Using Templates

Another very important feature of rumbas, is its templating feature. This feature allows you to create a template for a question or exam. This template can then be used to create multiple questions or exams. This is very useful when you have a lot of questions or exams that are very similar.

Create a new rumbas project

Add a question and an exam

We will add an exam with the following content:

---
type: normal
name: Exam
question_groups:
  - name: Group 1
    picking_strategy:
      type: all_ordered
    questions:
      - question.yaml

And also add a question with the following content:

---
type: normal
statement:
  content:
    nl: Hoveel is {formula}?
    en: How much is {formula}?
  placeholders:
    formula: 9 * {a}
advice:
  content: 
    en: You could calculate {times10} and then subtract {a}. This yields {result}
    nl: Je kan {times10} berekenen en dan {a} daarvan aftrekken. Dit geeft {result}
  placeholders:
    times10: 10 * {a} 
    result: '{a} * 10 - {a} = {a * 10} - {a} = {a*9}'
parts:
  - type: number_entry
    prompt: 
      content:
        en: Enter your answer in the inputbox
        nl: Geef je antwoord in in het invulveld
      placeholders: {}
    marks: 5 
    answer: a * 9 
variables:
  a: random(1..10)

Using a template

Create a template

We might want to create a lot of questions that are very similar to the question we just created. In some cases, we might want to let the variable a go up to 100 or be limited between 1 and 5.

To do this, we copy the contents of question.yaml to question_template.yaml and make the change the value of the variable a to template:a. This yields the following content for question_template.yaml:

---
type: normal
statement:
  content:
    nl: Hoveel is {formula}?
    en: How much is {formula}?
  placeholders:
    formula: 9 * {a}
advice:
  content: 
    en: You could calculate {times10} and then subtract {a}. This yields {result}
    nl: Je kan {times10} berekenen en dan {a} daarvan aftrekken. Dit geeft {result}
  placeholders:
    times10: 10 * {a} 
    result: '{a} * 10 - {a} = {a * 10} - {a} = {a*9}'
parts:
  - type: number_entry
    prompt: 
      content:
        en: Enter your answer in the inputbox
        nl: Geef je antwoord in in het invulveld
      placeholders: {}
    marks: 5 
    answer: a * 9 
variables:
  a: template:a # this field is now templatable and has template-key 'a'

There is no meaning behind the _template suffix of the file name, we just use it for the example.

Now that we have added a value of the form template:<template-key> the question_template.yaml file is a template. We can now use this template to create multiple questions.

Loading the template in an exam

The easiest way to use this templated question, is by loading it in an exam and giving values for each template key.

We will load the template two times in the exam. The first time we will set the value of a to 3 so it will always yield the same question. The second time, we set it to random(10..100) to let a be a random value between 10 and 100.

We will change our exam.yaml file to the following:

---
type: normal
name: Exam
question_groups:
  - name: Group 1
    picking_strategy:
      type: all_ordered
    questions:
      - question.yaml
      - type: template # we will load it as a template
        template: question_template.yaml # this template will be loaded
        a: 3 # this is filled in for `template:a`
      - type: template # we will load it as a template
        template: question_template.yaml # this template will be loaded
        a: random(10..100) # this is filled in for `template:a`

What if we forget to set a template key?

What would happen when we don't set all template keys? Let's try it out.

We will change our exam.yaml file to the following:

---
type: normal
name: Exam
question_groups:
  - name: Group 1
    picking_strategy:
      type: all_ordered
    questions:
      - question.yaml
      - type: template # we will load it as a template
        template: question_template.yaml # this template will be loaded
        a: 3 # this is filled in for `template:a`
      - type: template # we will load it as a template
        template: question_template.yaml # this template will be loaded
        a: random(10..100) # this is filled in for `template:a`
      - type: template
        template: question_template.yaml

This will yield an error message like the following:

[2023-01-25][09:48:30][rumbas_support::input][ERROR] Found 1 missing template keys:
[2023-01-25][09:48:30][rumbas_support::input][ERROR] 1  a at question_groups.0.questions.3.question_template.yaml.variables.a

Which says that we forgot to set the value of a for the fourth question (index 3 when you count from 0).

Using default values for template keys

It is possible to defined default values for template keys. This allows you to override the value but also have a default value that is used when the value is not set.

We will demonstrate this by allowing the marks for the question to be set by a template key, but also have a default value of 5 marks.

We will change our question_template.yaml file to the following:

---
type: normal
statement:
  content:
    nl: Hoveel is {formula}?
    en: How much is {formula}?
  placeholders:
    formula: 9 * {a}
advice:
  content: 
    en: You could calculate {times10} and then subtract {a}. This yields {result}
    nl: Je kan {times10} berekenen en dan {a} daarvan aftrekken. Dit geeft {result}
  placeholders:
    times10: 10 * {a} 
    result: '{a} * 10 - {a} = {a * 10} - {a} = {a*9}'
parts:
  - type: number_entry
    prompt: 
      content:
        en: Enter your answer in the inputbox
        nl: Geef je antwoord in in het invulveld
      placeholders: {}
    marks:
      template_key: marks
      default_valie: 5 
    answer: a * 9 
variables:
  a: template:a # this field is now templatable and has template-key 'a'

This allows us to optionally specify the value of the template key marks in the exam. If we don't specify it, it will use the default value of 5.

We will change our exam.yaml file to the following:

---
type: normal
name: Exam
question_groups:
  - name: Group 1
    picking_strategy:
      type: all_ordered
    questions:
      - question.yaml
      - type: template
        template: question_template.yaml 
        a: 3 # we don't specify the marks here, so it will be 5
      - type: template
        template: question_template.yaml 
        a: random(10..100)
        marks: 10 # assign 10 marks to the more difficult version

Create a question that uses a template

If you want to reuse a version of a question that uses a template, you can create a question that uses a template.

We will create a question that uses the template we created in the previous section.

We will create a question_using_template.yaml file with the following content:

---
type: template
template: question_template.yaml 
a: random([11,55,78])

We can now include this question in an exam.