/all/modules directory, and enable it by clicking the Administer | Site building | Modules link or by navigating to admin/build/modules. Select the Audio and the Audio getID3 modules. Click the Save configuration button to submit the form and enable the modules. Configure the Audio Module Now that we have installed the Audio module and its helper modules, we need to configure the audio module to support our needs. Click the Administer | Site Configuration | Audio link, or navigate to admin/settings/audio. As pictured in the following screenshot, you will see three tabs across the top of the page: Audio, Metadata tags, and Players. The Audio Tab The options on the Audio tab, pictured in the preceding screenshot, allow you to set some default values that are used when audio posts are uploaded. The values here can be created automatically, which can be useful if you are working with songs. For most cases, however, you will want to delete the option for the Default node title format, and leave the other default values intact. When you have adjusted the settings, click the Save configuration button at the bottom of the page. To save your settings, you must click the Save configuration button before moving on to the next tab. A Brief Explanation of Tokens In the preceding screenshot, there is a collapsible fieldset titled List of available tokens. Click on the link to expand the fieldset. A portion of the tokens available are shown in the following screenshot: As suggested by the preceding screenshot, tokens expose pieces of information about content created within a site. Tokens can only be used when a module has been written to work with the tokens. Because the Audio module has been written to depend on the Token module, we have the option of using tokens if we wish. For example, we could set the title of audio nodes to automatically incorporate the username and the creation date. To make this work, we would set the Default node title format (as shown in the Audio settings screenshot) to Created by [author-name] on [yyyy]-[mon]-[date]. In most cases tokens run invisibly in the background without requiring any adjustments by the end user. The Metadata Tags Tab The options in this section will be useful if you are setting up podcasts as part of a music or radio station, but will be less useful in other environments. By reducing the number of required options, you can simplify the form for uploading podcasts. The settings pictured in the following screenshot are all you need to get started publishing audio on the web. The Players Tab The Audio module comes with several different players that can be used to play your audio files. You can use the settings on this page to choose your preferred player. As you can see in the following figure, you can specify a different player for each type of audio file. The "best" player will largely be determined by your aesthetic preference; all of the players do a great job playing audio stored on your site. After you have chosen a player, click the Save configuration button to save your preference. Assign Rights to the Audio Module Now that we have installed, enabled, and configured the audio module, we need to assign rights to it. Click the Administer | User management | Roles link, or navigate to admin/user/roles. The possible rights that can be assigned are shown in the following figure: We will need to assign rights for the teacher role, the student role, the authenticated user role, and possibly the anonymous user role. For the authenticated user role, assign rights to download audio and play audio. For the student role, assign rights to create audio and edit own audio. For the teacher role, assign rights to create audio, edit own audio, and view download stats. For the anonymous user role, assign the rights you think are appropriate. In most cases, if you are allowing anonymous users to see content, allowing them the rights to download audio and play audio is appropriate. Each time you assign rights to an individual roles, click the Save permissions button to save the rights for the role. Adjust Existing Views Currently, three views are being used to display student and teacher-created content. We will need to edit these views so that they return any audio nodes created within the site. To edit these views, click the Administer | Site building | Views link, or navigate to admin/build/views. We need to edit three views: the teacher_blog view, the student_blog and conversation views. As shown in the following screenshot, these views can be edited by using the Edit link on the main Views administration page. Editing the student_blog View Click the Edit link as shown in the preceding screenshot. Then, in the Defaults display, under Filters, click on the Node: Type link, as shown by Item 1 in the following screenshot: As shown by Item 2 in the preceding screenshot, add Audio to the node types returned in this view. Click the Update button to store this change, and then click the Save button (not pictured in the preceding screenshot) to save the view. Editing the conversations View Click the Edit link for the conversations view. Then, in the Defaults display, under Arguments, click on the Search:Links to link, as shown by Item 1 in the following figure: As shown by Item 2 in the preceding screenshot, add Audio to the list of node types where this view will be validated. Click the Update button to store this change, and then click the Save button to save the view. As we add additional content types into the site, we will need to update these views to account for the newly-added content types.

