coursehub/README.md

# CourseHub

Self-hosted course video player: PHP 8.0+ + MySQL/MariaDB, its own CSS design
system and [Plyr](https://github.com/sampotts/plyr). No CSS framework, no build
step, and no CDN — Plyr and the Inter font are vendored in `assets/vendor/`,
so the app works with no internet access at all.

Single-page app: `index.php` is a static shell (sidebar, search header, mobile
tab bar); all navigation, login, browsing, playback, scanning and settings
happen over AJAX against the JSON API in `api/` (`auth.php`, `library.php`,
`progress.php`, `scan.php`, `quiz.php`, `reset.php`), with hash-based routes so
views switch without page reloads and browser back/forward still work:

| Route | Screen |
| --- | --- |
| `#/` | home — resume card, stats, in progress, last scan |
| `#/library`, `#/library/<shelf>` | categories, shelves or a flat catalog of every course |
| `#/folder/N` | a category (its courses), or a course/section (its contents) |
| `#/watch/N` | player, playlist, section quizzes |
| `#/quiz/N` | take and grade a quiz |
| `#/search/Q` | courses, videos and quizzes matching `Q` |
| `#/settings` | library folder, preferences, reset |

Only `stream.php` (the mp4 bytes) and `captions.php` (subtitles as WebVTT) are
plain HTTP resources.

- Recursively scans a videos directory for `.mp4` files and mirrors the folder
  hierarchy (categories → courses → sections → videos, any nesting depth), and
  works out **where a course starts** rather than assuming a depth.
- Per-user **resume**: log in from any device and continue where you left off.
- **Progress tracking at every level** — each folder shows completed/total and a
  percentage bar computed over its whole subtree.
- "Continue watching" strip — its play button opens the player *and* starts the
  video at the saved position — auto-play next video, playback speed, keyboard
  shortcuts (Plyr), completed checkmarks, natural sorting (`Video2` before `Video10`).
- **Subtitles**: a video with a sibling `.srt` file (`Lesson.mp4` +
  `Lesson.srt`) gets a CC button in the player — the file is converted to
  WebVTT on the fly by `captions.php`, addressed by DB id like the stream.
- **Search** courses, sections, videos and quizzes from the top bar — and a
  course's catalogue tags and blurb, once the catalogue is seeded.
- **Course details** (difficulty, tags, a blurb, the learning paths a course
  belongs to) from the vendor's catalogue or the downloader's sidecar file —
  see *Course catalogue* below.
- An optional **AI course advisor** on the home page: "I want to learn SD-WAN,
  where do I start?" answered with courses from your own library, in order,
  with links. Off unless you switch it on — see *Course advisor* below.
- **Reset progress** for one video, one quiz, a whole course/section, or the
  entire account.
- Course and section listings switch between **grid and list** layout, and the
  library between **categories, shelves and catalog**; both choices are remembered.
- **Categories** are the folders that sit above the courses — the library opens
  on them, and each one totals the courses beneath it.
- **Shelves** group courses by how far you are: in progress, finished, not
  started. The sidebar links straight to each one.
- Seekable streaming via HTTP Range requests; files are addressed by DB id only
  (no path traversal).

## Layout on disk

Put whatever shape your material already has under `VIDEOS_ROOT`. There is no
convention to follow and nothing to rename: the scanner works out which folder
is a course, per branch, and everything else follows from that.

```
videos/
├── Cloud/                                  category
│   └── AWS Networking/                     course  (children are numbered)
│       ├── 01 - Welcome/
│       │   └── Intro.mp4
│       └── 02 - Creating a VPC/
│           └── Subnets.mp4
├── Firewalls/                              category
│   └── Palo-Alto/                          category
│       └── Palo_Alto_Firewall_Essentials/  course
│           └── 01_Welcome/…
└── System Admin/                           category
    └── Red Hat … EX457/                    course  (videos sit right in it)
        ├── 01 Introduction.mp4
        └── 02 Inventories.mp4
```

### Where a course starts

Course roots do not sit at a fixed depth — one library can hold
`Category/<course>`, `Category/Vendor/<course>` and
`Category/Vendor/Exam/<course>` at once — so the scanner decides per branch,
walking down from the top:

| The folder… | is a |
| --- | --- |
| has no videos or quizzes anywhere under it | neither — it is skipped |
| holds videos or quizzes directly | **course** |
| has children whose names read as chapters (`01_`, `1. `, `Module 2`, `Week 3`) | **course** |
| anything else | **category** — look one level deeper |

Everything under a course root is one of its sections. The result is stored as
`folders.is_course` / `folders.course_id` at scan time, so the screens are a
lookup rather than a guess, and re-running the scan re-derives it.

