Scry

Scrapes courses from blackboard.

Dependencies

ruby >= 2.2.2

redis-server >= 3.0.7

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "scry"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install scry

Create a ruby file workers.rb and add

require "scry/workers"

Create a Rakefile and add

require "scry/tasks"
Scry::Tasks.install_tasks

Create a sidekiq.yml file and add

:concurrency: 20

:queues:
  - [scry_export_generator, 1]
  - [scry_export_downloader, 1]
  - [scry_log_writer, 1]

:limits:
  scry_export_generator: 5
  scry_export_downloader: 15
  scry_log_writer: 1

note: limits is available through the sidekiq-limit_fetch gem

Create a "scry.yml" file and add

:url: https://<blackboard_url>/
:login: <user_name>
:passwd: <user_password>

Optional

If different log file names are desired, in the scry.yml add the file names. This is the default configuration:

:export_generation_good: export_generation_good.txt
:export_generation_bad: export_generation_bad.txt
:export_download_good: export_download_good.txt
:export_download_bad: export_download_bad.txt
:export_generation_no_export_button: export_generation_no_export_button.txt

And if a different export folder is desired:

:default_dir: blackboard_exports

Usage

Start up sidekiq

bundle exec sidekiq -r ./workers.rb -C sidekiq.yml

Run the rake task to download all the courses.

bundle exec rake scry:scrape

This will download each cartridge zip into the default directory blackboard_exports

Delete entire default blackboard_exports folder

bundle exec rake scry:clean

Monitor sidekiq

bundle exec monitor

Development

After checking out the repo, run bundle install to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Running sidekiq

Need redis running first: redis-server

Run bundle exec sidekiq -r ./lib/scry/workers.rb -C sidekiq.yml

To get access to the workers in code require "lib/scry/sidekiq/boot.rb"

To monitor sidekiq using the web UI, run bin/monitor

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/scry. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.