What we will do, is: Do more than make each topic a long list of resources. Use the label resource and Moodle's indenting tool to change this: To this: Find out where we can get lots of free images for our courses. Explore different ways to use HTML to make our courses even more engaging. Include a talking character—an animated avatar—using Voki.com: Arrange Your Resources Why is it important to spend a little time arranging resources in a topic? Isn't it all eye candy? Let's take a look at my Topic 1: I've got a nice colorful title, some text to introduce the topic, and then a long list of resources—which, quite honestly looks just like the list of files in the shared drive I already use to distribute my documents and handouts to students. What if the topic looked like this: This is much more the effect we need. I've reordered my resources and included some labels, so that it is much easier for students to find a resource. In this section, we're going to learn how to bring some order into our topics. Putting Your Resources in Order One obvious difference between a shared drive and Moodle is that in Moodle, you can put the resources in the order you want, not the order the computer insists on (usually, numerical/alphabetical). However, in Moodle, any new resources you add are simply queued on to the end of the topic. This has meant that resources in my Getting Things Flying topic aren't exactly ordered in a sensible way—just the way I added them. I'm going to take action to remedy that now... Time for Action – Arrange Your Resources Remember that you need editing turned on before you start. Choose the resource you want to move. I'm going to move my Backyard ballistics links resource to the end of the topic. To start the process, I need to 'pick up' the resource. I click on the Move icon: This causes two things to happen. Firstly, the resource I want to move disappears. Don't worry—imagine you have it in your hand and you are ready to place it back into your course. Secondly, the boxes that have now appeared represent all the places to which you can move the resource that you are holding: Choose where you want to move the resource to. I want my list of links at the end, so I'm going to click on the box at the bottom. The boxes disappear and my resources have been shuffled: What Just Happened? A list o f resources in Moodle isn't simply a list of files, like you would find on a shared drive. One obvious difference is that in Moodle, you can arrange your resources to be listed in the order you want, and we've just seen how easy it is to achieve this. You can't find the Move icon? Your site may be configured so that you can drag and drop resources. In that case, instead of the Move icon you will see crosshairs next to your resource. To move the resource, click on the cross hairs and, keeping your finger pressed down on the left mouse butt on, drag the resource to its new location. Look for the line in the background—this tells you where your resource is going to be dropped to—then let go of the mouse butt on when you have found the spot. Now I've got my resources in the order I wanted, I have to say that my topic looks like just another resource dump—which is what I am trying to avoid. My resources would be much easier to use if I could introduce each of them with a short piece of text: Introducing a resource with a short introduction is a great way of improving the visual appeal of your course. The tool to achieve this is called a Label resource, and here's how to use it... Time for Action – Insert a Label I'm going to start the process of arranging my resource by having a short piece of text introducing the Backyard ballistics links resource. Make sure editing is turned on, click on Add a resource, and choose Insert a label. In the Editing Label page, enter your label text. When you are done, press the Save and return to course button. The new label is added to the end of the list of resources—which is obviously the wrong place for it. Click on the Move icon, next to the label you have just added: The page is re-displayed. Your new label disappears and lots of boxes have appeared. These boxes represent the places where your new label can go: Click on the relevant box to place your label. You're done! Remember: If you don't have a Move icon, you'll have crosshairs next to the label that you can click on to drag it to the right place. What Just Happened? After all the experience we have had with Moodle so far, using the label resource will be fairly straightforward. Judicious use of labels means our course topics don't have to be simply a long list of resources. Remember to treat labels as a way of leading the student towards and into a resource. Labels are not designed for content, so try to keep labels short—perhaps two or three sentences at the most. Labels are like the glue that holds topics together. You don't want your glue to be too thick. It's looking better, but my topic is still looking a little flat. You can indent your resources by clicking on the Move right icon next to the resource: Below is how things now look with a little indenting: Seeing the course from a student's point of viewAs a teacher, you will see a lot of options on the screen that your students won't. To get a clear idea of how a student will see the course, use the Switch role to… option at the top right of the screen. Choose Student from this list, and you will see the course as students see it.When you're done, click Return to my normal role and you'll get your normal view back. You will also need to Turn editing on to get the edit controls back.

