MoodleDocs - User contributions [en]

Setting up Eclipse

2006-09-25T15:17:36Z

Jvvw: /* Installing the necessary plugins */

[http://www.eclipse.org/ Eclipse] is an IDE originally designed for Java, but now with plugins for many languages including PHP. It has lots of very powerful features, and it is the editor that someMoodle developers like to use. Other (more) popular choices are vim and emacs.

However, Eclipse is not the easiest program in the world to get started with, so I'm going to take you through it step by step. These instructions assume Eclipse 3.2, the current version at the time of writing. It should not change much between releases.

;Warning
:This is just a brain-dump, and since I already have Eclipse installed on all my computers I have not been able to test all the the steps. I would be very grateful if some people could try these instructions and make the necessary corrections.[[User:Tim Hunt|Tim Hunt]] 21:32, 12 August 2006 (WST)

==Prerequisites==

Eclipse is written in Java, so I recommend getting the latest Java runtime environment from http://java.com/ for maximum speed and reliability.

Eclipse is quite big, so I recommend lots of memory in your computer. I have used it on Windows, MacOS X and Linux with 1GB, in each case with 1GB of memory, and that is plenty.

==Installing Eclipse==

Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. Click on the link where it says '''Download now: Eclipse SDK 3.2''' It should have automatically detected which platform you are using. Choose a Mirror, and wait for the ~100MB download.

You will notice that what you have got is a zip file (unless your system automatically decompresses it for you).

On Windows, upzip it into '''C:\Program Files''' (all the files go into an '''Eclipse''' folder there). Then look in the Eclipse folder and drag Eclipse.exe to the Start menu/Desktop/Quicklaunch bar to make a shortcut for starting it.

On MacOS, unzip and copy the Eclipse folder into Applications. Go into the Eclipse folder and drag the Eclipse app to the Dock for ease of launching.

On Linux, unzip somewhere suitable, and make an easy way to launch it.

==The first time you run Eclipse==

The first time you lauch Eclipse it does a bit of setup stuff, for instance, it create a '''workspace'''. This is where it stores the things you are working on. The default location is sensible on all platforms, so use that.

For some reason, every time you start Eclipse, it asks you which workspace you want to use. I have never seen the need to have more than one, so I recommend turning on the checkbox that says "Don't ask me this again".

Another thing that happens the first time you run Eclipse is that you arrive at a welcome screen. This has links to various bits of help, which you can read if you like, but you probaly don't need to if you are following these instructions. So find the button on the welcome page that closes it and gets you to the main Eclipse screen.

==Installing the necessary plugins==

By default, Eclipse comes with the Java tools. For everything else you will need to install some plugins.

If you are sitting behind a web proxy, from the '''Window''' menu choose '''Preferences ...'''. Choose '''Install/Update''' from the tree view on the left, and enter the proxy information in the boxes on the right. If you aren't behind a proxy, ignore this step.

From the '''Help''' menu choose '''Software Updates -> Find and Install'''.

On the first screen of the wizard, make sure that "Search for new features to install" is selected, then click '''Next >'''.

The next screen is a list of upgrade sites to check. You need to add one to the list, so click the '''New Remote Site ...''' Button.

In the pop-up dialog, give the remote site a name like '''PHPeclipse Update Site'''; set the URL to http://phpeclipse.sourceforge.net/update/releases/; then click '''OK'''.

Back in the wizard, turn on just two things in the box "Sites to include in search":
* Your newly created '''Phpeclipse Update Site'''; and
* the one called '''Callisto Discovery Site'''.
Then click '''Finish'''.

It goes off sees what updates are available at those sites. As it does so, it may occasionally pop up a dialog asking you to choose a mirror. Each time, select a sensible one.

Eventually, you get to a new wizard for selecting and installing the updates you want. The ones you want (you may have to search the tree structure) are, '''PHPeclipse''' (from your newly created PHPEclipse Update Site) and all the '''Web Standard Tools (WST)''' (usually under Callisto Discovery Site --> Web and J2EE Development).