### Overriding it

The rule reads chapter numbering, so it gets a course wrong when the sections
carry plain names (`Course/Introduction`, `Course/Advanced` looks like two
courses). Drop an **empty marker file** in the folder and the next scan obeys it
instead of guessing:

| File | Effect |
| --- | --- |
| `.course` | this folder is a course; everything under it is a section |
| `.category` | the courses are further down — keep looking one level deeper |

```bash
touch "videos/Cat/Unnumbered Course/.course"     # one course, not two
touch "videos/Cat/Exam Bundle/.category"         # each child is its own course
```

A marker settles only the folder it sits on. Once a course root is found,
everything below it is a section, so to push a course root *deeper*, mark the
folder above it `.category`. A `.category` on a folder that holds videos itself
is ignored — those videos have to belong to something.

Two consequences worth knowing:

- **Progress means something.** Shelves, the home page's "in progress" strip and
  every percentage are per course. Counting a whole category as one course
  instead buries twenty watched videos in a denominator of three thousand, and
  everything reads 0 % forever.
- **A folder of PDFs is not a course.** Anything with no `.mp4` and no quiz file
  anywhere beneath it never appears in the library at all.

### Folder names are case-sensitive

`CCNP Notes` and `CCNP NOtes` are two directories on a Linux filesystem and the
app treats them as two, because `folders.path`, `videos.path` and `quizzes.path`
are stored `utf8mb4_bin`. Under the default case-insensitive collation the
`UNIQUE` key on `path` merged them, and the second tree's videos were never
indexed. The search box still matches without regard to case.

## Setup

1. **Database** — create the schema and an app user:

   ```bash
   sudo mysql < schema.sql
   sudo mysql -e "CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS 'coursehub'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'coursehub';
                  GRANT ALL ON coursehub.* TO 'coursehub'@'localhost';"
   ```

2. **Configure** — edit `config.php`:
   - `VIDEOS_ROOT`: absolute path to your course folders (must be readable by
     the web server / PHP user).
   - DB credentials (change the password in production).
   - `ALLOW_REGISTRATION`: set `false` once your users have accounts.
   - `SESSION_LIFETIME`: seconds a sign-in lasts (the example config says 30
     days). Unset or `0` means a browser-session cookie that also dies after
     PHP's idle limit — 24 minutes by default, which signs people out over a
     long pause. Installs whose `config.php` predates the setting keep that
     old behaviour. If other PHP apps share the server's session directory,
     give this app its own `session.save_path` in the vhost / FPM pool.
   - `DEBUG`: include the exception type, `file:line` and stack trace in API
     error responses. Errors go to the PHP error log either way, so leave this
     `false` on anything publicly reachable. Installs whose `config.php`
     predates the setting behave as if it were `false`.

   No external binaries are needed — PHP with PDO/MySQL is the whole
   dependency list.

3. **Run** — with the PHP built-in server for testing:

   ```bash
   php -S 0.0.0.0:8080 -t /path/to/coursehub
   ```

   or point an Apache/Nginx + PHP-FPM vhost at the directory.

4. **Index the library** — click **Rescan library** in the top bar, or:

   ```bash
   php scan.php
   ```

   Rescan whenever you add/remove files. Re-scans are idempotent: existing
   videos keep their IDs (and everyone's progress); files that disappeared are
   hidden, not deleted, so progress survives if they come back. Each scan also
   re-derives which folders are courses, and brings an older install's tables up
   to date first, so there is no separate migration step.

5. **Seed the course catalogue** (optional, once) — see *Course catalogue*
   below. It gives courses a description, difficulty and tags, and it is what
   the advisor reasons over.

6. Open the site, create an account, and watch.

## Quizzes

Course folders may contain quiz text files next to the videos. Files named
`*_quiz_solved.txt` are indexed (a `*_quiz_notsolved.txt` twin is ignored —
it's the same content without answers). Format:

```
[&] Which two are supported CLI connectivity methods? (Select two)
- RDP
- rlogin
- GUI widget -- Correct
- FortiExplorer -- Correct
```

Questions start with `[&]`, options with `- `, and correct options end with
`-- Correct`. Questions with more than one correct option automatically render
as checkboxes instead of radios.

