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Getting Started

Startup instructions

1. Download

• Download and unzip the SQL LRS package and place it in your preferred directory. Latest distributions can be found here

2. HTTPS Config

• In order to support HTTPS, SQL LRS automatically creates a temporary self-signed certificate upon startup. These are appropriate for testing and development, but not for a production context.
• If you have a valid TLS certificate you would like to use you can find more instructions for installing it here.

3. Configuration Variables

Create initial configuration variables. Config vars can be set by creating and editing the file config/lrsql.json in your SQL LRS directory or alternatively as environment variables; to start off with the following should be set:

• adminUserDefault and adminPassDefault MUST be set in order to create an initial admin account. Otherwise you will not be able to use the LRS. These are temporary credentials that you will use to log in the very first time.
• httpHost should be set to the host address you are running your webserver on if you are allowing network access (by default it is 0.0.0.0 for localhost); likewise for httpPort and sslPort (which by default are 8080 and 8443, respectively).
• Likewise, authorityUrl should be set to a custom domain in order to uniquely identify Statements inserted into your LRS. (It is set to http://example.org by default.)
• If you are running Postgres, you should set dbHost, dbName, dbUser, and dbPassword to the appropriate Postgres system, as well as dbPort, dbSchema and dbProperties if needed.

The config/lrsql.json file does not need to contain all config vars; those that are skipped will use their default values.

The following is an example of a basic (non-Postgres) config/lrsql.json config file:

{
  "lrs": {
    "adminUserDefault": "myUsername",
    "adminPassDefault": "thisIsMyPassword1!1",
    "authorityUrl": "http://mydomain.com"
  },
  "webserver": {
    "httpHost": "0.0.0.0",
    "httpPort": 8080,
    "sslPort": 8443,
    "allowAllOrigins": true
  }
}

(Setting the webserver vars to these default values isn't necessary, but is shown here for demonstration purposes.)

The allowAllOrigins variable allows for a very permissive CORS configuration for testing and working locally in the absence of a permanent domain name/host. For a deployed system you will want to more properly configure CORS settings. For a complete list of config variables, see here. There is also a sample JSON config file provided for reference at config/lrsql.json.example which contains many more variables than the above.

4. Setup Postgres DB (Optional)

• If using Postgres, setup instructions can be found here.

5. Start the LRS

The LRS uses a slightly different startup procedure depending on what SQL database you want running underneath it. The following table details those modes of operation.

Mac or Linux

• In terminal/shell navigate to the root of the SQL LRS directory
• Run the appropriate shell script from the command line, e.g. bin/run_sqlite.sh.

Windows

• Windows: Double click to run the appropriate executable: e.g. lrsql.exe

In either case you should see a command line output resembling the following, which indicates you have started up successfully.

OS Security & Firewall Warnings

On some operating systems you will need to explicitly allow software from outside an app store to run the SQL LRS. For instance on MacOS:

Choose the "App Store and identified developers" option. The first time you run SQL LRS you will need to follow the procedure below to approve it.

During startup you may see a firewall/security warning depending on OS. In MacOS it may look like the following:

In which case go to your settings and click Allow Anyway on this screen:

In Windows you may see a similar warning that looks like this:

6. Create Accounts and Credentials

Now that the LRS is running, let's set up a (non-seed) account and some credentials to use it.

• First navigate in a browser to the LRS address. This will be http(s)://[host]:[port]/. For example, if you did not change the host and port variables in the sections above, then by default it should be accessible at http://0.0.0.0:8080/. You should see a login screen much like the following:

• Log into the LRS Admin UI using your seed admin account username and password that you set in config/lrsql.json.
• Under "Account Management," enter a new username and password and click "Create Account."
• Then log back in as the new account.
• Under "Credentials Management", click "Add New Credentials," which will auto-generate a new API key and secret.

7. Delete Seed Account

For security purposes, it is important to delete the seed account (as the username and password are stored in plaintext). While logged in as the new account you just created in part 6, go to "Account Management," click the "Delete" button corresponding to the seed account.

Additionally you should remove the adminUserDefault and adminPassDefault lines from config/lrsql.json. This will prevent the system from re-creating the seed accounts on future restarts.

Note that SQL LRS will not delete an admin account if it is the only one present.

Your first Statement

xAPI Statements can be inserted into and queried from the SQL LRS using HTTP commands. Let us insert the following Statement:

{
  "actor": {
    "mbox": "mailto:mike@example.org",
    "name": "Mike"
  },
  "verb": {
    "id": "http://example.org/verb/did",
    "display": { "en-US": "Did" }
  },
  "object": {
    "id": "http://example.org/activity/activity-1",
    "definition": {
      "name": { "en-US": "Activity 1" },
      "type": "http://example.org/activity-type/generic-activity"
    }
  }
}

In order to insert this Statement into your LRS, run the following command:

curl -X POST \
    http://[host]:[port]/xapi/statements \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -H "X-Experience-API-Version: 1.0.3" \
    -u "[api-key]:[api-secret]" \
    -d '[statement data]'

where api-key and api-secret are the credential pair you created earlier, host and port are set for your webserver, and statement data is your Statement (which you can copy-paste from above). This should return a JSON array containing a single UUID; this is the Statement ID that the SQL LRS generated (since the Statement did not have a pre-existing ID).

NOTE: You can use postman instead of curl to send xAPI statement. Please, see the Postman page for further details.

In order to retrieve that statement, you can run the following command:

curl -X GET \
    http://[host]:[port]/xapi/statements \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -H "X-Experience-API-Version: 1.0.3" \
    -u "[api-key]:[api-secret]"

This will run a query where all Statements will be returned - in this case, the one Statement you had just inserted.

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