What does it mean that a website supports xAPI? - xapi

I have a normal website where user can login and logout, I want to be able to launch xAPI content from this website supposing that the xAPI courses are stored on some cloud service and created by an authoring tool that supports xAPI like storyline.
I've read that launching should work basically by providing the right launch URL which is made of the link to the course besides endpoint from the LRS and some other informations like activity_id.
since launching works only by providing this url, what is the purpose of making the platform supports xAPI and what does that mean to the platform? is it the connection between the platform and the LRS? and how can I achieve that?
another thing I would like to know, who is usually responsible for making the send statement functions that send statements to the LRS, the instructional designer during creating the content or the web developper? because I was reading here in tincan php library and seems like he is making those statements inside the app code.

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How to integrate wit.ai With my own chatbot application

I would like to create my own web chatbot and i like to integrate my app with wit.ai for natural language classification.I need to know how to integrate wit.ai service(through api call) with my application(any language in backend).i am using C# in front end.I have gone through the integration part Which posted in wit.ai website.But i don't know how to connect it .Could anyone send me a integration details little briefly
I think the short answer is its similar to how you would call any other APIs from your application server components. Wit exposes multiple APIs like message, speech and converse which you can call by passing the Authorization token and other payloads and make use of the API response in your application.
You can use message API if you are only interested in extracting
intent and other atributes of the sententense
Use speech for building voice based application and
Converse if you want to build a little more smarter app. Currently you can only pass text for converse APIs.Hoping they will introduce voice option for this soon.
Now to make things simpler, they have also provided SDKs in various languages like node-wit, pywit etc. So if you want to build your server side logic using on nodejs or python you can use these SDKs. The advantage is that you dont have to manage raw APIs calls and instead it is all managed by SDK. Also, other big advantage is that you can make use of runActions method which encapsulates converse API and make things simpler. If you want to build in nodejs then the messenger example is a good starting point. You can borrow all this logic/concept in your app and replace FB related calls etc with your custom bot. For Python you can look at the below link
https://github.com/wit-ai/pywit/pull/55
Also, you can explore the options like using other frameworks like botkit if you plan to integrate wit with other chatbots like FB messenger or slackbot as these frameworks provide more flexibility and ability to easily switch to different chatbots in future. But they don't seem to properly support the converse API of wit.
You are specifically looking for integration details. Since you are using c# for frontend app, natuarally the best option would be to use c# for backend as well. In which case you will be left with directly calling wit APIs from your backend as I think there are no SDKs in c#. If you want to make use of SDK in node or python etc then you will have to build a rest based backend (for example) which can be invoked from your c# application. I am currently working on a nodejs app and integrating it with wit using node-wit. I can share some code once its ready but i dont know when I will be able to finish it. For bootstrapping my application I have used this node application. If you have some understanding of node then you can look at the /server/controllers logic. Similar to this application I have built a witController which uses runAction to interact with wit and I am calling this from front-end when user submits a message to your bot. The biggest challenge in runAction is to figure-out a way to send back the wit response to your front-end and get follow up response from user. Wit sends the response in Send method as you can see in the node-wit's messanger example.
Hope this helps!

Can you create Google Forms from Google Docs in an application?

I am thinking about app that will use google form and I need to create forms from that app. Is there a way how can I create form in google docs without using website but through some api or some other way?
I can offer an idea for a solution using Google App Script.
Since the beginning of 2013 you can create new forms using the App Script Forms Service API quite easily.
var form = FormApp.create(title)
.setDescription(description)
.setConfirmationMessage('Thanks for responding!')
;
The problem now is how to get that App Script running from your non App Script code.
You can use App Script to create a Web App that reacts to HTTP GET requests.
So putting it together, you may be able to create an App Script Web App that reacts to a GET request and when it gets the right URL parameters, it creates the form.
(Nov 2020) Yes, it is possible to programmatically create Google Forms. You can do it with Google Apps Script using its Forms service. You can also extend the code to read in the contents from Google Docs (with Apps Script's Document service) and use it for the creation of Google Forms.
I created a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Add-on, which you can think of as a Google Docs extension, called GFormIt. Its original purpose was intended for teachers to write exams/quizzes, possibly with answers, in Google Docs, then automatically convert them to Google Forms to distribute to students who submit their answers into Google Sheets (the destination for Google Forms submissions).
Furthermore, if you (the teacher) provided answers to your test questions, GFormIt would also auto-submit your answers to the Sheet as if you were a student. If you do that, and use a tool like Flubaroo to grade the exam, you could designate your row in the Sheet as “the answer key.” You can learn more about how it works, including viewing a short video, at the GFormIt page linked above.
This Google Docs add-on, along with others for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc., are all certified/validated by Google and available for free to anyone from the Google Workspace Marketplace. (However, your admins may have to grant permissions for you to try to install them to your corporate Workspace account.) If interested in building your own add-on, please see the developer documentation and perhaps some of my introductory videos to get started, the most relevant being the one linked to at the top of this answer.
Apps Script is a serverless Google technology, meaning you write your code (using JavaScript) in the browser, and it is hosted by & executed on Google servers. If you wanted to create your own web app (and hosted anywhere), you would have to wait for a Google Forms REST API which does not exist at the time of this writing. (If we ever launch one, you'll find its documentation at https://developers.google.com/forms along with the others like Sheets https://developers.google.com/sheets, Gmail https://developers.google.com/gmail, Drive https://developers.google.com/drive, etc.)
Earlier this year (Mar 2022) the new Google Forms Api graduated from Beta. It is more powerful that the previous versions and caters for two main use cases:
Automated form creation and editing: Enables automated form creation
and editing. Enables rapid form generation from large volume question
banks or other data backends.
Reaction to Form responses: The API also enables developers to build
automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include
developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering
business workflows based on response data.
We have used it to build an integration that Creates documents and slides each time a form is completed: www.portant.co/google-forms-to-docs and it works really well.
I think the other key use case looks like it would be a good fit for you and others looking for a solution like this.
Cheers, James
Sorry, the API doesn't support programmatically creating forms.

