View all courses

See Courses and Categories Lists Overview in 2.4 for the current screens

General proposal

Renderer has a base function, i.e. courses_and_subcategories_list() that accepts a number of options. Each interface - frontpage, /course/index.php, /course/category.php, etc. has it's own function that themes can override than creates an array of options to be passed to the base function.

Some options are taken from $CFG. It should be very easy to overwrite just those functions if they want more flexibility. Actually themes may have their own settings that control courses listings.

There is also a script called from AJAX to load extended course contents, category, or another page of list of courses/categories. Options will be passed to AJAX script as arguments so it does not need to be changed by theme.

Suggested options

• displaycourses: [none, countonly, collapsed, expanded] how (if) display courses list
• parentcategoryid: if specified, display subcategories and courses in this category (0 means top level)
• expandsubcategoriesdepth: depth to expand subcategories in the tree (deeper subcategories will be loaded by AJAX or proceed to category page by clicking on category name)
• omitcategories: for small sites, do not display categories names just list all courses in all subcategories
• sortcourses: how to sort courses
• sortcategories: how to sort subcategories
• categorieslimit: limit the number of subcategories inside one category. If there are more categories, a link "More categories..." is displayed, which leads to the subcategory page, or displays the next page or loads more entries via AJAX
• courseslimit: limit the number of courses inside one category. If there are more courses, a link "More courses..." is displayed which leads to the subcategory page, or displays the next page or loads more entries via AJAX
• categorieslimit1, categorieslimit2, etc.: limits the number of subcategories on the 1st nested level (if not specified, defaults to categorieslimit, categorieslimit1, etc.)
• courseslimit1, courseslimit2, etc.: as above
• ajaxdisabled: completely disable AJAX loading even if browser supports it

class core_course_renderer {

/** basic function that displays tree of subcategories and list of courses */
public function courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions) {
  // ...
}

/** invoked from /index.php */
public function frontpage_course_list($displaytype) {
  global $CFG;
  if ($displaytype === 'categories' || $displaytype === 'combo') {
    $displayoptions = array(
      'parentcategoryid' => 0,
      'expandsubcategoriesdepth' => $CFG->maxcategorydepth,
      'displaycourses' => ($displaytype === 'categories') ? 'none' : 'collapsed',
      'courseslimit' => ($displaytype === 'categories') ? 0 : $CFG->coursesperpage,
    );
    return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
  }
  return '';
}

/** invoked from /course/index.php */
public function courses_list_all() {
  global $CFG;
  $displayoptions = array(
    'parentcategoryid' => 0,
    'displaycourses' => 'collapsed',
    'categorieslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'courseslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
  );
  return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
}

/** invoked from /course/category.php */
public function course_category($category) {
  global $CFG;
  $displayoptions = array(
    'parentcategoryid' => is_object($category) ? $category->id : $category,
    'displaycourses' => 'expanded',
    'categorieslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'courseslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'sortcourses' => 'fullname',
    'sortcategories' => 'fullname',
  );
  return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
}

}