It’s always exciting when a new nugget is found in the Tomcat Access Logs.
getSafeFileName
Sometimes students say that they did upload a file into the assignment, but we can’t really prove that unless they hit Submit, right?
Wrong.
After pressing “Browse My Computer” in an Assignment, and selecting a file, the system outputs the following to the tomcat access log:
"POST /webapps/assignment/dwr/call/plaincall/AssignmentDWRFacade.getSafeFileName.dwr HTTP/1.1"
A student chooses a file from their computer, and attaches that to the Assignment:
130.184.196.29 - connector-45 _13125_1 [30/Nov/2016:11:26:49 -0600] "POST /webapps/assignment/dwr/call/plaincall/AssignmentDWRFacade.getSafeFileName.dwr HTTP/1.1" 200 145 "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.98 Safari/537.36"
The student submits the assignment (or Saves Draft, which results in the same action):
130.184.196.29 - connector-22 _13125_1 [30/Nov/2016:11:28:47 -0600] "POST /webapps/assignment/uploadAssignment?action=submit HTTP/1.1" 200 135 "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.98 Safari/537.36"
The student Views their Submission:
130.184.196.29 - connector-30 _13125_1 [30/Nov/2016:11:28:47 -0600] "GET /webapps/assignment/uploadAssignment?course_id=_21_1&content_id=_286_1&mode=view HTTP/1.1" 200 14050 "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.98 Safari/537.36"
This won’t help when a student claims to have typed something into the Submission box, but this can help students who do attach some file to the assignment, but do not submit it for one reason or another.
Note: This first appeared in the Blackboard Learn Q4 2015 release.
]]>