Next, and very importantly, you must click the '''Select Required''' button. Then you can click the '''Next >''' button.

Read and agree to all the license agreements. Then click '''Next >'''.

Click '''Finish''', and wait for the plugins to download.

Once the downloads have finished, a warning will pop-up telling you that all the plugins you downloaded are not digitally signed. The Eclipse Foundation build digital signing of plugins into their architecture as a security measure, and then did not sign any of their own plugins! Anyway, click the '''Install All''' button.

Finally, a window will pop up asking you to restart Eclipse. Do so.

==Setting the preferences for Moodle development==

Now go to the '''Window''' menu, and choose '''Preferences ...'''.

The Eclipse preferences are immense, with a tree view on the left, which selects which screen to display on the right. Don't panic, we'll guide you through it.

===General settings===

If you have strong feelings about fonts, choose '''General -> Appearance -> Colors and Fonts''' from the tree on the left. Then on the right look under '''Basic''' and change '''Text Font'''. All the other editor font settings will inherit from this, so this is probably the only one you have to change.

Under '''General -> Content Types''', select PHP Source File, and add '''*.html''' to the box at the bottom.

Under '''General -> Editors -> File Associations''', add '''*.php''' to the top box. With '''*.php''' selected in the top box, make sure '''PHP Editor''' is set to default in the bottom box. With '''*.html''' selected in the top box, select '''PHP Editor''' in the bottom box and click the '''Default''' button to change it, because in Moodle, most HTML files actually contain PHP code.

If you use a web proxy, enter the details under '''Internet -> Proxy Settings'''. (Yes, I know you have entered the somewhere else before. Now you have to enter them again here. I don't know why. You just do.)

===PHP Settings===

These are all hidden under the '''PHPeclipse Web Development''' bit of the tree.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> Browser Preview Defaults''', turn off both checkboxes.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> PHP''', on the '''Appearance''' tab, set '''Displayed tab width''' to 4.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> PHP''', on the '''Typing''' tab, turn off all the options except '''Pasting for correct indentation''', '''Insert spaces for tab''' and '''Close PHPdocs and comments''' and '''Remove trailing spaces on editor save'''. It would be nice to turn on more of these options, but most of the rest don't work very well.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> PHP -> Formatter''', on the '''New Lines''' tab, turn on '''Clear all blank lines'''.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> PHP -> Formatter''', on the '''Style''' tab, turn off '''Indentation is represented by a tab'''.

Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> PHP -> Templates''', I like to define a new template to help with debugging:
;Name
:dump
;Description
:Dump a PHP variable
;Pattern
<pre>echo '<pre>'; //DONOTCOMMIT
print_r(${cursor});
echo '</pre>';</pre>
You can do other useful things with templates too.

There is a really stupid bug. Under '''PHPeclipse Web Development -> Project Defaults''', you would like to add "." to the '''Include Paths''', but you can't using the GUI. You will have to edit one of the Eclipse config files by hand. So
# Note down the path to your Eclipse profile. On Windows it will be something like '''C:/Documents and settings/XXXX/workspace''', and on Unixy systems something like '''~/workspace'''.
# Close Eclipse.
# Open the file '''net.sourceforge.phpeclipse.ui.prefs''' that is in the directory '''(your workspace)/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings''' in a text editor.
# Look for a line in the file that starts '''_php_include_paths=''' If it is not there, add it at the end.
# Change this line to say '''_php_include_paths=.'''
# Run Eclipse again.

===CVS Settings===

These are all hidden under the '''Team''' bit of the tree.

Under '''Team -> CVS -> SSH2 Connection Method''', you can set up a public/private key pair. If you do this, you won't have to keep typing your Sourceforge password when doing CVS operations. See http://sourceforge.net/docs/F02/ for the instructions of what you have to do at the Sourceforge end to make this work. That should make it clear what you have to do in Eclipse.

The rest of the ones in this section are personal preferences, but I recomment them because the default settings are very irritating.

Under '''Team''', set '''Perspectives''' to '''None'''.

