Platform Plugin Aspects

Purpose

This repository holds various Aspects plugins for the Open edX platform including the event sinks that move data from the LMS to ClickHouse and the embbedding of Superset dashboards back into the platform.

Version Compatibility

• platform-plugin-aspects version 1.x: Nutmeg to Sumac
• platform-plugin-aspects version 2.x: Redwood and above

Sinks

Sinks are components that listen for events and store them in ClickHouse. The events are emitted by the Open edX platform via Open edX events or Django signals.

Available Sinks

Below are the existing sink names, and their corresponding object names (as needed for the dump_data_to_clickhouse command below.

• CourseOverviewSink - Listens for the COURSE_PUBLISHED event and stores the course structure including ordering data through XBlockSink in ClickHouse. Object name: course_overviews
• ExternalIdSink - Listens for the post_save Django signal on the ExternalId model and stores the external id data in ClickHouse. This model stores the relationships between users and their xAPI unique identifiers. Object name: external_id
• UserProfile - Listens for the post_save Django signal on the UserProfile model and stores the user profile data in ClickHouse. Object name: user_profile
• CourseEnrollmentSink - Listen for the ENROLL_STATUS_CHANGE event and stores the course enrollment data. Object name: course_enrollment
• UserRetirementSink - Listen for the USER_RETIRE_LMS_MISC Django signal and remove the user PII information from ClickHouse. This is a special sink and has no object name.

Commands

In addition to being an event listener, this package provides the following commands:

• dump_data_to_clickhouse - This command allows bulk export of the data from the Sinks. Allows bootstrapping a new data platform or backfilling lost or missing data. Each sink object is dumped individually. For large dumps you can use the --batch_size and --sleep_time to control how much load is placed on your LMS / Studio servers. Examples:

  Dump any courses that the systems thinks are out of date (last publish time is newer than the last dump time in ClickHouse):

  python manage.py cms dump_data_to_clickhouse --object course_overviews

  The force option willl dump all objects, regardless of the data ClickHouse currently has so this command will push all course data for all courses:

  python manage.py cms dump_data_to_clickhouse --object course_overviews --force

  These commands will dump the user data Aspects uses when PII is turned on:

  python manage.py cms dump_data_to_clickhouse --object external_id python manage.py cms dump_data_to_clickhouse --object user_profile

  To reduce server load, this command will dump 1000 user profiles at a time, with a 5 second sleep in between:

  python manage.py cms dump_data_to_clickhouse --object user_profile --batch_size 1000 --sleep_time 5

  There are many more options that can be used for different circumstances. Please refer to the commands help for more information. There is also a Tutor command that wraps this, so that you don't need to get shell on a container to execute this command. More information on that can be found in the Aspects backfill documentation.

• load_test_tracking_events - This command allows loading test tracking events into ClickHouse. This is useful for testing the ClickHouse connection to measure the performance of the different data pipelines such as Vector, Event Bus (Redis and Kafka), and Celery.

  Do not use this command in production as it will generate a large amount of data and will slow down the system.

  python manage.py cms load_test_tracking_events

• monitor_load_test_tracking - Monitors the load test tracking script and saves output for later analysis.

  python manage.py cms monitor_load_test_tracking

Instructor Dashboard Integration

Dashboards from Aspects are integrated into the Instructor Dashboard via Superset Embedded SDK. See Configuration for more details.

Getting Started with Development

Please see the Open edX documentation for guidance on Python development in this repo.

Deploying

The Platform Plugin Aspects component is a django plugin which doesn't need independent deployment. Therefore, its setup is reasonably straightforward. First, it needs to be added to your service requirements, and then it will be installed alongside requirements of the service.

Configuration

Instructor Dashboard Configuration

The Instructor Dashboard integration uses the Open edX Filters. To learn more about the filters, see the Open edX Filters documentation. Make sure to configure the superset pipeline into the filter as follows:

OPEN_EDX_FILTERS_CONFIG = {
  "org.openedx.learning.instructor.dashboard.render.started.v1": {
    "fail_silently": False,
    "pipeline": [
      "platform_plugin_superset.extensions.filters.AddSupersetTab",
    ]
  },
}

• SUPERSET_CONFIG - This setting is used to configure the Superset Embedded SDK. The configuration is a dictionary that contains the following keys:

  • internal_service_url - The URL of the Superset instance (useful in development, omit in production).
  • service_url - The URL of the Superset instance.
  • username - The username of the Superset user.
  • password - The password of the Superset user.

• ASPECTS_INSTRUCTOR_DASHBOARDS - This setting is used to configure the dashboards that will be displayed in the Instructor Dashboard. The configuration is a list of dictionaries that contains the following keys:

  • name - The name of the dashboard.
  • slug - The slug of the dashboard.
  • uuid - The UUID of the dashboard.
  • allow_translations - A boolean value that determines if the dashboard is translated in Aspects.

• SUPERSET_EXTRA_FILTERS_FORMAT - This setting is used to configure the extra filters that will be applied to the dashboards. The configuration is a list of strings that can be formatted with the following variables:

  • user - The user object.
  • course - The course object.

• SUPERSET_DASHBOARD_LOCALES - This setting is used to configure the available locales for the dashboards. The configuration is a list of supported locales by Aspects.

Event Sink Configuration

• EVENT_SINK_CLICKHOUSE_BACKEND_CONFIG - This setting is used to configure the ClickHouse connection. The configuration is a dictionary that contains the following keys:

  • url - The host of the ClickHouse instance.
  • database - The database name.
  • username - The username of the ClickHouse user.
  • password - The password of the ClickHouse user.
  • timeout_secs - The timeout in seconds for the ClickHouse connection.

• EVENT_SINK_CLICKHOUSE_PII_MODELS - This setting is used to configure the models that contain PII information. The configuration is a list of strings that contain the table names where the PII information is stored.

• EVENT_SINK_CLICKHOUSE_MODEL_CONFIG - This setting is used to provide compatibility with multiple Open edX models. The configuration is a dictionary that contains the following a key per model that contains a dictionary with the following keys:

  • module - The module path of the model.
  • model - The model class name.

Event Sinks are disabled by default. To enable them, you need to enable the following waffle flag: event_sink_clickhouse.{{model_name}}.enabled where model name is the name of the model that you want to enable. Or, you can enable them via settings by setting EVENT_SINK_CLICKHOUSE_{{model_name}}_ENABLED to True.

Getting Help

Documentation

Start by going through the documentation. If you need more help see below.

More Help

If you're having trouble, we have discussion forums at https://discuss.openedx.org where you can connect with others in the community.

Our real-time conversations are on Slack. You can request a Slack invitation, then join our community Slack workspace.

For anything non-trivial, the best path is to open an issue in this repository with as many details about the issue you are facing as you can provide.

https://github.com/openedx/platform-plugin-aspects/issues

For more information about these options, see the Getting Help page.

License

Please see LICENSE.txt for details.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. Please read How To Contribute for details.

This project is currently accepting all types of contributions, bug fixes, security fixes, maintenance work, or new features. However, please make sure to have a discussion about your new feature idea with the maintainers prior to beginning development to maximize the chances of your change being accepted. You can start a conversation by creating a new issue on this repo summarizing your idea.

The Open edX Code of Conduct

All community members are expected to follow the Open edX Code of Conduct.

People

The assigned maintainers for this component and other project details may be found in Backstage. Backstage pulls this data from the catalog-info.yaml file in this repo.

Reporting Security Issues

Please do not report security issues in public. Please email [email protected].