Adapt Learning Community: Adapt authoring tool was working, now isn't. Any advice?

Hi there,

I had been installing the Adapt authoring tool this morning and I am pleased to say that the installation
had worked and I was happily authoring a few screens. However, it then went downhill. I went to preview a
screen (for the first time) and I could see the progress indicator reach about halfway before it stopped i.e no preview. I then went to publish and it did do this successfully, however in the publish folder there were only json files and the assets files (my jpegs) no html file, so nothing to run.

Then without warning about 10 minutes later I could no longer access http://localhost:5000/. I just get
webpage not available. So I go to command prompt and type in node server and I get the following.
module.js:340 throw wrr; Error: Cannot find module 'C:\Users\Rupert\server

As shown here.

error message 1

So, I don't have any idea what the issue is, so to help diagnose, I have gone through the version
commands for everything that is installed as shown below. As you can see from below, everything seems to
be in order for git, node, npm, ffmpeg, grunt and adapt. The 'monogd' is not recognised as an internal or
external command, operable program or batch file confused me. I can stop MongoDb and start it again. I can also check in Robomongo that the database is running and open the adapt database and everything is there, so why when I try to get the version number from command prompt, does it say that it is not a recognised command?

Anyway, the main worry is why it is saying "module.js:340 throw wrr; Error: Cannot find module 'C:\Users\Rupert\server" when I run node server? Don't understand, it didn't do that earlier, it worked.

And of course what I am mostly interested in is getting Adapt authoring tool running again, and being able to preview and publish my module.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

error 2

Hi Rupert,

This may be a silly question but is the adapt_authoring project definitely cloned to the 'C:\Users\Rupert' folder? If you run a dir command from that location do you see server.js there?

Regards,

Brian

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Hi Brian,

Thank you for getting back. Nope not a silly question, the silliness on this is on my side, I am clearly not running those commands from the correct directories.

I have now done so and can now get back into the adapt authoring tool from running localhost:5000 in my chrome browser. The previewing and publishing still isn't working properly though, but to get to the bottom of this, I would like to just go step by step. Above I had been saying that I could not get the version of MongoDB. By now going to the correct directory and executing the version command I can see that the database version is V3.0.6 as shown below. I think the MongoDB database is working fine.

mongoDB version

So, now to node server as shown below. By going to the correct directory on command prompt and executing node server, I get the following and as you can see it is listening on port 5000. I can now get into adapt authoring from my chrome browser. The question I have is are the following three pieces of information returned on the command prompt what they should be?

Adapt Builder v0.1.1 - is that the correct version?

It says that the Adapt Framework is v.1.1.1 - is that the correct version?

It also tells me to run "node upgrade.js". Should I or should I not do this? I thought that I should not do this as I was under the impression I needed node to be v0.10.33, which it is at present. Running node upgrade.js would surely upgrade to a later version that we do not want, correct?

node server from command prompt

Thanks in advance for any further feedback/help.

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Hi Rupert,

You're on the latest released version of the authoring tool. I wouldn't worry about running 'node upgrade' just now. That doesn't actually upgrade the version of Node.js -- it would upgrade the underlying framework and the authoring tool. Version 2.x of the framework isn't supported in the version of the authoring tool you have so don't run that right now.

What is the error you're getting with preview and publish?

Brian

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Hi Brian,

I've done the following screenshot of my command prompt to show where I am at with versions of everything.

command prompt

I know that I need to have node running and the mongo database. Both are. Do I need to check for anything else to be running or correct version etc?

So I can author screens just fine as shown below.

authoring

Here I have just created a basic screen with some text. I just want to be able to succeed in previewing a screen and publishing. However I am not succeeding in either. When I go to preview, this is what I get.

preview

It asks me to wait, but it never does preview the screen, I leave it for 15 minutes. So, what happens when I publish out? It does create the zip file. However upon opening that zip file, there are only json files and the assets. There are no html files, so there is nothing to run.

Here is that zip file.

http://www.rjalearning.co.uk/VirtualCollege/16_09_2015/induction.zip

So, any further ideas? Thanks.

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Hi Rupert,

What is output in the console when you hit Preview or Publish? Can you go into Theme Picker, select a theme and hit Save, then try again?

Thanks,

Brian

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Hi Brian, thanks for looking at this. Here are the following screenshots from the console of what you were asking about.

First one - this is the output when I go to publish.

publish

This second screen capture is the output when I go to preview.

On my adapt, I only have the one theme, so I go into theme builder, choose Vanilla and press Save. I then go and republish and preview and here are the screenshots for those.

Here is screenshot having pressed Publish after saving this vanilla theme.

publish selected vanilla theme

And here is preview after I have selected this vanilla theme.

preview selected vanilla theme

Thanks, the problems mentioned on this thread with the publish and preview, still exist.

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Brian, I think that I may have had a breakthrough on this. Just reading around I am not the only person having these issues at the moment, as is shown on the following threads below. Even the fixes don't seem entirely watertight, from what I am reading a few new errors kicked up as a result. I am reading that a version 0.12 of the authoring tool may be available by the end of September. I think I should wait until that 0.12 comes out and start again. Luckily I have fresh, new computer to try it on when it comes out, so I look forward to that.

I do not regret having problems like I have been having, you start to learn when you are stuck and I feel my knowledge on adapt has increased significantly since I have been posting here. With this greater knowledge, I feel I am in a better position to have another go with the authoring tool when the next version comes out.

I think that I will be asking another question here on the forum before then though, but luckily not a technical one, more like what skills and skill levels you need for working with the adapt framework directly.

Those thread links....

https://community.adaptlearning.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=933

https://community.adaptlearning.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=856

https://community.adaptlearning.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=868

Thanks.

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Woohoo! The fix worked for me. I can now preview and publish with the authoring tool. Thought I would update on how I did this, for anyone still struggling. Worked first time as well.

For the purposes of doing this, I had freshly installed windows 7 onto a spare computer rather than use my work computer.

This is what I did.

Installed git.
Once I had done that, from git bash, I cloned the authoring tool as per the instructions in the wiki. Then from git bash, I used the command given by Dennis

$ git checkout develop

Once I had done that, I just went through the usual procedure from the wiki. That was as follows

Install Node.js
Verify npm is installed
Install FFmpeg
Install the Grunt and Adapt Command Line Tools
Install MongoDB
Install the Required npm Packages

Now before running the install script, as per Dennis's instructions, I run grunt build from the command prompt. I do not know if this made any difference or not. But it is what I did.

Then once, I had done that, I ran node install to complete the job.

Now it is running fine and I have done a few screens, published out and they are working nicely. If this is a false dawn I will report back, but just wanted to post this in case there is anyone struggling out there atm who this may benefit.

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