A simple, queryable Caliper event store.

Most Learning Record Stores (LRSes) that support IMS Global Caliper (or XAPI) today just store the JSONB of the event payload in some fashion. There is no built-in query capability. You must write rather elaborate JSON queries to gain insight into student usage patterns based on the events.

Callisto provides the same generic event store. But it decomposes the various event types into their own structured forms and then exposes specific REST queries for each event type. It is our hope that the Callisto query web services eventually become extensions to the IMS Global Caliper standard.

Callisto is a very simple Ruby on Rails app with models and controllers for (eventually) all important Caliper events likely to be used for query. It is written for Postgres due to PG's excellent JSONB and fulltext support which are likely to be helpful. It could be ported to other relational databases. Given its focus on web service query, Callisto will stick very closely to the generated Rails scaffolding for the models for each Caliper event.

Code is available on GitHub

All Callisto code is open source via Apache License 2.0.

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• PostgreSQL 10+ (client only)

Clone project:

git clone https://github.com/openedinc/callisto.git
cd callisto

Initialize containers:

docker-compose up

The first time you run this will take a few minutes, it should output something similar to the following:

postgres_1  |  done
postgres_1  | server stopped
postgres_1  |
postgres_1  | PostgreSQL init process complete; ready for start up.
postgres_1  |
postgres_1  | LOG:  database system was shut down at 2018-01-30 00:34:47 UTC
postgres_1  | LOG:  MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled
postgres_1  | LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
postgres_1  | LOG:  autovacuum launcher started
callisto_web_1 exited with code 1
...

This is expected and only will happen the first time you launch the containers. Cancel the operation with Ctrl+c. Next, initialize the database:

docker-compose run web bin/rails db:setup db:migrate db:seed

This will setup the database tables. You should output like this:

...
== 20180130181022 CreateActiveAdminComments: migrating ========================
-- create_table(:active_admin_comments)
   -> 0.0541s
-- add_index(:active_admin_comments, [:namespace])

$

Now restart the web container. The database container should already be running.

docker-compose restart web
docker-compose ps

You should see the following:

Name                      Command              State           Ports
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
callisto_postgres_1   docker-entrypoint.sh postgres   Up      5432/tcp
callisto_web_1        bin/rails s -p 3000             Up      0.0.0.0:3000->3000/tcp

You can create a test user by running the following script:

docker-compose exec web bin/rails user:create["[email protected]","password"]

We strongly recommend developing callisto using docker so you can ensure the application will run the same way locally as it does in production. Below are the steps if you'd like to run it without docker.

• Ruby 2.5.x
• PostgreSQL 10+

Clone project:

git clone https://github.com/openedinc/callisto.git
cd callisto

Run setup script to install gems and prepare the database:

bin/setup

Now you can run the project:

bin/rails s

You can create a test user by running the following script:

bin/rails user:create["[email protected]","password"]

Callisto includes an admin interface, powered by active admin. If enabled, the interface is available on the /admin path. For example, in local development: http://localhost:3000/admin

Callisto can be configured via environment variables. The following variables are available:

• TOKEN_LIFESPAN: Sets the duration of user tokens in seconds. Default is 2 weeks (1209600)
• ENABLE_ACTIVE_ADMIN: Set to true to enable the admin interface. Default is false. The admin interface is also disabled if this variable is not set.

You can create an admin user by running the following script:

bin/rails user:create_admin["[email protected]","supersecret"]

NOTE: Callisto's active admin interface should not be exposed to the public internet for anything other than development / test environments. Production environments should run a copy of the callisto container on a secure network with the admin interface enabled.

You will need to sign in to get your access-token, uid, and client. These attributes will be used in all subsequent requests to authenticate your user.

curl -X POST -i \
  -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  "http://localhost:3000/api/v1/auth/sign_in" \
  -d '{"email": "[email protected]", "password": "password" }'

access-token: VBU0HTcLQRX6X6o2rnXtmw
token-type: Bearer
client: 67iQfwL3rJ_Da7nNXwKhNw
expiry: 1519412618
uid: [email protected]

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'access-token: VBU0HTcLQRX6X6o2rnXtmw' \
  -H 'client: 67iQfwL3rJ_Da7nNXwKhNw' \
  -H "uid: [email protected]" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/v1/example_endpoint

Various queries on AssessmentItemEvents can be performed with the assessment_item_events.json endpoint.

Parameters include:

• actor_id - the ID of the assessment item taker, e.g. "https://example.edu/user/554433"
• action_name - what happened with the assessment item, e.g. "http://purl.imsglobal.org/vocab/caliper/v1/action#Completed"
• object_id - the assessment item ID itself, e.g. "https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/001"
• generated_id - the ID of the assessment attempt, e.g. ""https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/001/item/001/response/001""
• learning_objective - all GradeEvents for a particular learning objective, expressed as a CASE URL

Example REST call (all assessment item events for specified user):

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'access-token: lW1c60hYkRwAinzUqgLfsQ' \
  -H 'client: W_xCQuggzNOVeCnNZbjKFw' \
  -H 'uid: [email protected]' \
  https://opencallisto.org/api/v1/assessment_item_events.json?actor_id=https://example.edu/user/554433

Various queries on GradeEvents can be performed with the grade_events.json endpoint.