Under '''Team -> CVS -> Annotate''' set '''Use Quick Diff annotate mode for local file annotations''' to '''Yes''', and '''Open perspective after a 'Show Annotations' operation''' to '''No'''.

Under '''Team -> CVS -> Label Decorations''', switch to the '''Icon Decorations''' tab and turn on all the settings, and then on the '''Text Decorations''' tab change both '''File Decoration''' and '''Folder Decoration''' to be just '''{name}'''.

===Web and XML settings===

Foreach XXX in CSS, HTML, Javascript, XML:

Under '''Web and XML -> XXX Files ->XXX Source''', choose '''Indent using spaces''' and '''indentation size''' 4.

==Checking out the Moodle code==

From the '''File''' menu, choose '''New -> Project ...''', then click '''Next >'''.

In the wizard that pops up, choose '''CVS -> Projects from CVS''', then click '''Next >'''.

Select '''Create a new repository location''', then click '''Next >'''.

Fill in
<div style="float: right; border: 1px solid orange; padding: 0 1em;">
For anonymous CVS access use
;Host
:moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net
;Repository path
:/cvsroot/moodle
;User
:anonymous
;Password
:(leave blank)
;Connection type
:pserver
</div>
;Host
:moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net
;Repository path
:/cvsroot/moodle
;User
:(your sourceforge username)
;Password
:(if you set up the SSH2 key thing in preferences, leave this blank, otherwise, type in your sourceforge password.)
;Connection type
:extssh
(CVS experts, if you are confused by that last one, know it is an Eclipse-specific thing.) Then click '''Next >'''.

On the next screen of the Wizard, choose '''Use an existing module'''. Wait a moment, then select '''moodle''' from the list. Click '''Next >'''.

On the next screen, make sure the option '''Check out as a project configured using the New Project Wizard''' is selected, then click '''Next >'''.

Click '''Refresh Tags''', then choose the branch you want. For now leave it set to '''HEAD'''.

Click '''Finish'''.

Now you will find yourself back at the start of the '''New Project''' Wizard. This is because of the option you chose three paragraphs ago. This time you should select '''PHP -> PHP Project''', then click '''Next >'''.

Make up a project name. '''moodle''' would be sensible.

Click '''Finish''', and wait while all the moodle files are checked out of CVS.

Once it has finished, it will probably ask you if you want to switch to the PHP perspective. Answer '''Yes'''.

If you also need the 1.6 stable branch, or another branch, repeat all the other steps with a few changes:
* This time you can choose '''Use and existing repository location''' instead of typing all the sourceforge CVS details again.
* Select the appropriate branch.
* Use a different project name.

==Let your development web server know where your files are==

Either by editing you web server's config files, or using a symbolic link. Make sure your webserver can see your new working set of files at a sensible URL, so you can test the code you are working on.

==Quick tour of some cool features, and remaining configuration changes==

I find the default workbench setup is pretty good. Here is a quick guide to some of the bits.

===Navigator===

To the left is the '''Navigator'''. This is a tree view of all your files. If you double-click on a file, it opens in the editor in the middle. Try opening '''course/lib.php''' now. You will notice that it comes up nicely syntax-hightlighted.

===Error highlighting===

In the middle of the file, just type any old text, for example "I like Eclipse". Obviously, this is not valid PHP syntax, and Eclipse will notice this, and put a red underline under it. Also, by the scrollbar is a ruler with a red mark in it to show the error.

You will see some yellow marks lower down the ruler. There are warnings. Click on one, and you will be taked to where that warning is in the file. Hover your mouse over the warning, and you will get a tooltip explaining what the problem might be.

Save the edited file. (Don't worry that it is broken, we'll clean up the mess later.) Notice that a red error marker is added to the file in the navigator, so you can see that there is a problem. Also, error markers are added to the course folder, and the whole project, so you could see there was an error even if the navigator tree was collapsed.

You will probably find lots of warnings that the config.php file can't be found. In the navigator, find the file '''config-dist.php'''. Do '''Copy''' then '''Paste''' and choose to call the new file '''config.php'''. Edit this new config.php as normal. You should fine that most of the include file warnings have gone now.

