About Pyqti

The IMS Question & Test Interoperability (QTI®) specification, Version 2.1 is widely used by e-learning and assessment tools. This library enables programmatic creation of tests. The resulting zip file can be imported by tools supporting QTI 2.1.

Pyqti is lazy and does not use any XML library. Instead, XML files are created using templates obtained from an existing LMS.

Currently, Pyqti has only been tested with OpenOLAT 14.

Installation

pip install .

Usage

The following code...

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import random
from pyqti.qti import Qti
from pyqti.item import Section, Essay, Kprim

# Create a new section
pasta = Section("Recipes")
# Generate three essay questions, 10 points each
for i, p in enumerate(["Spaghetti", "Penne", "Linguine"], 1):
    item = Essay(10, p,
           f"""<p>Share your favourite {p.lower()} recipe</p>""",
           uuid=f"pasta{i:02d}")
    pasta.add(item)

# This section will contain 5 out of all available questions
maths = Section("Maths", select=5)
# Generate 100 Kprim questions
for i in range(100):
    statements, answers = [], []
    # Each question contains 4 math problems
    for i in range(4):
        x, y = random.sample(range(0, 10), 2)
        rest = (x + y) % 2
        target = random.choice([0, 1])
        target_name = "even" if target == 0 else "odd"
        statements.append(f"The sum of {x} and {y} is {target_name}")
        answers.append(True if target == rest else False)
    # Create Kprim item, awarding 4 points
    item = Kprim(4, "Odd or even", statements, answers)
    # Add it to the section
    maths.add(item)

sections = [pasta, maths]
qti = Qti("Demo exam", sections, navigation_mode="nonlinear")
zip_path = f"out/my-exam.zip"
qti.save_as(zip_path)

...produces the following output when imported into OLAT LMS:

See /demo/large.py for more examples.

Roadmap

• ☑ Create QTI XML and ZIP files
• ☑ Support for (nested) sections, essays and kprim questions
• ☐ Support for other item types (SC/MC etc.)

Support for item types will be added when needed. Please leave a feature request on the issue tracker. Pull requests welcome!

Supporting additional item types

Implementing new item types is straight-forward:

• Pick a suitable name for the item type (e.g. "kprim")
• Create an item in your LMS
• Export the test from your LMS as a zip file
• Find the item's XML file and copy it to pyqti/templates, naming it appropriately (e.g. "kprim.xml")
• Find the relevant section in imsmanifest.xml which references the item's XML file
• Create a new snippet file (e.g. pyqti/template/manifest_kprim.xml) and copy the relevant snippet from imsmanifest.xml
• In both newly created XML templates, replace strings by placeholders (${xyz}) where necessary
• Create a new Item subclass in pyqti/item.py; the classname must correspond to the type name (e.g. "Kprim")
• implement __init__: it must set self.data to a dictionary that will be used to populate the template.

See the existing implementations at the bottom of pyqti/item.py and the corresponding templates in pyqti/templates as a guideline.

License

Distributed under the BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE for more information.