Tracking query strings in Shopify, using webhooks and admin options

I was redirected here by Shopify support. I have three main questions for a project I'll be working on and wanted to see how possible some of the things would be.
We are looking to develop a plugin for use with Shopify to track purchases through the use of a link shortener (to see which link referred what purchases, etc.). I have a few questions that I'm not 100% sure on even after reading through the documentation.
The first problem that I seem to have is tracking the query string that the link shortener appends to the URL once it redirects. For this service, they use "?visit_id={hash}" and I need to be able to access this--at the very least on the "Thank You" page after an order. I saw in the docs that there is "landing_page_ref" (http://wiki.shopify.com/Order#landing_site_ref) but considering our query string is "visit_id" instead of one of the acceptable parameters, how would I be able to use that query string?
Lastly, I just have a question about how webhooks work with plugins that are on the app store. I know I can just call webhooks to wherever I want, like my personal server, but if this app gets onto the app store, I obviously don't want to hook everything to my own server. Is there a way to make it run on the store itself, and which URL should I use?
Lastly, what is the preferred method for handling configuration options for the plugin? Is there a way to hook into the admin backend or would all configuration have to be in a file within the plugin?
Thanks,
Andrew
I'll do my best to answer these for you. It sounds like you're used to building plugins for something like Wordpress - Shopify apps are a bit different.
You can't access anything on the thank you page for the order.
The thank you page/checkout process goes through a secured Shopify page that you don't have access to - so if you want information about what your URL shortener attached to the store pages, you'll need to retrieve it while they're on the page (using something like a ScriptTag + Javascript to track the query string), or hope that it's inside the Order when you retrieve it later (using the API or a webhook).
Webhooks need to talk to a server you run.
They send the information to you, and then you process it and deal with it. If you want to use webhooks, you will need to run a server with your app on it for the webhooks to talk to.
You manage your own config.
Because you're running your own server to handle those webhooks, you handle configuration for your plugin there. The apps I've worked on typically have their own database for managing configuration options, as well as an admin panel to manage them (it's what the user accesses when they click 'Log Into [Your App]' on the "Manage Apps" screen).
You'll need to run your own server to host your Shopify app.

Google Analytics for Mac OSx application

Is it possible to use Google Analytics API's to track Mac OSX applications?
If not could any one suggest me an alternative for Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is designed to work with web applications not for desktop apps. Although it might be possible to collect info about your application and send it to your Google Analytic account but the amount of work required to retrofit might be better spent, building your own Analytic solution.
A good starting point would be to create a simple web service, which collects information regarding clicks. Then rewrite your application to call that web service on every click within your application.
You would ideally want to store this information locally and submit it to the web service in batches. You would also want to design the application, so that if you ever shut down the web service, the application would still be able to operate.
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments by Václav Slavík, they have added apps analytics for iOS/Android.
I made a simple set of classes for doing this:
https://github.com/stephenlind/SimpleCocoaGoogleAnalytics
Google Analytics is not only for web applications, but also for mobile. It's available on the platform like android, iOS, etc. If you want to track your MAC OS X application, you can choose DeskAppTrack or DeskMetrics. DeskAppTrack is only available on MAC. It provide a professional data statistical analysis and it's free. While DeskMetrics is available on MAC and Windows. Either one is ok.
This really depends on how detailed you want to get. If you are are truly looking for analytics with detail and control flow data, you are better suited to created your own web service, as mentioned.
However, if you simply want to know a small number of operations, that occur at a small volume, i.e. when the app is launched (a quick and dirty solution): then in theory you could create a landing page on your site that contains a minimal head section, and a blank body, and then load the URL with an NSURL when you want to trigger the action.
Of course, you would have to include the google analytics tracking codes in the header, and you may need to load an off-screen webview to get the javascript to run. Like I said, quick and dirty.
In either case, you want to make sure the application will continue to perform properly, even if the web service / page is not present.

Using URL Link To Send Params To VB.NET App

What I am looking for is using a URL link such as "MyApp://param=value" or "MyApp://mysite.com/?params=value" to open my application and read the params using GET. I do not want to use the click once method to do this, because I want the application to load up without the starting up bar at the topleft. I know it could be done but I could not find anywhere to do it at. You can see an example used over at curse.com where they use a link like "curse://curse.com/?etc=etc" to launch their app and download the item. Another example is with Ventrilo where you can use "ventrillo://etc" links to start vent and connect to a server. The reason I want this is because I plan to use it to give my customers a way to give their clients a way to connect to their servers with my software using a simple URL.
Since the question is about VB.NET, I’m assuming you are targeting Windows.
In that case, this can be done by registering a custom URL handler via the Windows registry.
Other operating systems have different ways of achieving this.