corelab-blockkit

corelab-blockkit

A library for building and managing content blocks.

Overview

corelab-blockkit is a CoreLab project that provides a standardized representation of course content as discrete "blocks" that can be serialized, rendered, and extended. It's designed to be lightweight, type-safe, and easily extensible.

Features

• Core Block Types: TextBlock, ImageBlock, VideoBlock, AudioBlock, DownloadBlock, GlossaryBlock, QuoteBlock, SupplementBlock
• Serialization: JSON and YAML support
• Type Registry: Extensible registry for block types
• Block Operations: Add, remove, move, and find blocks
• Metadata: Track creation/update times, favorites, tags, and custom metadata
• Extensibility: Add custom block types without modifying the core library

Installation

pip install corelab-blockkit

Quick Start

from corelab_blockkit import BlockList, TextBlock, ImageBlock

# Create a block list
blocks = BlockList()

# Add a text block
text_block = TextBlock(
    text="Hello **world**! This is a *markdown* formatted text block.",
    format="markdown",
)
blocks = blocks.add(text_block)

# Add an image block
image_block = ImageBlock(
    url="https://example.com/image.jpg",
    alt_text="An example image",
    caption="Figure 1: Example image",
)
blocks = blocks.add(image_block)

# Serialize to JSON
json_str = blocks.to_json(indent=2)
print(json_str)

# Serialize to YAML
yaml_str = blocks.to_yaml()
print(yaml_str)

# Deserialize from JSON
deserialized = BlockList.from_json(json_str)

Plugin Guide

You can extend blockkit with custom block types by creating a plugin. Here's how:

• Create a new package with a class that inherits from BaseBlock
• Define an entry point in your pyproject.toml:

[project.entry-points."blockkit.blocks"]
my_block = "my_package:MyBlock"

• Install your package, and blockkit will automatically discover and register your block type

See the examples/plugin_example directory for a complete example.

JSON Specification

Each block is serialized to JSON with the following structure:

{
  "id": "uuid-string",
  "kind": "block-type",
  "meta": {
    "created_at": "iso-datetime",
    "updated_at": "iso-datetime",
    "is_favorite": false,
    "tags": [],
    "extra": {}
  },
  "payload": {
    // Block-specific content
  }
}

A block list is serialized as:

{
  "blocks": [
    // Array of block objects
  ]
}

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.