Revision as of 22:22, 13 June 2010

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Overview

The major difference from 1.6-1.9 enrolments is that the course enrolment information is stored again in a separate database table course_participants. The enrolment related information was move from course table to new enrol table which holds plugin instances. The old enrolment plugins need to be completely rewritten. Course category enrolments via role assignments is not possible any more, existing category enrolments are migrated to new cohorts and cohort enrolment plugin.

The benefits are:

we can use SQL to find enrolled users in any course extremely quickly (much better performance)
multiple enrolment plugins per course are full supported (includes more instances of the same type)
new enrolment overview interface
user enrolments may be suspended and reactivated
plugin may prevent users to change/break enrolment synchronised with external systems
finer access control, more flexible/configurable course settings UI
no hardcoded enrolment behaviour - it is possible to completely replace guest access, self enrolments, etc. with custom plugins

Database structure changes

New course_participants table

New table which stores users participating in courses (aka enroled users). It can be used directly in SQL joins.

Field	Type	Default	Description
id	int(10)	auto-incrementing
status	int(10)	0	0 means active enrolment, 1 means suspended, anything else means inactive (user can not access course) and is defined by plugin
enrolid	int(10)		foreign key, references enrol.id
userid	int(10)		foreign key, references user.id
timestart	int(10)	0	time stamp, start of active participation period
timeend	int(10)	0	time stamp, end of active participation period
modifierid	int(10)		last user who modified enrolment, references user.id
timemodified	int(10)		timestamp, last modification

New enrol table

Stores information about enrolment plugins used in course, includes plugin configuration data and instance status. The optional fields have plugin specific meanings, plugins may define other tables related via the enrol.id if necessary.

Field	Type	Default	Description
id	int(10)	auto-incrementing
enrol	char(20)		enrolment plugin name
status	int(10)	0	0 means active plugin, anything else means inactive (user can not access course) and is defined by plugin
courseid	int(10)		foreign key, references course.id
sortorder	int(10)		order of instances in course
name	char(255)		optional plugin instance name, useful when multiple instances of the same plugin used in course
enrolperiod	int(10)	0	optional default enrolment period, in seconds
enrolstartdate	int(10)	0	timestamp, optional default enrolment start date
enrolenddate	int(10)	0	timestamp, optional default enrolment end date
expirynotify	int(1)	0	optional flag
expirythreshold	int(10)	0	timestamp, optional
notifyall	int(1)	0	optional flag
password	char(255)		optional enrolment password
cost	char(20)		optional cost field
currency	char(3)		optional currency field
roleid	int(10)		general optional field
customint1	int(10)		general optional field
customint2	int(10)		general optional field
customint3	int(10)		general optional field
customint4	int(10)		general optional field
customchar1	char(255)		general optional field
customchar2	char(255)		general optional field
customdec1	decimal		general optional field
customdec2	decimal		general optional field
customtext1	text		general optional field
customtext2	text		general optional field
timecreated	int(10)		timestamp, date when instance created
timemodified	int(10)		timestamp, date when instance last modified

Enrolment plugins

Enrolment framework is fully pluggable, there should not be any hardcoded dependencies in code any more. Technically you may delete all enrol plugins and only new custom plugins. Plugins may integrate at:

new admin settings pages
login process - user enrol sync
two require_login() hooks
course edit page - plugin settings for each course
course enrolment methods list - add, remove, hide enrol instances
management of enrolled users
cron script

Manual enrolments

Implemented in /enrol/manual/*, true manual enrolments.

Temporary guest access

Implemented in /enrol/guest/*. This plugin does not use course_participants table. The course access is granted inside require_login() call together with a temporary guest role. Access key is optional.

Self enrolment

Implemented in /enrol/self/*. Users decide when to enrol. Enrolment key is optional, it can use group enrolment keys too.

Cohort enrolment

Implemented in /enrol/cohort/*. Synchronises cohort users with course enrolment, optionally assigns group too. The sync is implemented through event listeners.

Course meta links

Implemented in /enrol/meta/*. Replaces old metacourses. The difference is that every course may be child and parent course at the same time. The sync is implemented through event listeners. It is possible to mix meta enrolments with normal enrolments.

External database

Implemented in /enrol/database/*. Separate course creation and user synchronisation, more sync options implemented.

LDAP

TODO - most of the code can be borrowed from database enrol plugin.

Authroize

TODO - luckily we do not need any more hardcoded hooks all over the place ;-)

Flat file

TODO

imsenterprise