A question that refers to a diagram carries it as a Markdown image on its own
line, anywhere between the `[&]` line and the next question:

```
[&] Based on the diagram shown, which of the following are true?
![quiz image](https://example.com/quiz-images/switching1.png)
- PE1 imposes a label -- Correct
```

The image is shown under the question text. It is fetched by the browser from
wherever the URL points (usually the course provider's server), so an install
with no internet access sees a note and a link instead of the picture.

Quizzes are graded server-side (answers are never sent to the browser before
submission). A question counts only if the selected set exactly matches the
correct set. Best score, last score, and attempt count are stored per user;
a quiz is *completed* once every question is answered correctly in one
attempt, and quiz scores count toward folder progress alongside videos.

## Course catalogue

Folder names are all the scanner can see. Two things add more:

- **A sidecar file.** The INE downloader (`ine.py`) drops a `<slug>.json` into a
  course folder once every file of the course has been fetched. It carries the
  course's title, difficulty, tags, description and learning paths, and the
  scanner reads it.
- **The catalogue seed.** The downloader can also export the whole catalogue
  you have access to (`all_courses_with_access.json`). Turn it into an SQL
  patch and apply it to any install, dev or live, before or after a code
  deploy — it creates its own table and upserts by id, so re-running it is
  harmless:

  ```bash
  php tools/build-catalog-seed.php ~/ine-dl/all_courses_with_access.json > seeds/ine_catalog.sql
  mysql coursehub < seeds/ine_catalog.sql      # or: sudo mysql coursehub < …
  php scan.php                                  # matches the library to it
  ```

  `seeds/` is git-ignored (the file holds the vendor's course descriptions);
  ship it alongside the code. Rebuild it whenever the export is refreshed.

Every scan then resolves one `course_meta` row per course: the sidecar when
there is one, otherwise the catalogue entry whose **folder key** matches the
course folder's name. The key is the folder name the downloader would have
created — spaces and hyphens become underscores, other punctuation is dropped
(`folderKeyFor()` in `includes/functions.php`) — so `Cisco SD-WAN Use Design,
Cloud & Advanced Features` finds `Cisco_SD_WAN_Use_Design_Cloud_Advanced_Features`,
and a folder renamed by hand still matches as long as the words are the same.
Courses from elsewhere (CBT Nuggets, your own notes) simply have no row and
look as they always did. The scan summary and the Settings page say how many
courses got their details from a sidecar, from the catalogue, or from neither.

Any other `.json` under the library (the downloader also writes one per lab
lesson) is ignored.

## Course advisor

An optional box on the home page that answers questions like *"I want to
learn SD-WAN, where do I start?"* or *"what should I know before Core MPLS?"*
with courses from your own library, in a suggested order, each linking to its
course page with your progress on it. When something you need is not on the
server but is in the seeded catalogue, it says so and links to the vendor's
page; topics covered nowhere are listed too.

It is **off by default** and the app never depends on it. To turn it on, set
in `config.php`:

```php
define('AI_ENABLED', true);
define('AI_API_KEY', 'sk-…');                     // https://platform.deepseek.com/
define('AI_BASE_URL', 'https://api.deepseek.com'); // any OpenAI-format endpoint
define('AI_MODEL', 'deepseek-v4-flash');
define('AI_DAILY_LIMIT', 50);                      // questions per user per day
```

With `AI_ENABLED` false (or no key) the box does not appear, `api/advisor.php`
answers 503, and the app makes **no outbound requests at all**. The one extra
requirement when it is on is PHP's curl extension. Each user can also hide the
box for their browser from Settings.

What leaves the server when it is on: the names of your courses and sections
with their sizes, the catalogue details (difficulty, tags, blurb, learning
paths), the catalogue titles of courses you have access to but have not
downloaded, your progress percentage per course, and the conversation you
type. Never video files, subtitles or quiz contents.