Notice also that there is another marker on each file icon. A little yellow cylinder on most files, but a white-on-brown star on the one you have edited. This is telling you the CVS status of each file. The brown stars are changes you have made but not checked in yet.

===Outline===

Over to the right is the Outline view. This shows a list of functions and classes defined in this file. By default, they are listed in the same order as in the file, but if you click on the '''az''' toolbar button, they are sorted into alphabetical order.

Click on the function name '''add_course_module''' in the Outline. You will see that the editor scrolls to the definition of that function.

===Code navigation===

In that function, hover the mouse pointer over the function name '''insert_record'''. After a while, the documentation for that function will appear in a big tooltip.

Hold down CTRL, move the moust pointer over the function name '''insert_record''', then click. Eclipse should load datalib.php, and scroll you to where this function is defined.

In the main Eclipse toolbar, there are forward and back arrows like in a web browser. Click back now to get back to '''course/lib.php'''.

===Open resource===

From the '''Navigate''' menu, choose '''Open Resource...'''. In the dialog that pops up, start typing a filename for instance type '''moodlel'''. In the box in the middle of the dialog, you will see it list all the files in the project whose names start that way. At the bottom is a box which lists the different folders that contain a file with that name. This can be a very quick way of opening files with fairly unique names like moodlelib.php, without having to click through the levels of the navigator tree. Of course, it is not so useful for an index.php file! Click OK now to open moodlelib.php. (It would actually work if you just did CTRL + Shift + R, moodlel, Enter.)

===Multi-file search===

Scroll down moodlelib a little bit, and double click on the name of the constant '''MOODLE_INTERNAL''' where it is defined, so that the text is selected. Then, from the '''Search''' menu, choose '''Search...'''. Notice that the '''Containing text''' box has already been filled in for you with the text you just selected. Of course you can just type text into this box without selecting it first. Notice that you can do regular expression searches, but leave that turned off for now. In the '''File name patterns''' box type '''*.css, *.html, *.inc, *.js, *.php, *.xml'''. (This is the most useful general setting for working on moodle. Eclipse will remember this setting, so you only have to enter it once.) Click '''Search'''.

The search results will appear in a new view underneath the editor. That view has a toolbar with yellow up and down arrows. Click the down arrow a few times and it will take you to the first few matches in the code, opening the relevant files as necessary.

===Synchronize view===

I think this is my favorite feature. From the '''Window''' menu, select '''Show View -> Other...'''. In the dialog that pops up, select '''Team -> Synchronize''', then click '''OK'''.

This opens the Synchronize view below the editor. The view has a toolbar. Click on the first toolbar button, which pops up the Synchronize wizard.

On the first screen, there will probably only be one option: '''CVS'''. Make sure that is selected, then click '''Next >'''.

Under '''Scope''', choose '''Workspace''', then click '''Finish'''.

Wait while it talks to the CVS server. After a while, you will see that the Synchronize view lists course/lib.php, and something called '''.project.... That is, it is listing just the files you have edited, but not checked in yet.

'''.project''' is something that belongs to Eclipse that we don't care about. So select it and bring up the context menu, and choose '''Add to .cvsignore...'''. In the dialog that pops up, choose the top option, then click '''OK'''. Then you will find the Synchronize view shows you a '''.cvsignore''' file that you aren't interested in, so add that to .cvsignore too!

If you double-click on '''course/lib.php''' here, you will see that it opens the compare editor, which is a nice graphical display of the changes in this file.

If you select a file or files here, then bring up the context menu, you will see the option to '''Commit...''' the changes. (But don't do that now!). This is the easiest way to commit things in Eclipse.

However, our changes were rubbish, so we want to undo them. So open the context menu again, and choose '''Override and Update'''. This checks a clean copy of the file out of CVS, removing our changes.

Note that the easiest way to do an ordinary CVS Update is to select the top-level project-folder in the Navigator view on the left, open the context menu, and choose '''Team -> Update'''.

