Adding theme upgrade code

As theme's have got considerably more advanced in Moodle 2 there is now on occasion a need to write upgrade code for a theme. This quick tutorial looks at just how to do that.

Why?

As part of the Moodle 2 revamp theme's have been given the same abilities as many of the other plugin types within Moodle. They are now able to have settings pages, database tables, they can override renderers, and they can do all sorts of great things. Unfortunately this change has its positives and negatives, on the positive you can now really get some cool stuff happening within a theme, the downside is just like any other plugin you need to think about those who are already using your theme when you make changes. If you are changing the name of a setting, or if you are changing the database schema for the theme you will need to add upgrade code to your theme so that those who are already using your theme are moved along nicely and don't lose the effort they've put into customising and setting up your theme.

Step 1: version.php

For those of you who are already familiar with writing Moodle plugins you will be familiar with the version.php, however for many themer's the reality is that they've never gone beyond adding a settings page so this will be new.

The version.php file is a requirement for many plugin types, however for theme's it is optional. The idea is that it contains just two or three lines of code that the tell Moodle what version the plugin is and a little bit about where it is meant to be, or what version of Moodle it requires. The version.php file for a theme should be created within the theme's base directory e.g. moodle/theme/mythemename/version.php.

The following is an example of what a version.php file for a theme looks like.

<?php

/**

* This is the version.php file for my theme.
*/

$plugin->version = 2011032900; $plugin->component = 'theme_mythemename'; $plugin->requires = 2010122500; $plugin->maturity = MATURITY_STABLE;

The first thing to notice here is that we are setting properties of an object called $plugin, this object will be used to describe our theme. We are setting four properties here, version, component, requires, and maturity. The version property is required and the rest are optional however it is best practice to put the in as well.

The version property

The version property is the version number of our theme and needs to be an integer, although you can set it to any integer value you want it is HIGHLY recommended to use the date format shown above as it is used everywhere else throughout Moodle.

The format is YYYYMMDDXX :

1. YYYY is the four digit year, e.g. 2011
2. MM is the month with preceding 0 if required, e.g. 03
3. DD is the day with preceding 0 is required, e.g. 28
4. XX is an incrementing value starting at 00, you can increment this if you add several upgrade code blocks on the same day.

As a hint its easiest just to set the version property to today's date when adding upgrade code, or releasing a version of your theme that introduces something new such as a database table, or config setting.

The component property

The component is used to describe the plugin and its type. In our case we are working with themes and the theme name I have used in my example is mythemename, therefore the component is theme_mythemename.

When installing or upgrading a plugin Moodle checks the component and uses it to make sure that the plugin has been installed in the correct location. This is particularly helpful for the end user as it prevents nasty accidents where they accidentally put a plugin in the wrong place.

If you are working on other types of plugins the component of course will differ, its best to refer to the docs for those plugin types to find out what you would have to use there.

The requires property

The requires property sets the version of Moodle that is required by this plugin. This is particularly handy if your plugin makes use of a feature that was introduced in a specific version of Moodle, or if your plugin relies on a bug fix that was introduced in a specific version.

You can find the current Moodle version by looking at main Moodle version.php file. In the example above I have set my theme to require Moodle 2.0.1 by setting the requires property to Moodle's version number when that was released. If you are trying to find out a specific version number you can do so by heading to https://github.com/moodle/moodle, changing the tag drop down to the version you desire, then inspecting the version.php file at the bottom of the files list. You should see $version = XXXXXXXXXX;.

The maturity property

This is a property that is expected to be fully supported in Moodle 2.1. It informs Moodle about the state of the code and can be one of the following values:

MATURITY_STABLE

Use this when the theme is stable and works well.

MATURITY_RC

This marks the theme as a release candidate, users can expect the theme to contain one or two bugs but be largely stable and usable.

MATURITY_BETA

This marks the theme as a beta release, users can expect the theme to contain several bugs and for it to be likely to change still.

MATURITY_ALPHA

This marks the theme as an alpha release, this is the first release of a new theme and users will expect to find alot still needs to be done.