Valence is Desire2Learn’s extensibility technology and it includes all the APIs and tools that developers use to create valuable, integrated solutions for their customers. If you have used D2LWS APIs in the past, or are new to integrating with Desire2Learn’s products, then you can use the documentation on this site to understand the state-of-the-world for extensilbity at Desire2Learn.
Technology features¶
Web 2.0 integrated and decoupled. We’ve based our architecture upon the practices of Web 2.0 and cloud services that permit richly integrated apps, easy configuration, and operational independency. All access to our system is supported through HTTP and HTTPs calls.
IDKey Auth. Our three-legged authentication system ensures that we can transparently support all customer authentication scenarios involving your applications. Also, by ensuring that all API routes into an LMS occur within the acting context of a particular user login, service adminstrators can be confident that activating your application is a safe and constrained step to take.
REST/JSON standards. As a result of using RESTful APIs and JSON data structures, we provide a broad and well-supported technolgy base for our platform. You will find many off-the-shelf tools you can use to help simplify your work. Additionally, we provide open-source library wrappers for a number of languages with an emphasis on prioritizing the more sophisticated authentication steps of your application’s interaction with an LMS.
Extensibility Areas. Our continually expanding suite of APIs provide access to a variety of technical functionality:
| Area | Notes |
|---|---|
| Org and structural | Retrieve and update organizational structure, course lists, user information, and more |
| Content | View and create content components and resources for a course |
| Assignments and grades | Facilitate assignemnt and assessment-related features |
| Social | Access to ePortfolio Collections, Artifacts, and activies of electronic portfolios |
What’s new¶
Learning Suite v10.0.0 brings along with it several new bundles of functionality to Valence.
ePortfolio improvements. Version 4.0.0 of the ePortfolio product component includes new routes to support
- User and Object subscriptions.
- Integration in eP of learning objectives.
- Preset filters for use with the get activity route.
- Removing an association between a reflection and another eP object.
- Simple file upload introduced for eP artifacts.
Learning Environment improvements. Version 10.0.0 of the Learning Environment product component includes new routes to support
- Calendar interaction.
- ISBN associations with course content.
- Course completion interaction with grades.
Learning Platform. Version 10.0.0 of the Learning Platform product component lets callers specify a desired profile image size to prompt the service to thumbnail profile images before sending them back.
It also provides a way for callers to retrieve a SOAP services authentication token through the Valence API.
Learning Repository. Version 5.6 of the Learning Repository product component provides new routes to support access to learning objects.
Versions and migration¶
All API routes to an LMS component are versioned, and include a version negotiation process. This allows your applications to gracefully adapt to the product components that a customer has active. Additionally, it lets Desire2Learn maintain overlapping API versions in a particular product installation, giving your application’s development a way to transition to new features along withour customers, gradually.
The following table shows the association between various versions. Each table column shows a major LMS platform release version, and the API version introduced for each product component related to the individual product component’s release version.
| Suite v10.0.0 (current) | Suite v9.4.1 (legacy) | |
|---|---|---|
| Learning Platform | 1.0 - 1.1 : 5.0.0 | 1.0 : 4.5.0 |
| Learning Environment | 1.0 - 1.1 : 10.0.0 | 1.0 : 9.4.1 |
| Learning Repository | 1.0 : 5.6.0 | – |
| ePortfolio | 2.0 - 2.1 : 4.0.0 | 2.0 : 3.5.1 |
Program features¶
Tools and community. We intend to provide an expanding list of tools to assist you in developing and managing your relationship with Desire2Learn; for example, using our KeyTool you can easily register your application and retrieve the necessary Application ID and Key values you will need to authentiate with an installed LMS.
Additionally, we provide community support to you in a number of different ways depending on your needs.
Mobile Module SDK. All technology companies require a mobile platform strategy; Desire2Learn’s Mobile Module SDK lets you include your application features directly into applications that customers build using Desire2Learn’s framework. Using this SDK, your features become embedded in the UI of an institution’s LMS system so you can sell your software to organizations, rather than individuals.
Distributing applications with the Partner Program. Our relaunched partner program provides access to all the tools you need for success in deploying and commeercializing your application or service, including levels that offer support, training, and partner business plans. For more information on partner benefts, check out our Partner Program home page.
Support¶
We provide support for our Learning Framework APIs througha number of channels, depending upon the nature of your issue or question.
| If you... | Then ... |
|---|---|
| Need help with an API, Tool, or code you are working on | Search, then post, to Desire2Learn Q&A on StackOverflow (tag with Desire2Learn so our contributors will see your post. |
| Have identified a candidate defect or want to request a feature | Open an issue in our issues tracker that includes steps to reproduce the issue, what you expected the results to be, and what actually occurred instead. |
| Want API examples or samples | Check out our samples page. |
| Have a question about our Desire2Learn Partner Program | Visit our Partner Program home page, or if you’re already a partner, email the D2L Partner Manager. |
| Have other questions about Valence not addressed by the previous resources | Contact or Valence@Desire2Learn.com |
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