Parameters include:

• actor_id - the ID of the assessment taker, e.g. "https://example.edu/user/554433"
• object_id - the ID of the assessment attempt, e.g. "https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/001/attempt/5678"
• object_assignable - the ID of the assessment, e.g. "https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/0011"
• generated_id - the ID of the assessment result, e.g. "https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/001/attempt/5678/result
• learning_objective - all GradeEvents for a particular learning objective, expressed as a CASE URL

Example REST call (all grade events for specified user):

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'access-token: lW1c60hYkRwAinzUqgLfsQ'
  -H 'client: W_xCQuggzNOVeCnNZbjKFw' \
  -H 'uid: [email protected]' \
  https://opencallisto.org/api/v1/grade_events.json?actor_id=https://example.edu/user/554433

Various queries on AssessmentEvents can be performed with the grade_events.json endpoint.

Parameters include:

• actor_id - the ID of the assessment taker, e.g. "https://example.edu/user/554433"
• action_name - what happened with the assessment, e.g."http://purl.imsglobal.org/vocab/caliper/v1/action#Paused"
• object_id - the ID of the assessment, e.g. "https://A0501617.opened.com/assessment_bank/0235872d-636a-4467-94d0-5ab6842463ed/assessment/1094264"
• generated_id - the ID of the assessment attempt, e.g. "https://example.edu/politicalScience/2015/american-revolution-101/assessment/001/attempt/5678/result
• learning_objective - all GradeEvents for a particular learning objective, expressed as a CASE URL

Example REST call (all grade events for specified user):

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'access-token: lW1c60hYkRwAinzUqgLfsQ'
  -H 'client: W_xCQuggzNOVeCnNZbjKFw' \
  -H 'uid: [email protected]' \
  https://opencallisto.org/api/v1/assessment_events.json?actor_id=https://example.edu/user/554433

Various queries on MediaEvents can be performed with the media_events.json endpoint.

Parameters include:

• actor_id - the ID of the media viewer, e.g. "https://example.edu/user/554433"
• action_name - what happened with the video, e.g. "http://purl.imsglobal.org/vocab/caliper/v1/action#Ended"
• object_id - the URL of the video itself, e.g. "https://example.com/super-media-tool/video/1225"
• learning_objective - the learning objective of the video, expressed as the CASE URL for the standard, e.g. http://opensalt.opened.com/cftree/item/19033

Example REST call (all grade events for specified user):

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'access-token: lW1c60hYkRwAinzUqgLfsQ'
  -H 'client: W_xCQuggzNOVeCnNZbjKFw' \
  -H 'uid: [email protected]' \
  https://opencallisto.org/api/v1/media_events.json?actor_id=https://example.edu/user/554433

Callisto relies on Postgres to store the attributes of each Caliper event individually. This includes columns such as actor_id, action_name, and object_id. As new Caliper events get created the following rules should be followed for generating Postgres tables and their columns. The rules here are also useful for code the expects to populate rows to the table.

Table names (following the ActiveRecord convention) should be the Caliper event name (its type) with underscores between words. For example the Caliper AssessmentEvent has the table name "assessment_events".

The columns that must always be present include:

• id - a unique ID for the row stored in the table. This is necessary for the ActiveRecord ORM to function.
  ables for each event should be available with the following rules. Code that populates the table does not have to populate this column
• event_id - the Caliper id attribute should be represented as event_id in the table to not collide with the id column mentioned above
• payload - a direct duplicate of the JSON of the original Caliper payload
• client - this column will be the identity of the logged in application sending Caliper events or querying for them. It is used to segment the data by particular groups.

The Caliper event type attribute should NOT be present in the Postgres table, as it is implied by the table name.

All other Caliper event attributes SHOULD be present in the table and abide by the following rules:

• The column names should be the exact Caliper attribute name but converted to underscores when there is more than one word instead of camelCase. For example the "eventTime" attribute becomes "event_time".
• Non-valid identified characters (alphanumeric plus underscore) should be stripped. So the Caliper event attribute "@context" becomes "context".
• For attributes that are embedded inside other attributes, an underscore should be placed in between the parent and child attribute to create a column name. For example the id attribute inside the actor attribute would be placed in the column "actor_id".

Callisto is a project from ACT, Inc..

Current contributors include Adam Blum, Lucas Campbell and Lars Burgess.

It is open source and available via Apache License 2.0. Please submit pull requests to us via the GitHub repo if you make enhancements. Email us if you want to discuss your contributions.

IMS Caliper is a trademark of IMS Global