Our shop is now ready for customers. They can register to the shop and get some permissions to browse products and place orders. After building the catalog, one of the big tasks of the shop administrator is to manage the orders. Managing an order includes viewing the order, ensuring that payment is made, shipping the product to customers ship to address, and setting the appropriate status of the order. Whenever the status of the order changes, the shop administrator can also notify the customer about its status. When the product is delivered, the status should also be changed. Sometimes, you need to change the status when the customer refunds it for some reason. Viewing the orders To view the list of orders placed, click on Orders | List Orders. You get the Order List screen: The Order List screen shows all of the orders placed so far in that store. It shows the latest order first. As you can see, it shows the order number, name of customer, date of order, date last modified, status of the order, and total price of the order. As there may be hundreds of orders per day, you need to filter the orders and see which ones need urgent attention. You can filter the orders by their status. For example, clicking on the Pending link will show all of the orders which are pending. Viewing the list of pending orders, you may enquire why those are pending. Some may be pending for not making the payment, or you may be waiting for some offline payment. For example, when the Money Order payment method is used, the order needs to remain Pending until you receive the money order. Once you get the payment, you can change the order status to Confirmed. Viewing an order's details In the Order List screen, you will get an overview of each order. However, sometimes it may be necessary to view the details of an order. For viewing an order's details, in the Order List screen, click on the order number link under the Order Number column. This shows details of the order: In the Order Details page, you will first see the order number, order date, order status, its current status, and IP address from where the order was placed. There is a box section from where you can update the order's status and view the order's history. Then, you get the Bill To and Ship To addresses. After the Bill To and Ship To addresses, you get the list of ordered items and their prices. You can also add a new product to this order from this section. This section also shows taxes added, and shipping and handling fees: After the product items, you get another section which shows shipping information and payment method used: In the Shipping Information section, you get the carrier used, shipping mode applied, shipping price, shipping and handling fees, and shipping taxes. The payment section shows what method was used and when the payment was made. It shows the payment history for this order. It also shows how much of a coupon discount was applied to this order. As an administrator of the shop, you can change the values in the fields where an update icon () is displayed. At the bottom, you see the customer's comment. Customers may provide comments while placing the order. These comments may be very much valuable for the shop owner. For example, the customer may want the product to be delivered in a special way. The customer can express that in this comment. For printing the purchase orders, you may use a printer friendly view. To see the purchase order in a printer friendly view, click on the Print View link at top. This formats the purchase order as a plain document, and also shows a printer icon. Click on that printer icon to print the purchase order. Understanding an order's status How is the order management workflow maintained? Mainly, this is based on the order status. After receiving an order from the customer, it passes several statuses. An order's life cycle is shown in the following diagram: These order status types are defined in advance. At the very outset of starting the shop, the workflow should be clearly defined. Managing order status types You can view the existing order status types from Orders | List Order Status Types. This shows the List Order Status Types screen: As you see from the screen on the previous page, there are five status types. We may add another status type of Delivered. For adding a new order status type, click on the New icon in the toolbar, or on Orders | Add Order Status Type. Both brings the Order Status screen: In the Order Status screen, first type the Order Status Code. For the Delivered status, assign D as code. Then, type the name of the status type in the Order Status Name text box. In the Description text area, you may provide a brief description of the order status type. At the end, specify a list order value. Then, click on the Save icon in the toolbar. This adds the new Delivered order status type. You can create as many order status types as you need. Changing an order's status As indicated earlier, while fulfilling the order, the shop owner needs to update the status of the order, and communicate that status change to the customer. You can change an order's status from two places. In the Order List screen, you can see the orders and also change status. For changing the status of an order, select an order status type from drop-down list in the Status column. Then, click on the Update Status button to save the change. If you want to notify the customer about this     status change, select the Notify Customer? checkbox. One disadvantage of updating the order status from the Order List screen is that you cannot add a note on changing the status. The other way of updating the order status provides this advantage. For using this, click on the order number link in the Order List screen. The order details page will open. On the right side, you will see a box from where you can update the order status. Can you see the Comment text area in the following screen? As you can see, from the Order Status Change tab, you can change the status, write a comment, notify the customer about the status change, and can also add the comment with that notification.

