Development:Anonymous Users
Note: This article is a work in progress. Please use the page comments or an appropriate moodle.org forum for any recommendations/suggestions for improvement.
Moodle 2.0
Objective
To allow users to switch into an anonymous mode when using certain activities eg when posting to a forum, so that the user's real identity cannot be ascertained by other non-privileged users.
Possible Use Cases
- Activity: for example a forum may be switched into anonymous mode by teacher rendering all posts anonymous.
- User: a user may choose to participate in an activity anonymously. In this case the teacher would switch the activity into an optional mode. For example, the forum module, when posting to a forum in an optional anonymous mode, the student could choose at the time of posting whether the post should be anonymous;
- Role Play: a teacher may choose to run the whole course in an anonymous mode to allow students to role play. In this case the anonymous mode will be forced to "yes" in the course settings.
Settings
Global
- Anonymous Mode: On/Off
- Anonymous Images: On/Off
- Enable Course Anonymous Mode: On/Off
Course
- Anonymous Mode: On/Off/Optional
Activity
- Anonymous Mode: On/Off/Optional
User Profile
The following additional fields will be added
- Alias
- Alias image
Code Changes
New Table
A new table user_course_alias will be added
field | type | description |
---|---|---|
id | int | autoincrement |
userid | int | id from the user table |
courseid | int | id from the course table |
alias | string | the user's alias for this given course |
Core Code
The fullname function in lib/moodlelib.php will need to be changed. Currently it is defined as:
function fullname($user, $override=false)
where the user object is only required to contain firstname and lastname properties.
Proposed changes are:
function fullname($user, $override=false, $anonymous=false)
where the user object is required to contain firstname, lastname, alias