That's all the really important features. I sure you can learn everything else on your own. An you could always read the built in help!

Developer notes

2006-08-21T08:38:55Z

Jvvw: /* Core code */

<p class="note"> '''Note for contributors:''' This area is for developers to work on various bits of code and documentation as necessary. Once material has matured it should be linked to from the main [[Developer documentation]] page.</p>

==Core code==

*[[Other lang issues|Language issues]]
*[[Datalib Notes]]
*[[Application/session variables]]
*[[Roles]]
*[[Filters schema]]
*[[Filterall support]]
*[[Moodle forms library]]
*[[Martin form notes]]
*[[Groups documentation for module developers]]

==Modules and other recognised plugin types==

*[[Forum development|Forum functional upgrade]]
*[[Blogs and forums|Blogs, forums and the nature of discussion]]
*[[Conditional activities]]
*[[Wiki development|Wiki module development]]
*[[Improved Payment Plugin]]
*[[Calculated question development]]
*[[Cleanups required in the quiz and question bank]]

==Other==

*[[MoodleDocs development]]
*[[Usability]]
*[[Document Management API]]
*[[wikindx|Possible integration of WIKINDX with Moodle]]
*[[simple web services]]

''I split this into three categories becuase the list was getting a bit long.''--[[User:Tim Hunt|Tim Hunt]] 00:34, 17 August 2006 (WST)

Developer notes

2006-08-21T08:38:34Z

Jvvw:

<p class="note"> '''Note for contributors:''' This area is for developers to work on various bits of code and documentation as necessary. Once material has matured it should be linked to from the main [[Developer documentation]] page.</p>

==Core code==

*[[Other lang issues|Language issues]]
*[[Datalib Notes]]
*[[Application/session variables]]
*[[Roles]]
*[[Filters schema]]
*[[Filterall support]]
*[[Moodle forms library]]
*[[Martin form notes]]
*[[Groups]]

==Modules and other recognised plugin types==

*[[Forum development|Forum functional upgrade]]
*[[Blogs and forums|Blogs, forums and the nature of discussion]]
*[[Conditional activities]]
*[[Wiki development|Wiki module development]]
*[[Improved Payment Plugin]]
*[[Calculated question development]]
*[[Cleanups required in the quiz and question bank]]

==Other==

*[[MoodleDocs development]]
*[[Usability]]
*[[Document Management API]]
*[[wikindx|Possible integration of WIKINDX with Moodle]]
*[[simple web services]]

''I split this into three categories becuase the list was getting a bit long.''--[[User:Tim Hunt|Tim Hunt]] 00:34, 17 August 2006 (WST)

Datalib notes

2006-07-28T13:54:34Z

Jvvw: /* General Datalib usage Notes */

== General Datalib usage Notes ==

Couple of discussion threads about usage of datalib are [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=43456 here] and [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=38183 here].

== Advanced Usage: get_recordset() ==

There's a new series of function calls in datalib that were introduced shortly after 1.5: get_recordset() and friends. It takes a bit of work to make good use of them, they are definitely useful.

The function calls themselves take similar parameters to the get_records() family, and return an AdoDB recordset. In most situations, the right thing is to use get_records(), making sure that you are selecting a limited number of records (use LIMIT of course wink ), and that you are clearly fetching only the fields you need. That is enough for 99% of the cases. Stop reading now, use get_records(), and done.

Easy!

Now, there are some cases where we need to perform huge selects. And the downside of the get_records() machinery is that it allocates it all in RAM -- and if indeed records > than RAM, we are in trouble. This mostly affects batch processing in admin/cron.php (backups for instance) and the silly sync scripts we have in some auth and enrolment plugins.

In those cases, where you have no option but to SELECT all the users, or all the courses, get_recordset() really shines. As you get an AdoDB recordset, you can iterate through it very fast, and with very low memory usage. I have prepared and profiled some samples and found that to keep that advantage you have to be very careful how you use it.

I started testing with a large mdl_user table with 46K users, stored in PostgreSQL locally (socket connection). Here is a rundown of the code and rough timings...

