News
The News file is a way to share updates about a given course.[1] The Courses platform automatically renders the news file for users in a way similar to if it were written in AsciiDoc or another supported format.
Within Courses, course news is also displayed on the main page (signpost) for individual courses.
News also provides an open API and is available in JSON format, making it easy to integrate with other services.
Based on version control of the file[2], Courses automatically detects for each news item:
- Author and publication date
- Changes or deletion of the news item
These parameters can be manually overridden, see Attribute overrides.
Prerequisites
The News file must meet the following requirements:
- It must be version-controlled with git and placed in the root directory of the project under the name
NEWS.adoc - It must contain a document title (e.g.
= News) - It must be written in AsciiDoc syntax
Creating a news item
Individual news items are separated using a first-level heading (e.g. == News title).
A news item is simply added among existing ones, at the top of the file.
See the example code, news item Schedule for repeating students.
= News 1
== Schedule for repeating students 2
Today, September 17, repeating students were also admitted into the schedule.
== Exercise teams 3
MS Teams exercise groups have been created for individual instructors’ tutorial groups.
These teams will serve as a support platform for online teaching and for assignment submissions.
A list of instructor teams can be found on the page describing the exercise schedule.
Students were assigned to these teams according to the in-person timetable.- Required - Page title.
- Newly added news item.
- Older news item.
Attribute overrides
- date
- Publication date of the news item.
The news item will not be published until the specified date has passed.
It must be in one of the following formats:
- ISO 8601:
2019-06-13,19-06-13,19-6-13 - Czech:
13. 6. 2019,13.6.2019,13.6.19,13.06.2019 - British English:
13/06/2019,13/06/19,13/6/19
- ISO 8601:
- author
Name, e-mail, or website link of the author. E-mails or links must be enclosed in angle brackets.
Examples:
"Kevin Flynn","Kevin Flynn <flynn@encom.com>","Kevin Flynn <https://encom.com/~flynn>"
== Beware of Tron
:date: 2019-06-13
:author: Kevin Flynn <flynn@encom.com>
Tron turned against its creator!Editing or removing news items
When modifying the news file, do not mix multiple types of changes (creating new items, editing existing ones, or deleting items) within a single commit.
Example usage
One of the courses using news is BI-ZMA.
- Course page https://courses.fit.cvut.cz/BI-ZMA/
- Source repository on GitLab https://gitlab.fit.cvut.cz/BI-ZMA/bi-zma/