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Web Submit

For many years, students have used the command line submit utility for submitting course work. Now, there's a different way to submit course work - Web Submit - and it can be found here:

https://webapp.eecs.yorku.ca/submit

Students with an EECS account can login to Web Submit with their EECS credentials. Students without an EECS account can login with their Passport York credentials.

After logging in, the user will see a list of academic years, terms, and courses. The default academic year and term is the current one. By default, no course or assignment are selected.

A field “Submit Status” updates to indicate either “Submission Enabled” or “Submission Disabled” depending on whether the group bit on the assignment subdirectory is writable or not.

Under “Please specify files to submit:”, the user has an opportunity to submit up to 10 files at once. There is a browse button for selecting each file. As long as the assignment is open for submission, clicking on the “Browse” button, takes the user to their web browser file manager where they can select a file. After selecting up to 10 files, the user hits the “Submit Files” button at the bottom of the screen, and all the files are submitted. A “Messages:” field will show up to inform the user of the success of the process. Up to 512 MB of files can be uploaded at once. If the user submits more than 512 MB, the student will get an error message and will need to reselect their acadyear/term/course/assignment again.

When the user selects a particular academic year, term, course, and assignment, he will see any files that he has submitted from this Web Submit session or past sessions. Faculty can configure whether students are permitted to view the contents of submitted files (see below). If submission is enabled, the user will be able to delete files from his submission, or add additional files. If submission is closed, the user will not be able to delete files or add additional files.

Web submit has more file restrictions than the standard submit command. Files submitted cannot start with a “.” and cannot contain spaces. In fact, the only valid characters that filenames can contain include: numbers, letters, _, -, and “.”. Web submit will only show the student submitted files that match this specification.

Check Scripts

With the command line version of submit, if you have a _check file in your submit directory, it gets executed when students submit their work. _check files are not supported by web-based submit at this time. As a result, if an assignment contains a _check file, web submit will not allow submitting to that assignment, and tell the student to use the command line submit instead. Here is additional documentation on using submit outside the PRISM lab via a Windows or Mac platform. This page was developed by Professor Burton Ma.

How to submit from outside the Prism lab

This course uses an automated system that checks your submitted work for correctness and coding style. The system is not currently compatible with the EECS Web Submit system; thus, students must transfer their work to an EECS server and then remotely log in to the server to submit their work. This document describes the steps needed to submit work from outside the Prism lab.

Windows users

Windows does not provide an easy-to-use method for transferring files or for remotely logging in to a UNIX workstation. You will need to download and install software to provide these services.

Step 1

Download and install WinSCP. WinSCP is an open source free program that supports secure file transfer between two Internet connected computers.

Step 2

Download and install putty (at the bottom of the linked page; it is easiest to use the PuTTY Installation package). putty is an open source free program that supports secure remote login to a host computer (among other things).

Step 3

Remote login to the EECS undergraduate server and create a directory for your submission files if you have not already done so in the past. Do this by running the putty program that you installed in Step 2. In the Host Name (or IP address) field enter the EECS undergraduate server name red.cse.yorku.ca and then click the Open button

Step 4

You may get a warning window stating “The server's host key is not cached in the registry.” This is to be expected if this is the first time that you have logged into red.cse.yorku.ca using putty. Click the Yes button to continue.

Step 5

You should see a login terminal appear:

Step 6

Type your EECS user name and press Enter. Type your EECS password and press Enter; your password will not appear as you type it.

Step 7

To keep things organized, make a directory named submit and change to the newly created directory by typing the commands:

mkdir submit
cd submit

Do not close putty; you still need it to run the submit command.

Step 8

Transfer your files from your computer to the EECS undergraduate server. Do this by running the WinSCP program that you installed in Step 1. Enter the EECS undergraduate server name red.cse.yorku.ca as the Host name, type in your EECS user name and password, and press the Login button.

Step 9

You may get a warning window stating “The server's host key was not found in the cache.” This is to be expected if this is the first time that you have logged into red.cse.yorku.ca using WinSCP. Click the Yes button to continue.

Step 10

When you successfully login, you should see the WinSCP program running as shown in the figure below. The left pane shows the file system of your computer, and the right pane shows the file system of the EECS undergraduate server.

Step 11

In the left pane, navigate to the folder containing your submission files using the Open directory/bookmark button. For eclipse users, you can find the folder holding your files using eclipse (in eclipse, open one of your submission files, click the File menu and select Properties).

Step 12

In the figure below, you can see that I have successfully found the files that I want to submit in the left pane.

In the right pane, navigate to your submit directory that you created in Step 7.

Step 13

In the left pane, select the files that you want to submit. In the figure below, you can see that I have selected three files to submit. Click the Upload button (highlighted in red in the figure below) to upload your files.

Step 14

When the upload is finished, you will see your files appear in your account on the EECS server in the right pane.

Step 15

In putty verify that your files have been successfully uploaded by listing the contents of the directory:

ls

Step 16

In putty, type in the submit command given to you by your instructor. For example, to submit lab1 for EECS2030 you might type:

submit 2030 lab1 Point2.java SpiroUtil.java group.txt

Step 17

Read the output of the submit command carefully. If there are errors with your submission you may be forced to re-submit your corrected work.

Step 18

You may re-submit your work as many times as you like. Every time you make changes to your work on your computer, you must re-transfer your work using WinSCP and re-submit by typing in the submit command in putty.

Mac users

Mac OS provides a terminal program much like the terminal program that you use in the Prism labs. You can transfer your files and submit using the Mac terminal.