The traditional get_records() is fast (~14s), but it consumes 296MB of memory. It looks like:

$users = get_records('user');

So the next thing was to check that just triggering the SELECT was fast, and that fetching and re-shaping all that data into memory was an expensive step. get_recordset() in itself never fetches the data into PHP-space, so it takes only 4.8MB and 1.4s:

$users = get_recordset('user');

Next I tried using get_recordset() with FetchNextObj() which looked quite convenient, because it will yield each record in an object, similar to the objects that get_records() returns inside the array. The memory usage stayed the same (4.8M), but this is very slow (~65s):

$users = get_recordset('user');
while($v = $users->FetchNextObj()){
// do something
}

Internally, get_records() is using GetAssoc(), so I looked in there to se faster ways of getting at the data. Apparently, the trick is in reading the $rs->fields array and using MoveNext(). So this loop still takes 4.8MB and walks the 46K user records in 4s:

$users = get_recordset('user');
while(!$users->EOF) {
$user = $users->fields;
// do something
$users->MoveNext();
}

Naturally, as soon as you start doing useful things, this will take longer to exec. The core advantage, however, is that it can give you comparable performance to get_records() but with very low memory usage.

There is an interesting [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=45794 discussion about get_recordset() in the General Developer Forum].

UK MoodleMoot 06 hackfest

2006-07-10T13:03:31Z

Jvvw: /* 1 Bug fixing */

Monday 24th July, 2006

''Welcommen zum Hackfest'' (OK - I've been watching too much WorldCup on TV).

The first MoodleMoot hackfest is nearly upon us... and we don't have an agenda!

This is an open source agenda for the hackfest. We'll have a day before the Moot to geek out on some code, maybe develop a feature or two, fix some bugs and generally make our favorite learning system a happier place. But I leave it up to you to tell me exactly what we should do. We have four or five rooms with internet connections, a few projectors, and I'll try to get pizza.

Let's start by brainstorming some ideas here for a few days. If someone posts something you're interested in, put your name under it as a vote. The top votes become our central organizing ideas. For example

==1 Bug fixing==

Let's spend a few hours and hunt down as many outstanding bugs in 1.6 as possible. Bounties for most bugs killed, trickiest bug killed, and most unusual bug killed.

''I'm Interested:''
# Jason Cole
# skodak
# martin langhoff (auth & enrolment specifically).
# Martin Dougiamas
# Juliette White (arriving late though!)

(iarenaza) I won't be there, but here are a couple of bugs for Martin L., related to auth: #4648 and #5373. Very easy to fix :-)

==2 What next for the quiz module?==

If any other quizzy people are there, we should have a talk about where we see the quiz module going.

I/the OU have the following priorities:

# Make question type plugins really plug-in-able. At the moment there are some limitations:
#* All the lang strings are still in lang/en_utf8/quiz.php.
#* qtype plugins cannot easily feed CSS and Javascript into the page.
#* pluggable qtypes and pluggable inport/export filters don't play nicely together.
# Write some new question types.
# Make some improvements to existing question types.
# Get RQP working again, so our in-house question engine can talk to Moodle.

''I'm Interested:''
# Tim Hunt

==Performance profiling==

Pick a (memory|database) hog and put it on a diet.

''I'm interested''

# martin langhoff

(iarenaza) Once again, I won't be there, but here's an unfixed bug in 1.6.x and HEAD (was fixed in 1.5.x, but not applied to HEAD at the moment): bug #4591

==Hacking on the OLPC Board==

MartinL will be bringing the OLPC board (if it is booting, and customs allows!) for people to have a play with it. If we have any Mozilla/XUL experts in the house, he will want to explore building a limited cached Moodle UI with it for offline work.

'''Note:''' We will need some spare parts & hardware to get the board going. I will bring a power supply, but a VGA monitor, USB mouse + keyboard, USB ext disk, USB hub, and open wifi (no ethernet on the board) will be needed.

