Adapt Learning Community: Difficult getting started with component plugin development

I thought I'd make a start at component development by taking an existing component, changing its name and internal name references and trying to run it in Adapt Builder.

I can upload the modified component and include it in a course and change its settings in Adapt Builder but when I come to preview and view the page containing the component, it says Loading... and the circle just keeps on turning!

I've confirmed using Robomongo that the componenttype and its instances in the course are in the database.

I've read the component development docs but can't grasp whether I need to register the new component plugin. I've tried to do so, but I get a message when I run Adapt Register as follows:

$ adapt register
This will publish this plugin to http://adapt-bower-repository.herokuapp.com
Error: EINVAL, invalid argument

I'm not fully up to speed with github, bower, etc but I thought that I'd try and learn by experiment. I'm an experienced Windows developer (C#) - I just feel I'm missing something fundamental.

Can anyone give a little assistance or point me in the direction of the best primer to get me started please?

Hi Simon

Fun to hear that you are giving a go at developing plug-ins. I hear two issues in your post: 1) starting into developing, and 2) getting your modified component to open in the authoring tool. I'd like to offer some unsolicited advice about the first.

If you are really just starting to experiment with plug-ins, and you really are “not fully up to speed with github, bower, etc”, then I'd highly recommend that you begin your experiments in the stand-alone framework and not in the authoring tool. The authoring tool is not a development environment. It is a tool that uses completed [and stable] plug-ins.

My recommendation: 1) develop in framework, 2) create the properties.schema once everything is working in the framework, 3) test in authoring tool.

Experiment by all means, but I think you'll find your development time much more productive in the framework.

(my two cents)

Chuck

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Hi Simon

Good to hear that you are building plugins. You don't need to register plugins in order to use them in the Adapt Builder.

Sounds like you can get past the upload process, but failing on the framework build. As Chuck said probably best to try building in the Adapt framework first. There are better debug options.

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Thanks for the help.

Actually I did get my modified Narrative Component working in Builder by configuring it correctly!

I hadn't included any Narrative items and, if you do that in the Narrative Component it never loads!

Is this a know feature/bug?

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HI Simon,

I noticed this issue myself just yesterday. It looks like a bug so I've raised it here:
https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt-contrib-narrative/issues/146

Regards,

Brian

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