Packaging Items

The config.json and index.html files, along with other assets such as media files make up the definition of an Assessment Item.

For this Item to be presented in a browser the Javascript code for rendering the PIE Custom Elements and Controller logic needs to be assembled.

The PIE CLI provides a packaging tool that will package and assemble the PIE code and all dependencies needed for rendering.

pie pack [item directory, defaults to current directory]

When an Assessment Item is packaged the packaging tool adds the following javascript files to the item definition by default:

Packaging for Client Side Only

The pie cli has a flag -C --include-complete that will additionally add the following file to the packaged item:

This script bundles the the client side view, the controllers and the configuration json data into one file. This is provided for creating a version of the assessment item that can easily be included as one file in HTML and does not require any server-side rendering capability. See rendering items

Distributing Items

When sharing PIE Assessment Items between systems, the best practice is to share them in their packaged form (including the basic definition and assets along with the assembled javascript code). The system receiving the items may choose to re-package if necessary using the basic item definition.

Example:

  config.json
  index.html
  pie.js
  pie-view.js
  pie-controller.js
  picture-one.png
  ...

Extra metadata that may (and should) be included with an Assessment Item is outside the scope of the PIE project.

Advanced Packaging - Code Reuse

If you are packaging a lot of assessment items, you can optimize the process by reusing the same javascript code for items that use the same sets of pies.

When you pack an Assessment Item there are 2 files generated that are reusable, pie-view.js and pie-controller.js. This is because they contain logic only related to the pies used by the item. They don't contain any logic relating to the item itself.

If we have 1 assessment item that has:

{
  "elements": {
    "my-pie": "1.0.0"    
  },
  "models": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "element": "my-pie",
      prompt: "question 1"
    }
  ]
}

And another that has:

{
  "elements": {
    "my-pie": "1.0.0"    
  },
  "models": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "element": "my-pie",
      prompt: "question 1"
    },
    {
      "id": "2",
      "element": "my-pie",
      prompt: "question 2"
    }
  ]
}

Both of these assessment items use my-pie@1.0.0, so the pie-view.js + pie-controller.js built for question 1 would work for question 2.

The PIE cli tool provides a command to help with reusing generated code:

pie manifest [item directory, defaults to current directory] --outfile myManifest.txt

Writes a JSON file which includes a unique hash ID that represents the PIEs (and their versions) that are included in the config. Using this ID you can store generated code by ID and reference to see if it has already been created before packing a new item.