How it works: the whole library is rendered as one stable block of text and
sent with every question, and the provider caches that prefix, so a question
costs a fraction of a cent. The model replies in JSON; the server drops any
course id it made up before the browser sees it, and links are built only from
ids that exist. Each question (including one that fails) counts toward the
per-user daily limit, kept in `advisor_requests` together with the token
counts, so you can see what it costs. A conversation lives in the browser tab
and is resent with each turn, so follow-ups ("I already know MPLS") work.

Any OpenAI-format chat endpoint can stand in for DeepSeek — point `AI_BASE_URL`
and `AI_MODEL` at it; a local model server keeps even the advisor offline. If
the server rejects DeepSeek's `thinking` / `reasoning_effort` fields, add
`define('AI_REASONING_PARAM', false);` to leave them out.

Timeouts: a reply takes a few seconds to tens of seconds. PHP's own limit is
raised for the call, but PHP-FPM's `request_terminate_timeout`, Nginx's
`fastcgi_read_timeout` (60 s by default) and Cloudflare's ~100 s cap still
apply — leave them at a minute or more.

## Search

The top-bar box searches as you type (from two characters, debounced) and also
on Enter. It matches folder, video and quiz **names** and their relative
**paths**, so `Course 1/Intro` lists everything under that section. Results are
grouped into courses/sections, videos and quizzes, with your progress shown on
each row. Searches live at `#/search/<query>`, so a result page can be
bookmarked or shared.

## Resetting progress

`api/reset.php` deletes progress rows for the logged-in user only — never for
anyone else, and never any video, quiz or folder itself. Four scopes:

| Where | Scope | Clears |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Player page → **Reset** | `video` | that video's position + completion |
| Quiz page → **Reset attempts** | `quiz` | that quiz's attempts, best/last score |
| Folder page → **Reset progress** | `folder` | everything in that folder's subtree |
| Library list row → ↺ | `folder` | that one course's subtree |
| Settings / avatar menu → **Reset all progress** | `all` | every video and quiz on the account |

Each one asks for confirmation first, and the reply reports how many video and
quiz rows were removed. Resetting the video you are watching also suppresses
the player's teardown save, so the position you just cleared isn't written back.

## Look and feel

The UI implements the **Course Library** design (a Claude Design document).
`assets/style.css` is the whole design system — tokens first, then layout, then
components. There is no CSS framework under it, and the icons are inline SVG
from the design rather than an icon font.

| Token | Hex | Used for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Paper | `#EFEAE1` | outermost ground |
| Surface | `#FAF8F5` | app background |
| Sidebar | `#F5F1EA` | left rail |
| Card | `#FFFFFF` | cards, rows, dialogs |
| Ink | `#1A1814` → `#B8B0A2` | four text weights (`--ink` … `--ink-4`) |
| Accent | `#1F6F5C` | primary action, links, progress, completion |
| Danger | `#B84A3C` | reset and errors |

Type: **Inter** throughout — headings, interface text, and counts/durations/
paths (the design's own 'Elms Sans' ships only inside the design document).
The font is self-hosted from `assets/vendor/` (latin + latin-ext subsets).
Numeric text uses `tabular-nums` so columns of counts and durations still
line up without a separate monospace face.

Courses have no cover art, so each one gets a hue from the design's six-colour
set (clay, sage, slate, sand, plum, sky), picked from its folder id so it stays
the same across renders and reloads. That hue drives its card art, its initial
badge and its progress bar.

There is no scripted motion — views render directly in their final state; the
only movement is the CSS the components themselves carry (hover states, the
loading spinner).

Below 900 px the layout follows the design's mobile frame: the sidebar gives way
to a bottom tab bar, the search field becomes a pill with a round scan button
next to it, and grids drop to two columns.

## Settings

`#/settings` shows what the server actually knows and what this browser
remembers:

- **Library folder** — `VIDEOS_ROOT`, whether it is readable, indexed counts,
  total running time, the watched threshold, and when the last scan ran.
- **Preferences**, stored per browser: autoplay next video, open the library
  in list view.
- **Reset progress** — the account-wide reset, with a count of how many courses
  currently hold progress.

Scan time lives in an `app_meta` key/value table. Reads tolerate the table not
existing, so an install created before it was added keeps working until its
next scan creates it.