An introduction to the in-place editing feature In-place editing means making the content available for editing just by clicking on it. We hover on the element, allow the user to click on the element, edit the content, and update the new content to our server. Sounds complex? Not at all! It's very simple. Check out the example about www.netvibes.com shown in the following screenshot. You will notice that by just clicking on the title, we can edit and update it. Now, check out the following screenshot to see what happens when we click on the title. In simple terms, in-place editing is about converting the static content into an editable form without changing the place and updating it using AJAX. Getting started with in-place editing Imagine that we can edit the content inside the static HTML tags such as a simple <p> or even a complex <div>. The basic syntax of initiating the constructor is shown as follows: New Ajax.InPlaceEditor(element,url,[options]); The constructor accepts three parameters: element: The target static element which we need to make editable url: We need to update the new content to the server, so we need a URL to handle the request options: Loads of options to fully customize our element as well as the in-place editing feature We shall look into the details of element and url in the next section. For now, let's learn about all the options that we will be using in our future examples. The following set of options is provided by the script.aculo.us library. We can use the following options with the InPlaceEditor object: okButton: Using this option we show an OK button that the user clicks on after editing. By default it is set to true. okText: With this option we set the text value on the OK button. By default this is set to true. cancelLink: This is the button we show when the user wishes to cancel the action. By default it's set to true. cancelText: This is the text we show as a value on the Cancel button. By default it's set to true. savingText: This is the text we show when the content is being saved. By default it's set to Saving. We can also give it any other name. clickToEditText: This is the text string that appears as the control tooltip upon mouse-hover. rows: Using this option we specify how many rows to show to the user. By default it is set to 1. But if we pass more than 1 it would appear as a text area, or it will show a text box. cols: Using this option we can set the number of columns we need to show to the user. highlightColor: With this option we can set the background color of the element. highlightendColor: Using this option we can bring in the use of effects. Specify which color should be set when the action ends. loadingText: When this option is used, we can keep our users informed about what is happening on the page with text such as Loading or Processing Request. loadTextURL: By using this option we can specify the URL at the server side to be contacted in order to load the initial value of the editor when it becomes active. We also have some callback options to use along with in-place editing. onComplete: On any successful completion of a request, this callback option enables us to call functions. onFailure: Using this callback option on a request's failure, we can make a call to functions. Callback: This option calls back functions to read values in the text box, or text area, before initiating a save or an update request. We will be exploring all these options in our hands-on examples. Code usage of the in-place editing features and options Now things are simple from here on. Let's get started with code. First, let's include all the required scripts for in-place editing: <script type="text/javascript" src="src/prototype.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="src/scriptaculous.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="src/effects.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="src/controls.js"></script> Once this is done, let's create a basic HTML page with some <p> and <div> elements, and add some content to them. <body><div id="myDiv"> First move the mouse over me and then click on ME :)</div></body> In this section we will be learning about the options provided with the in-place editing feature. In the hands-on section we will be working with server-side scripts of handling data. Now, it's turn to add some spicy JavaScript code and create the object for InPlaceEditor. In the following piece of code we have passed the element ID as myDIV, a fake URL,and two options okText and cancelText: Function makeEditable() {new Ajax.InPlaceEditor( 'myDIV', 'URL', { okText: 'Update', cancelText: 'Cancel', } );} We will be placing them inside a function and we will call them on page load. So the complete script would look like this: <script>function makeEditable() {new Ajax.InPlaceEditor( 'myDIV', 'URL', { okText: 'Update', cancelText: 'Cancel' } );}</script><body onload="JavaScript:makeEditable();"><div id="myDiv"> First move the mouse over me and then click on ME :)</div></body> Now, save the fi le as Inplace.html. Open it in a browser and you should see the result as shown in the following screenshot: Now, let's add all the options step-by-step. Remember, whatever