Overview of the Content Type Hub

Motivation

Previously, all libraries in the H5P ecosystem were released as a big package. This required the H5P site administrator to seek out, download and install all the libraries H5P has to offer whenever he wanted an update of a single library feature.

By showing a complete overview of available libraries directly on your site, the Hub enables users to easily find their favourite content types, discover the latest and freshest content types or look through the improved descriptons and find a content type for their specific use-case. 

The Hub also allows for a more agile H5P ecosystem where packages can be released independently of each other. We hope this will lead to an even more thriving H5P ecosystem as the updates are delivered directly to you, instead of you having to seek them out.

Moving towards a centralized place for all developers to share their libraries will make it easier for developers to share their content types independently of the H5P core team. We are particularly excited about how this could be a huge step towards a more open flow of community-driven content types. The addition of metadata to each content type will work towards making contributed content types discoverable, and exposing the amazing developers that work hard under the radar in the H5P community.

The sharing and discoverability part of the hub is very much in line with H5Ps vision of empowering everyone to create, share and reuse interactive content. We hope you’ll like it!

 Technical overview

There are three main parts comprising the H5P Hub ecosystem

• Hub
• Plugin
• Client

The Hub is a centralized repository that stores all metadata for all content types that are available through the Hub.

The plugin is the H5P plugin that you have installed on your server, enabling the server to deliver and produce H5Ps.

The client are the users of your server, where H5Ps are created and viewed.

Hub

The centralized repository contains all officially registered H5Ps from H5P.org. Developers may apply for developer access to share their own content types to make them part of the libraries that the HUB provides. The centralized repository’s main function is to make content more discoverable, we do not wish to put constraints on what developers can share, so as soon as you have developer access you may share freely of your creations.

The hub stores all metadata that has been registered for each library. With these additionally searchable data authors of content types can attract the correct audience for their content types more granularly.

Title:
The title for your library, i.e. Course Presentation

Summary:
Short description of what your library achieves

Description:
A more in depth text on how the library can be used

Icon:
An optionally provided vector graphic to distinguish your content type from others

Screenshots:
Screenshots that may illustrate different use-cases for the library and show how the author and view part coincide

License:
A license which dictates how the library may be used

Example content:
Example content for showing a real use of the library

Tutorial:
An optionally provided tutorial on how to author good content

Keywords:
Searchable keywords for making the library more discoverable, e.g. “math”, “geometry”, “pythagoras”

Categories:
Categories to distinguish between intended use of the library, e.g. “game”, “educational”

Owner:
The creator or organization behind the library

The hub is thus responsible for exposing an API that the H5P plugin can use to gather this centralized library information. The hub also exposes the packages for installing the libraries provided in this central repository.

Plugin changes

There are several changes to the plugin to facilitate moving integration of the Hub. The biggest change is that the plugin caches a complete list of the latest content types that the hub provides to minimize the frequency that the plugin has to talk to the Hub.

The plugin will update its replica of the Hub libraries at regular intervals provided by the plugin ecosystem. You may also update the cache manually through the H5P Libraries page.

Installing external libraries is also handled here. The user may tell the plugin when they wish to install a new library. The plugin will check that the user has the necessary permissions and then fetch the library from the Hub, before finally validating and installing the library on your server, making it possible for the user to unleash his creativity.

Since the plugin is responsible for talking to the hub we recommend an SSL enabled server to make sure that your server is talking to the correct source.

Client changes

The client is the place where all the visual differences will be made evident. The selector for choosing library has been completely revamped with a modern look.

You are now able to browse through the available libraries, find your favourite libraries and discover new ones.

The client asks the plugin for an updated list of the libraries gathered from the hub and serves this to all users. The user will then immediately be able to use the authoring tool of the chosen library.

Content type cache

The content type cache, as mentioned earlier, is a cached replica of the available libraries from the Hub. It is a concept that you should familiarize yourself with.

To be able to provide your users with all the latest libraries from the H5P Hub, it is important to update this cache often. This can be done by configuring how often the content type cache update should run in your CMS. It can also be updated manually through the H5P Libraries page.