''I'm interested:''

# martin langhoff

==How to save/retrieve a complete section from stock?==
Now the sections become more and more accepted as the tasksets for a week, our teachers wish to have topic oriented stores (courses for the moment) as section stores and want to copy one/more sections form that task store to a clean course..

''(In the end we wish that students can select sections from the store to compose their own courses, until the teacher freezes their choice set and the learning game can begin.)''

''I'm interested:''
# Ger Tielemans (I arrive a little later, so start with the bugs first, please :))
# Jan Kater (same arrival=same message as Ger T.)

==How to reveale files outside a course without using datadir for course 1?==
Can someone explain the right setup and use of the exception array:
- we want to show a student (after login) only his own file from that store
- we want to show a teacher/tutor only the files from the students in his course(s)

''I'm interested:''
# Ger Tielemans
# Jan Kater

==How to repair the last bug in the old bookmark option ?==
We changed William's bookmark in a student only note-taking tool and (thanks Chardelle!) almost repaired the complete bookmark for 1.6. (and it can be accessed from My Page)
Bug: Only when the user tries to sort the heder in the overview, the text of the headers disappear.
Code clean-up: how to remove obsolete code and make the bookmark pages secure?
(Wish for new code: categories are privat, so allow a student to delete a self created category)

''I'm interested:''
Ger Tielemans

==How to insert a HTML-editor in old code block and make it secure ?==
To make the set of student note-taking tools complete, I found old code to have a global private notebook.
(I group this with bookmarks in the calender, so the student has: 1. privat time-related-notes in the calendar, 2. a button for the overview of the privat page-related-notes under the calendar and 3. a global privat notebook for other scribbles..)
On this moment this piece of code has a flat text editor, would be nice to have HTML or even the new (Ajax?) miniWiki?)

With the new "View as student button" check like if isstudent() {..show..} offers teachers and admins empty - only for real student - spots (so an error)

''I'm interested:''
# Ger Tielemans
# Jan Kater

== Improve the way we integrate Rubrics in Moodle, like... ==
http://docs.subjectivemetrics.com/User/cam/rubistar/rs_overview.html

maybe with some flavors of...

http://ipeer.apsc.ubc.ca/ipeer_site/

==Add your suggestion here ...==

Go on, you know you want to.

==See also==
* [http://moodlemoot.org/ http://moodlemoot.org/]

Activity modules

2006-05-31T10:34:59Z

Jvvw: Placeholder about support for groups and metacourses

'''Activity modules''' reside in the 'mod' directory. Each module is in a separate subdirectory and consists of the following mandatory elements (plus extra scripts unique to each module):

* ''mod.html'' - a form to set up or update an instance of this module
* ''version.php'' - defines some meta-info and provides upgrading code
* ''icon.gif'' - a 16x16 icon for the module
* ''db/'' - SQL dumps of all the required db tables and data (for each database type)
* ''index.php'' - a page to list all instances in a course
* ''view.php'' - a page to view a particular instance
* ''lib.php'' - any/all functions defined by the module should be in here. If the modulename is called widget, then the required functions include:
:* widget_add_instance() - code to add a new instance of widget
:* widget_update_instance() - code to update an existing instance
:* widget_delete_instance() - code to delete an instance
:* widget_user_outline() - given an instance, return a summary of a user's contribution
:* widget_user_complete() - given an instance, print details of a user's contribution
:* Other functions available but not required are:
:** widget_delete_course() - code to clean up anything that would be leftover after all instances are deleted
:** widget_process_options() - code to pre-process the form data from module settings
:* To avoid possible conflict, any module functions should be named starting with widget_ and any constants you define should start with WIDGET_
* ''config.html'' - (optional) a form to set up or update global settings of this module
* Lastly, each module will have some language files that contain strings for that module.

IMPORTANT: When creating a new module, the new name of the module must not contain numbers or other special characters!

You should also make sure that your activity module provides appropriate support for groups and metacourses.

==See also==

* http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/NEWMODULE.zip - new module template for starting module development. Please follow the README instructions inside the zip.
* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5 Activity modules] forum

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