we are adding now will be inside the definition of the constructor. First let's add rows and columns to the object. new Ajax.InPlaceEditor( 'myDIV', 'URL', { okText: 'Update', cancelText: 'Cancel', rows: 4, cols: 70 }); After adding the rows and cols, we should be able to see the result displayed in the following screenshot: Now, let's set the color that will be used to highlight the element. new Ajax.InPlaceEditor( 'myDIV', 'URL', { okText: 'Update', cancelText: 'Cancel', rows: 4, cols: 70, highlightColor:'#E2F1B1' }); Drag the mouse over the element. Did you notice the change in color? You did? Great! Throughout the book we have insisted on keeping the user informed, so let's add more options to make this more appealing. We will add clickToEditText, which will be used to inform the user when the mouse hovers on the element. new Ajax.InPlaceEditor( 'myDIV', 'URL', { okText: 'Update', cancelText: 'Cancel', rows: 4, cols: 70, highlightColor:'#E2F1B1', clickToEditText: 'Click me to edit' });

Let's get started. CallerID Lookup Sources Caller ID lookup sources supplement the caller ID name information that is sent by most telephone companies. A caller ID lookup source contains a list of phone numbers matched with names. When FreePBX receives a call, it can query a lookup source with the number of the caller. If the caller is on the lookup source's list, a name is returned that will be sent along with the call wherever the call gets routed to. The name will be visible on a phone's caller ID display (if the phone supports caller ID), and is also visible in the FreePBX call detail records. In order to set up a caller ID lookup source, click on the CallerID Lookup Sources link under the Inbound Call Control section of the navigation menu on the left side of the FreePBX interface as shown in the following screenshot: The Add Source screen has three common configuration options: Source Description Source type Cache results Source Description is used to identify this lookup source when it is being selected as a caller ID lookup source during the configuration of an inbound route. Source type is used to select the method that this source will use to obtain caller ID name information. FreePBX allows a lookup source to use one of the following methods: ENUM: FreePBX will use whichever ENUM servers are configured in /etc/asterisk/enum.conf to return caller ID name information. By default, this file contains the e164.arpa and e164.org zones for lookups. All ENUM servers in the enum.conf file will be queried. HTTP: FreePBX will query a web service for caller ID name information using the HTTP protocol. A lookup source that uses HTTP to query for information can use services such as Google Phonebook or online versions of the white/yellow pages to return caller ID names. When HTTP is selected as the source type, six additional options will appear for configuration. These options are discussed in the HTTP source type section. MySQL: FreePBX will connect to a MySQL database to query for caller ID name information. Usually, this will be a database belonging to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software package in which all customer information is stored. When MySQL is selected as the Source type, five additional options will appear for configuration. These options are discussed later in the MySQL source type section. SugarCRM: As of FreePBX version 2.5.1, this option is not yet implemented. In the future, this Source type option will allow FreePBX to connect to the database used by the SugarCRM software package to query for caller ID name information. If the Cache results checkbox is selected, then when a lookup source returns results they will be cached in the local AstDB database for quicker retrieval the next time the same number is looked up. Note that values cached in the AstDB will persist past a restart of Asterisk and a reboot of the PBX. Once a caller ID name has been cached, FreePBX will always return that name even if the name in the lookup source changes. Caching must be disabled for a new caller ID name to be returned from the lookup source. Once all configuration options have been filled out, click on the Submit Changes button followed by the orange-colored Apply Configuration Changes bar to make the new lookup source available to inbound routes. Now that we have an available lookup source, we can configure an inbound route to use this source to set caller ID information. Click on the Inbound Routes link under the Inbound Call Control section of the navigation menu on the left side of the FreePBX interface as shown in the following screenshot: Click the name of the inbound route that will use the new lookup source in the menu on the right side of the page (in this example, DID 5551234567) as shown in the following screenshot: Scroll down the page to the CID Lookup Source section. Select the name of the new lookup source from the Source drop-down menu: Click on the Submit button at the bottom of the page, followed by the orange-colored Apply Configuration Changes bar at the top of the page. Calls that are routing using this inbound route will now query our new lookup source for caller ID name information.

