This project incorporates elements from the open-source project CLM to facilitate its functionality.

What is the License Management Component?

The developed concept of the license component aims to enable users to use digital educational content from providers in a legally secure manner, while at the same time meeting the requirements of education providers and schools. This component serves to model user rights to digital learning content and facilitates the exchange of data between the education providers' systems and the registration systems. This includes metadata systems for the representation of media, license marketplaces for the acquisition and administration of licenses and registration systems for schools and their users.

Architecture

The present illustration demonstrates how the concept of the license component aims to ensure legally secure access to educational content for users based on license agreements. The component supports the import of licenses, either through direct communication with a license marketplace or through initiation by the learning resource manager. These licenses can be synchronized via bilateral REST communication. Moreover, it is intended that the organizational structure of an educational institution will be aligned with the license component. This includes the integration of existing user accounts from various Identity Providers as well as the representation of the hierarchical organization structures during the license allocation.

To unlock full functionality, each service component has been developed as a microservice. This module is known as license-core.

Reference Project

The Control & Connect project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under funding code 16INBI002C, tackled the problem of user-related license allocation in the German education sector.

In the consortium, three key partners have joined forces with Fraunhofer FOKUS as implementer of the concept, the Verband der Bildungsmedien (VBM), which represents the interests of school associations and publishers, and the n-21 state initiative, which has extensive expertise in the administration and coordination of school and organizational structures in Lower Saxony, in order to meet the challenges effectively.

CC-LICENSE-CORE

The license core accesses other microservices to allow for license assignments and demand notifications in a GUI. Furthermore, this component verifies the legal consumption of individual users through their license assignments.

Dependencies

License Package and Metadata Services

• To import license data and corresoponding metadata, the APIs of BILDUNGSLOGIN are used to deliver the relevant content. More details: partners/BILDUNGSLOGIN.md

SSO and User- Contextdata Service

• Authentication, Autorisation as well as user context information are being delivered by moin.schule via OIDC/SchulConnex. More details: partners/n-21.md

Medienregal BILDUNGSLOGIN

• To be able to view their assigned licenses, the BILDUNGSLOGIN Medienregal is used to query relevant licenses from the component, as well as list- and view the Media accordingly. More details: partners/BILDUNGSLOGIN.md

Requirements:

• Before initiating this server, it is mandatory to configure the following microservices. Please adhere to the individual setup guidelines for each microservice:
  • CC-Metadata-Manager
  • CC-License-Manager
  • CC-User-Context-Manager
• MariaDB Version 10x setup locally
• Redis Version 6x setup locally
• Node.js Version 20x
• Kecloak proxy credentials which is configured to forward all requests

Quick Start:

Install node_modules in the respective git submodules with their respective dependencies by running:

npm install

It is also necessary to copy .env.default file to .env and insert the appropriate values. Please contact the owner of this repository to the values. A description of the values is also given in the file itself.

(UNIX) cp .env.default .env.local

The following table gives an overview of the settings you can change through the environment variables:

Name	Example	Required (Yes/No)	Description
MARIA_CONFIG	localhost|3306|test|root|12345	Yes	Connection details for MariaDB, including host, port, database name, user, and password.
PORT	3000	Yes	The port on which the service should be deployed.
NEXT_PUBLIC_DEPLOY_URL	http://localhost/api	Yes	The URL where the front end of the application is deployed, used to make API calls.
NEXT_PUBLIC_SELF_URL	http://localhost:3000/api	Yes	The URL where the service's own API is accessible, used for internal service-to-service communication.
NEXT_PUBLIC_REDIRECT_URI	http://localhost:3000/signIn	Yes	The URI for redirecting users after login or logout, used in OAuth2/OpenID Connect flows.
NEXT_PUBLIC_KEYCLOAK_CLIENT_ID	license-core-local	Yes	The client ID for Keycloak authentication, necessary for Keycloak integration.
NEXT_PUBLIC_KEYCLOAK_AUTH_ENDPOINT	https://learning-services1.fokus.fraunhofer.de/realms/test/protocol/openid-connect/auth	Yes	The Keycloak authentication endpoint, required for initiating authentication with Keycloak.
NEXT_PUBLIC_IMPRESSUM_URL	/imprint	No	The URL for the legal notice or imprint page, typically required in some countries.
NEXT_PUBLIC_DATENSCHUTZ_URL	/dataprotection	No	The URL for the data protection page, containing information on data handling and privacy.
DELETE_USE_CASE_EVERY_DAY	false	No	Indicates whether to delete license information and assignments daily at 00:00, for testing the license assignment process.
DEPLOY_URL	http://localhost:3000/api	Yes	The URL where APIs are hosted, central to accessing all microservices including the license core.
GATEWAY_URL	http://localhost/api	Yes	The gateway URL for all hosted microservices, including the license core.
REDIRECT_URI		Yes	The URI used for OIDC redirection, necessary for authentication flows.
KEYCLOAK_CLIENT_ID		Yes	The client ID for interacting with Keycloak, separate from the publicly exposed one.
KEYCLOAK_CLIENT_SECRET		Yes	The client secret for Keycloak authentication, necessary for secure interactions with Keycloak.
KEYCLOAK_LOGOUT_URL		Yes	The URL for initiating logout in Keycloak, necessary for properly terminating sessions.
KEYCLOAK_TOKEN_ENDPOINT		Yes	The endpoint for obtaining tokens from Keycloak, part of the authentication process.
KEYCLOAK_EXCHANGE_TOKEN_ENDPOINT		Yes	The endpoint for token exchange in Keycloak, used for obtaining tokens with different scopes or for different clients.
SANIS_USERINFO_ENDPOINT		Yes	The endpoint for retrieving user information, likely part of an authentication or identity service.
SANIS_CLIENT_ID		Yes	The client ID for interacting with SANIS, if applicable, for authentication or data retrieval purposes.
SANIS_CLIENT_SECRET		Yes	The client secret for SANIS, necessary for authenticated requests to SANIS services.
SANIS_TOKEN_ENDPOINT		Yes	The endpoint for obtaining tokens from SANIS, if using SANIS for authentication or authorization.
REDIS_URL	redis://:12345@localhost:6379	Yes	The connection string for Redis, including password and port, for caching and session management.
REDIS_SECRET	'keyboard cat'	Yes	The secret used by Redis for encryption, should be a secure, randomly generated string.

Afterward just startup the server with following command:

npm run dev

Afterwards you should be able to launch the application on the following address:

http://localhost:3000

Structure

The LMC offers on one hand a lightweight backend application based on express and on the other hand a Next.js application to render server side pages

The project follows following structure

├── server.ts / # Entrypoint of the project where all routes are defined │ ├── express/ # based on a lightweight http server │ │ ├── models/ # The DAOs for interacting with the persistence layers │ │ └── handlers/ # Responsible for handling the requests based on specific routes │ ├── pages/ # Next.js pages which are used to display the frontend │ │ │
└── README.md # The file you're reading now

Changelog

The changelog can be found in the CHANGELOG.md file.

Get in touch with a developer

Please see the file AUTHORS.md to get in touch with the authors of this project. We will be happy to answer your questions at {clm@fokus.fraunhofer.de}

License

The project is made available under the license in the file LICENSE.txt