Roles and permissions

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Roles are groups of permissions. Users are assigned roles in specific contexts. The combination of roles and context define a specific user's ability to do something on any page. The most common examples are the roles of student and teacher in the context of a course.

Note: Sometimes the terms "capabilities" and "permissions" are used to mean "the ability to do something". Technically, they are different. A capability is an action created in the code (edit a quiz). Permissions are assigned to the capability.

Definitions

Role

An identifier of the user's status within each Context. The status depends upon permissions given for one or more capabilities in any given context. A role can often change within different contexts.

For example Teacher and Student are standard user roles. These roles probably have different capabilities in some contexts but may share permissions in the other.

When Moodle is first installed, a number of Standard roles are created automatically.

Capability

A description of a particular Moodle feature. A list of many capabilities can be seen in the capability category index page.

For example moodle/blog:create(writing blog entries) or "Backup course" are two capabilities.

Note: the "mod/blog:create" notation is a common to identify a capability.

Permission

A setting for a capability. Can be any one of four: not set(inherit), allow, prevent or prohibit.

Context

A "space" in Moodle.

For example: a course, activity module or block can each be a context.

Some contexts can contain multiple contexts in their space. For example, a course can contain a lesson, assignment, forum and quiz modules, plus blocks.

Each context can assign a different role to a User

See also

• Useful things a teacher can do with roles
• Development:Roles administration improvements for Moodle 2.0
• How permissions are calculated
• Category:Capabilities
• Using Moodle Roles and Capabilities forum