RAVE Alerts

This module provides integration with the RAVE system for campus alerts used 1400 campuses to communicate with 40% of the U.S. Higher Education population in the event of an emergency or campus closure.

This module uses the RAVE RSS channel to display messages in a block. The block can be placed on all pages or just a site's font using core block placement or Context.

The module supports 2 modes; default and active. In the default mode, each site checks the RAVE RSS once per minute and displays a cached result to all users of that site. The duration is configurable and processed in hook_exit so it is executed on all page loads even when Drupal has cached the page. In default mode, if you have 400 active Drupal sites on campus the maximum number of requests you'd expect to see is 400 per minute. This assumes that at least some http requests reach Drupal and trigger hook_exit. If a site uses long Varnish cache timeouts to improve performance for anonymous users, the site currently would not display alerts.

When a new item is detected in the RSS feed, the module looks at the description field for "tiggers". The tiggers are configurable, but default to the text 'active' and 'clear'.

In active event mode, each page load will include javascript that will check the RAVE RSS for changes every 10 seconds directly. Once in active event mode, users with an open window will see new alerts as they are posted without needing to refresh the page.

To remove the messages from the site, simply include the clear token in the description of a message.