Package Inspector

What it's for

Open an e-learning package, a ZIP of the kind you upload to a learning management system (LMS), and see what’s inside it. It recognises SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 (with its edition), cmi5 and AICC packages, shows the course structure, and checks for the mistakes that make an LMS refuse to import a package or fail to launch it.

For example, when an LMS rejects a course with an unhelpful “invalid package” message, open the ZIP here to see whether the manifest is missing, the course was zipped inside a folder, or a launch file isn’t where the manifest says.

How to use it

Choose a ZIP, or drop one on the page. Nothing is uploaded: it’s read in your browser. You get:

• A summary: the kind of package, its title, and the number of files and their size once unzipped.
• Checks: errors, warnings and notes. Where a check involves particular files, Which ones lists them. For AICC, the course files are also checked against each other: required columns, duplicate IDs, AUs without a title or a place in the course structure, .cst members that don’t exist, and .crs totals that don’t match.
• Structure: the course’s organisations, items or assignable units (AUs), and the file each one launches.
• Files: totals by file type and by top-level folder, and every file with its size.

The links in .html, .htm, .xhtml and .css files (up to 5 MB each) are checked too: src, href, poster and data attributes, and CSS url() and @import.

For a SCORM 2004 package there’s also a Sequencing section, which describes each activity’s control modes, sequencing rules, attempt limits, rollup rules, objectives and delivery controls in plain sentences, such as “Before it starts: if the activity is satisfied, skip it.”

Compare with another version takes a second ZIP: choose one, or drop it on that box (with two file boxes on the page, a file is dropped on the one it’s for). It lists the files added, removed and changed, found by the SHA-256 of each file, with paths taken relative to each package’s own folder. It also shows the differences in the manifest, or cmi5.xml, line by line as a unified diff.

Save the report downloads all of this, the sequencing included, as a plain-text file. Open in… XML Format opens the manifest or cmi5.xml in the XML Format tool; the page says so if it’s too long to fit in a link (about 4,000 characters).

Example

Save this as imsmanifest.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest identifier="fire-safety" version="1.0"
  xmlns="http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imscp_rootv1p1p2"
  xmlns:adlcp="http://www.adlnet.org/xsd/adlcp_rootv1p2">
  <metadata>
    <schema>ADL SCORM</schema>
    <schemaversion>1.2</schemaversion>
  </metadata>
  <organizations default="org1">
    <organization identifier="org1">
      <title>Fire Safety</title>
      <item identifier="item1" identifierref="res1">
        <title>Fire Safety Basics</title>
      </item>
    </organization>
  </organizations>
  <resources>
    <resource identifier="res1" type="webcontent" adlcp:scormtype="sco" href="index.html">
      <file href="index.html"/>
      <file href="missing.js"/>
    </resource>
  </resources>
</manifest>

Put any index.html file beside it, select the two files (not a folder holding them), zip them, and choose the ZIP. The message line reads “SCORM 1.2: 1 error.” The summary shows Kind SCORM 1.2, Title Fire Safety, Schema version 1.2, 1 organisation, 1 resource (1 SCO), and 2 files. The one check is the error “The listed file missing.js isn’t in the ZIP.” The structure shows Fire Safety, and under it Fire Safety Basics — launches index.html (SCO).

Good to know

Links built in JavaScript while the course runs can’t be checked, and links to other sites aren’t checked. ZIP files that use ZIP64 (over 4 GB or 65,535 files) or encryption can’t be read, and only stored and deflated entries are supported. The manifest isn’t validated against the XSD schemas (the official XML definitions of the standards), and sequencing rules are described, not checked. A note that files are “unlisted” is usually fine: LMSs serve every file in the package.