Need to use zuludesk api with schedules task

[johnpd]

Hi, I’m hoping someone here can help me Start a skeleton bit of code which can issue api calls to zuludesk api. Basically the students have figured out that if we ban games during the hours of 8-4 they can change the clock setting to overcome it.

 

Therefore having reflected on their old skool ingenuity I shall return it, with a non timed on or off call of the ban games profile. Rather than having to log into zuludesk and turn a slider on and off each day - I want to script it maybe a simple app.exe which can be schedule on a server Monday to Friday.

 

I’ve got good understanding of most o.o coding languages however I’m rusty so if you can point me to the best way forward (skeleton code) or reading I would appreciate the “kick start”.

 

Cheers

John

Edited February 11, 2018 by johnpd

[SimonHooker]

Hi John. I'm not familiar with Zuludesk specifically, but their documentation seems to have plenty of info and a sample in there already for Javascript or PHP - https://api.zuludesk.com/docs/. The JS one just requires that you have jQuery available ( Download jQuery | jQuery / https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/#jquery ). You could using that make a simple HTML page which exists solely to run Javascript in a browser. A scheduled task would then just need to load that file up in a browser or something along those lines.

 

If the API is web-accessible you could get more fancy, i.e. have an AWS Lambda function which does basically the same thing on a schedule.

 

I'm not sure if this is of much help to you but the docs might help you on the right way. If you have an example attempt which doesn't seem to work, feel free to post it up on here ( with any credentials removed ) and I can try to help you there

[johnpd]

I’ll give it a go end of the week now - just had the ofsted call come in.

 

Sounds like JavaScript in html page will be easy to implement. I think the clear setting after 3600 seconds is my issue - I don’t want it clearing so hopefully it allows me to ignore that variable.

 

Thanks

John

[SimonHooker]

Hi John

 

Good news, clearAfter is optional. If you just omit it then I would expect it to not clear. Alternatively if you are looking to lock it down between 0800 and 1600 you have 2 options. 1: an task that locks it down at 0800 every day, clearing after 8 hours ( clearAfter=28800 ). Alternatively, you have the default to have it locked down and then have a policy which unlocks it at 1600 for a reasonable time frame. You could go for the full 16 hours 1600-0800, however I assume it's reasonable to assume that there won't be students playing games at 1am? So maybe just have a task which executes at 1600 which unlocks for, for example, 6 hours ( giving game time up to 2200 ), so a clearAfter of 21600. That way in the morning it will be back to being disabled. Something like that anyway.

[johnpd]

Thanks I’ll give it a go - however the clear after value can’t be used as the students just move the clock time on the iOS and they are able to get around it.

 

I’ll update in the coming weeks with my success or not when the little &£@ manage to find another way through it - or not hopefully.

[johnpd]

iOS 12 means we can now lock date and time ! Came out in the last 24 hrs. Phew

[dhicks]

iOS 12 means we can now lock date and time ! Came out in the last 24 hrs. Phew

 

I get that your original issue has been solved, but just thought I'd add for future reference that for web-scripting issues such as described above, Apify might come in handy:

 

https://www.apify.com/

 

It lets your run and automate browserless Chrome instances, so even if there's no available (or documented) API for you to use you can still write a script that automates pressing buttons / sliders / etc to get what you want done.

[johnpd]

Thanks it looks interesting for many tasks!

 

You never stop learning in IT!