## How progress works

- The player POSTs `{video_id, position, duration}` to `api/progress.php`
  every 5 s while playing, plus on pause/seek, via `navigator.sendBeacon`
  when the tab is hidden or closed, and when navigating to another view
  in the SPA.
- A video is marked **completed** at ≥ 95 % watched (`COMPLETE_THRESHOLD`).
  Completion is sticky — rewatching doesn't un-complete it.
- Folder progress is computed over the folder's entire subtree using a path
  prefix match, with partial credit for videos in progress.
- Every course is rolled up in **two queries for the whole library**, grouped by
  `folders.course_id`, and a folder's children in two more — not two per card.
  A library of a few hundred courses would otherwise spend a page load on
  several hundred prefix-matched queries.
- Video duration is read at scan time by parsing the mp4's `mvhd` header in
  pure PHP, so listings show durations before anyone plays the video. If a file
  can't be parsed, the browser reports its duration on first play instead.

## When something breaks

`index.php` stamps `assets/*.css|js` with the file's mtime (`asset()`), so a
deploy is always a fresh URL. Without that, a browser or CDN holding a stale
`app.js` runs it against a newer shell, it grabs element IDs that no longer
exist, and it throws before unhiding the shell — a blank page whose only clue
is in the console. If you ever do see a blank page, hard-refresh and purge the
CDN cache first.

A small handler installed ahead of every other script catches uncaught errors,
unhandled rejections and failed script/stylesheet loads, and paints them into a
`#boot-error` panel — so a failure that stops the app is visible on the page
rather than silent. Server-side, uncaught exceptions *and* fatals (via
`register_shutdown_function`, which `set_exception_handler` never sees) are
returned as JSON, with detail gated behind `DEBUG`.

## Security

- **Sessions**: cookies are set `HttpOnly` + `SameSite=Lax` in code, `Secure`
  automatically when the request came over HTTPS, and strict session-ID mode
  is on (fixation protection).
- **CSRF**: every state-changing request must echo the session's token —
  `fetch()` sends it as an `X-CSRF-Token` header; the `sendBeacon` progress
  save carries it as a `csrf` body field. The token is issued by
  `GET api/auth.php` and rotated at login.
- **Login throttling**: failed sign-ins are recorded per username + IP
  (`login_attempts`, created automatically on first failure, so existing
  installs need no migration). Five failures for a username, or twenty for an
  IP, inside 15 minutes answer `429` until 15 minutes have passed since the
  last failure. A successful login clears the username's failures; stale rows
  are purged as new ones are recorded.
- **Behind Cloudflare** (or any proxy that hides the visitor), the IP the
  throttle sees is the proxy's. Either restore real client IPs at the web
  server (Apache `mod_remoteip` / Nginx `real_ip` with `CF-Connecting-IP` —
  the better fix, it also corrects your logs), or set
  `CLIENT_IP_HEADER` to `'CF-Connecting-IP'` in `config.php`. Only do either
  if the origin is unreachable except through the proxy; otherwise the header
  can be spoofed to dodge the per-IP limit.
- The shipped `.htaccess` (Apache) denies direct access to `videos/`,
  `includes/`, `seeds/`, `tools/`, `config.php` and `schema.sql` — without it, video URLs would
  bypass login entirely. The rules match those folder names anywhere in the
  URL path, so they hold whether the app lives at `/` or under a prefix such as
  `/coursehub/`. Nginx setups need the equivalent `location` blocks, or keep
  the videos and includes outside the docroot (the safest choice either way).
- The server makes no outbound requests unless the AI advisor is switched on,
  and then only to `AI_BASE_URL` (see *Course advisor*).
- Only `.mp4` files ever reach the browser, and only through `stream.php`.
  A quiz's exhibit image is the one thing loaded from elsewhere — its URL is
  whatever the quiz file says, sent with `referrerpolicy="no-referrer"`.

## Production notes

- PHP streams the video in 512 KB chunks with Range support, which is fine for
  a handful of users. For heavier use, serve files with `X-Accel-Redirect`
  (Nginx) or `X-Sendfile` (Apache) instead of streaming through PHP.
- Put the app behind HTTPS — the session cookie is then marked `Secure` on its
  own. When TLS ends at a proxy that talks plain HTTP to the origin, the
  cookie is still marked `Secure` provided `CLIENT_IP_HEADER` is set: the same
  trust that makes the proxy's client-IP header believable makes its
  `X-Forwarded-Proto` believable.
- A rescan is one-at-a-time: a second **Scan library** while one is running
  (from any user) answers "already running" instead of racing it.