Step 1

In Launchpad, search for the terminal program, and start the terminal program. You will use this terminal to access files on your EECS account by logging into the EECS undergraduate server computer.

Step 2

ssh (short for secure shell) is a program for logging into a remote computer and for executing commands on a remote computer.

Remotely log in to your EECS account using ssh by typing the following command and pressing enter:

ssh your_eecs_username@red.eecs.yorku.ca

You should replace your_eecs_username with your actual EECS user name. For example, if I wanted to remotely log in to my account I would type:

ssh burton@red.eecs.yorku.ca

Step 3

If this is the first time that you have remotely logged in to the server, you will receive a warning message. Type yes and press enter to continue:

Step 4

Enter your password and press enter (your password will not appear as your type):

Step 5

You are now logged in to your EECS account. Notice that the prompt in your terminal has changed to red which is the name of the EECS server computer that you are currently logged in to.

Step 5

To keep things organized in your EECS account, you should create a directory for your submission files. Type in the following commands, pressing enter after each command (if you haven't already done this in the past):

mkdir submit
cd submit

This will create a directory named submit in your home directory of your EECS account, and then change to the newly created directory.

Step 6

Open a second terminal window (click on the Shell menu and click on New Window). You will use this terminal to access files on your computer.

Step 7

Find the directory where your submission files are located. For eclipse users, you can find the directory holding your files using eclipse (in eclipse, open one of your submission files, click the File menu and select Properties).

Step 8

Change to the directory on your computer where your submission files are located. For example, my files are located in the directory workspace/EECS2030/src/eecs2030/lab1. To change to that directory I would type the following command into the terminal and press enter:

cd workspace/EECS2030/src/eecs2030/lab1

Step 9

List the contents of the directory by typing the following command into the terminal and press enter:

ls

In the figure below you can see that I have three files in the directory (Point2.java, SpiroUtil.java, and group.txt).

Step 10

Transfer your files to your submit directory on the EECS undergraduate server. If you want to transfer all of the files in the directory use the following command:

scp * your_eecs_username@red.eecs.yorku.ca:submit

Again, replace your_eecs_username with your actual EECS user name.

If you want to transfer specific files you can do so by transferring them one at a time; for example, I could transfer all three files individually by typing:

scp Point2.java burton@red.eecs.yorku.ca:submit
scp SpiroUtil.java burton@red.eecs.yorku.ca:submit
scp group.txt burton@red.eecs.yorku.ca:submit

Step 11

scp will prompt you for your EECS password; type it in and press enter.

Step 12

scp will transfer a copy of your files from your computer to your EECS account.

Step 13

Switch back to the first terminal window that you opened (the terminal where you are currently logged into red).

Make sure that your files have been transferred into your submit directory by typing the following command and press enter:

ls

In the figure below, you can see that the files group.txt, Point2.java, and SpiroUtil.java are now in the submit directory of my EECS account.

Step 14

Submit your files using the command provided by your instructor.

For example, to submit lab1 for EECS2030 you might type:

submit 2030 lab1 Point2.java SpiroUtil.java group.txt

Step 15

Read the output of the submit command carefully. If there are errors with your submission you may be forced to re-submit your corrected work.

Step 18

You may re-submit your work as many times as you like. Every time you make changes to your work on your computer, you must re-transfer your work using scp (using a terminal window on your computer) and re-submit by typing in the submit command (using a terminal window where you are logged into red).

Your remote login session ends automatically if you don't enter any commands for a certain period of time. If this happens, you will see a message that mentions a broken pipe and your terminal prompt will show the name of your computer (indicating that you are no longer remotely logged into red). If this happens, run the ssh program again to log back into red.

Feedback

If a faculty member places an HTML file called feedback.html in the users submit directory, and makes the file owned by group submit (chgrp submit feedback.html), then when the student logs in to web submit, and selects the course, and assignment, he will see “Feedback: Available”. Clicking on “Available” opens a new web browser tab which contains the web submit header (title and York Logo), a feedback header (including user, academic year, term, course, and assignment), the faculty feedback (contents of feedback.html), then the standard web submit footer. If no feedback is available for the selected assignment, “Feedback: None” is displayed. The “feedback.html” file needs to be owned by group submit or the system will not be able to read it. Since the standard web submit header and footer are added to the contents of the feedback file, the file should not contain a head section/title/etc. Basic HTML can be used. PHP cannot be used.

Additional Configuration

An optional file called “.config” may be placed in the assignment subdirectory. This will configure additional behaviour for Web Submit.

At the moment, there's only one option:

preview=false

If you place “preview=false” in .config, the user will not be able to preview the contents of previously submitted files. The default behaviour is to allow previewing the contents of previously submitted files.

Please ensure that if you use “.config”, that it is readable by the web server. That is: chmod 644 .config

Custom Web Submit Startup URL Parameters

In order to simplify Web Submit startup for your students, you may include a specific academic year, term, course, and even assignment as additional parameters to the Web Submit URL. For example - this URL would link to Web Submit with academic year 2015-16, winter term, course 9999, and assignment “a2”:

https://webapp.eecs.yorku.ca?acadyear=2015-16&term=W&course=9999&assignment=a2

When a user clicks on this link, it would take them to the web submit login page. After logging in, the user will be taken immediately to the selected assignment.

In addition, you can add “&ppy” to the end of the URL. This will skip the EECS login page and take the student directly to Passport York for authentication.

Questions?

If you have any questions about Web Submit, please consult with tech.

services/websubmit.1474993443.txt.gz · Last modified: 2016/09/27 12:24 by seela

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