Friday, April 23, 2010

What's New in the EKP 6.1 API

Although there are no major new areas of functionality in the EKP 6.1 API, there are several useful enhancements, listed herewith.

  • News feeds can now be filtered by category. Both api/publicNews and api/userNews now support an optional categoryId parameter. Why this is useful: If you are creating a topical portal, you can now restrict the articles shown to those that are relevant to the subject of the portal; for example, an onboarding portal can show articles targeted to the user, with the further restriction that only articles related to onboarding are shown.
  • api/module returns additional information. Specifically, module attributes are now returned, as are prices (currency and amount) for module sessions. (Since module attributes are not always intended for learners, they will be returned only if you authenticate as a System Administrator.) Why this is useful: Price information is essential for e-commerce portals, while module attributes can be used to retrieve implementation-specific data such as a product code to be passed to a payment gateway (if this is not the same as the EKP course ID).
  • Images specified via the Picture URL field are now available in news feeds. (Note that you can always include inline images in your articles using the HTML <img> tag.) Why this is useful: Images add impact to news articles, and being able to include those images on your portal sites will make those sites more engaging.

We hope these enhancements will make the API significantly more useful in EKP 6.1.

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