A trunk in the simplest of terms is a pathway into or out of a telephone system. A trunk connects a PBX to outside resources, such as PSTN telephone lines, or additional PBX systems to perform inter-system transfers. Trunks can be physical, such as a PRI or PSTN line, or they can be virtual by routing calls to another endpoint using Internet Protocol (IP) links. Trunk types FreePBX allows the creation of six different types of trunks as follows: Zap IAX2 SIP ENUM DUNDi Custom Zap, IAX2, and SIP trunks utilize the technologies of their namesake. These trunks have the same highlights and pitfalls that extensions and devices using the same technology do. Zap trunks require physical hardware cards for incoming lines to plug into. SIP trunks are the most widely adopted and compatible, but have difficulties traversing firewalls. IAX2 trunks are able to traverse most firewalls easily, but are limited to adoption mainly on Asterisk-based systems. In terms of VoIP, ENUM(E.164 NUmber Mapping) is a method for unifying E.164 (the international telecommunication numbering plan) with VoIP routing. The ENUM system can be considered very similar to the way that the Internet DNS system works. In the DNS system, when a domain name is looked up an IP address is returned. The IP address allows a PC to traverse the Internet and find the server that belongs to that IP address. The ENUM system provides VoIP routes back when queried for a phone number. The route that is returned is usually a SIP or IAX2 route. An ENUM trunk allows FreePBX to send the dialed phone number to the publice164.orgENUM server. If the called party has listed their phone number in the e164.org directory, a VoIP route will be returned and the call will be connected using that route. A VoIP route contains the VoIP protocol, the server name or IP address, the port, and the extension to use in order to contact the dialed phone number. For example, a SIP route for dialing the number 555-555-1234 might appear as SIP:1234@pbx.example.com:5060. This is advantageous in several ways. It is important to note that indirect routes to another telephony system are often costly. Calling a PSTN telephone number typically requires that call to route through a third-party provider's phone lines and switching equipment (a service they will happily charge for). If a number is listed in the ENUM directory, the returned route will bridge the call directly to the called party (or their provider), bypassing the cost of routing through a third party. ENUM also benefits the called party, allowing them to redirect inbound calls to wherever they would like. Service disruptions that would otherwise render a particular phone number useless can be bypassed by directing the phone number to a different VoIP route in the ENUM system. More information on ENUM can be found at the following web sites: The ENUM home page The e164.org home page: The Internet Engineering Task Force ENUM charter DUNDi (Distributed Universal Number Discovery) is a routing protocol technology similar to ENUM. In order to query another Asterisk system using DUNDi, that system must be "peered" with your own Asterisk system. Peering requires generating and exchanging key files with the other peer. DUNDi is a decentralized way of accomplishing ENUM-style lookups. By peering with one system you are effectively peering with any other system that your peer is connected to. If system A peers with system B, and system B peers with system C, then system C will be able to see the routes provided by system A. In peer-topeer fashion, system B will simply pass the request along to system A, even though system C has no direct connection to system A. DUNDi is not limited to E.164 numbering schemes like ENUM and it allows a PBX to advertise individual extensions, or route patterns, instead of whole phone numbers. Therefore, it is a good candidate for distributed office setups, where a central PBX can be peered with several satellite PBX systems. The extensions on each system will be able to call one another directly without having to statically set up routes on each individual PBX. More information on DUNDi can be found at the following web sites: DUNDi home page Example DUNDi SIP configuration Example DUNDi IAX2 configuration Custom trunks work in the same fashion as custom extensions do. Any valid Asterisk Dial command can be used as a custom trunk by FreePBX. Custom trunks typically use additional VoIP protocols such as H.323 and MGCP. Setting up a new trunk Setting up a trunk in FreePBX is very similar to setting up an extension. All of the trunks share eight common setup fields, followed by fields that are specific to the technology that trunk will be using. In order to begin setting up a trunk, click on Trunks in the left side navigation menu as shown in the following screenshot: From the Add a Trunk screen, click on the name of the technology that the trunk will be using (for example, if a SIP trunk will be used, click on Add SIP Trunk) as shown in the following screenshot:

Windows OS for Windows Mobile is available in various versions, but for this article we will be using Windows Mobile 6. Windows Mobile 6 uses .NET Compact Framework v2 SP2, and has 3 different versions: Windows Mobile 6 Standard (phones without Touch Screen) Windows Mobile 6 Professional (with Phone functionality) Windows Mobile 6 Classic (without Phone functionality) Windows Mobile 6.1 and Windows Mobile 6.5 are other 2 higher versions available with some additional features as compared to Windows Mobile 6. Windows Mobile 7 expected to be released in 2010 and is said to have major updates. This article concentrates on development on Windows Mobile 6 Professional. Software Prerequisite This article will introduce you to the development for Windows Mobile 6 Professional, using Visual C#. Windows Mobile 6 has .NET Compact Framework v2 SP2 preinstalled. .NET Compact Framework is a Compact Edition of .NET Framework, and does not have all the features of the complete .NET Framework. Following are the software required for development: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK Refresh (SDK contains emulator, used for testing, debugging. To download click here) ActiveSync (Used for Data Synchronizing between development machine and Windows Mobile, To download click here) Without making any exception, we will follow the golden rule of learning by writing “Hello World” application. Hello World We will assume that you have installed all the prerequisite software mentioned above. Launch Visual Studio 2008 and select Visual C# (if prompted). Create a new Project (File -> New) as shown below: While creating a new Project, Visual Studio 2008 IDE provides an option to select an installed template, which will create Project with all the basic requirements/structure for development. For Windows Mobile, we will select option Smart Device and template Smart Device Project as shown below.  You can also provide: Name: Name for Project. We will call it as MyFirstApp. Location: Location where this project will be created. Browse and set the desired location. We will use default location for now. Solution Name: Name for referring the Solution. Usually we keep it same as Project Name. Since Windows Mobile 6 has .NET Compact Framework v2, it will select the .NET Framework 2.0 from the dropdown on the top right. Click OK. Next step is to select the Target platform, .NET Compact Framework Version and Template. For our application we will select: Target platform: Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK .NET Compact Framework Version: .NET Compact Framework Version 2.0. Template: Device Application Project MyFirstApp is successfully created and IDE will open a Form as shown. Let me introduce you to the various sections on screen. This is the main section called development section. All the coding and designing of the Form is done here. This section is called Toolbox and lists all the available components. If this section is not visible click View->Toolbox. This section is called Solution Explorer and shows all the forms, resources and properties. If this section is not visible click View->Solution Explorer. This section is Properties and displays all the properties for the component selected. If this section is not visible click View->Properties Window. By default Form is named as Form1. Let us first change the Name of the form. To do so select the form and the properties related to form will be listed in properties window. The entire properties list is in the form of Key Value pair. For changing Name of form, change value of property Name. For this example we will change it to HelloWorldForm. Now this form will be referred as HelloWorldForm throughout the application. Changing form name doesn’t change form caption (title) it is still showing Form1. To change caption change the value of property name Text. For this example we will change the Text to Hello World. Also the file representing this form in Solution Explorer will still be referred as Form1.cs, again you can either keep the name of the file as it is or can rename it. We will rename it to HelloWorld.cs.

Now let us see how to deploy it on Windows Mobile Device. For deploying the application on device you need to have ActiveSync installed. There are two ways in which application can be deployed on to the device.  First option is to connect the device to the Development machine via USB. ActiveSync will automatically detect it and you can click on on the top bar. And this time select option "Windows Mobile 6 Professional Device". But then this approach is useful when you want to test/deploy and use the application yourself. What if you want to distribute it to others? In that case you need to create an installation program for your Windows mobile application. The installation file in the Windows Mobile world is distributed in the form of a CAB file. So once we have done with application we should opt for option 2 of creating a CAB file (A CAB file is a library of compressed files stored as a single file). Creating CAB File Creating a CAB file itself is a new project. To create CAB project right click on the solution and select the option New Project as shown below. Clicking on New Project option will open Add New Project Wizard. Select option Setup and Deployment under Other Project Types on the left hand menu. Then select option Smart Device CAB Project on right hand side as shown below. We have named this project as MyFirstAppCAB. Click OK and MyFirstAppCAB project is created under the solution a shown. Now to add files to the CAB, right click on the Application Folder under File System on Target Machine and select option Add-> Project Output as shown. On selecting Project Output option, the following screen will popup. Depending upon the requirement, select what all needs to be compressed in CAB file. For this example we require only output, hence will select option Primary output. Now right click on CAB project MyFirstAppCAB and select option Build. CAB file with name MyFirstAppCAB will be created at the location MyFirstAppMyFirstAppCABDebug. Now let us see how we can deploy this CAB file on emulator and run the application. Click on Tools on the top bar and select option Device Emulator Manager. This will open a Device Emulator Manager as shown below. Select option Windows Mobile 6 Classic Emulator. Right click and select option Connect. Windows Mobile Emulator will start and on Device Emulator Manager you can see to left of Windows Mobile 6 Classic Emulator as shown below. Next step is to Cradle. If you are attempting to cradle for the 1st time, then you need to setup ActiveSync. To setup ActiveSync, double click on on right bottom on Task bar. Microsoft ActiveSync will open up, select option File -> Connection Settings as shown in figure below. Connection Settings window will be open up as shown below. Check the option Allow Connections to one of the followings and then from the drop down select the option DMA. After connecting Windows Mobile 6 Classic Emulator using Device Emulator Manager, again right click and select option Cradle as shown below. Cradle will start ActiveSync and make Emulator work as device connected using ActiveSync. On successful connection you can see on the left of option Windows Mobile 6 Classic Emulator on Device Emulator Manager as shown.