Czech Hackfest 2009 notes

Hackfest participants, if anything we discussed has been been missed out, please edit the page and add it!

Moodle 2.0

DB stuff

• New development area in admin menu, new feature in db layer - db session
• Use db for session information setting (on by default)
• things which really need testing - sessions, large scale
• migrating data from one db to another db server
• development > experimental > database transfer
• development > experimental > database export
• to learn sql write stats code, write unit test to check if sql is correct
• DML functions

Plugins

• Every plugin should have support for install, upgrade, access etc
• Complete list of plugin locations available
• previously stuff was hardcoded, now cleaned up
• to do: work on lang pack part

File API

• previously teachers moving, renaming files and linking them from everywhere e.g. backup and restore includes all course and site files just in case
• can be lots of files in course files not used at all, people upload new version, same file put in lots of courses
• 2 character directory names
• things which really need testing - copying of files during upgrade
• need to warn admins in upgrade notes
• no longer course files for teachers
• in 2.0 file link will contain lots of info - path, file name
• if teacher uploads new version of file, students immediately see new version
• re draft files, previously editing files in place, no undo, when editing set of files copy of old files made, copied to draft area, after editing click save then option to submit or cancel / discard
• no direct editing of files, done in separate area, instead of using course files, use file picker, save rubbish elsewhere
• missing piece - management of personal files
• interface needs optimizing
• not yet done: quotas
• editing activity content section ajaxy

Navigation

• Needs to be a block
• 2 dimensions - context (site, course, activities) and page type (course-view, mod-quiz-view etc)
• moodle theme changes, base class, page class
• mod/quiz/lang - lang file in plugin folder (same for core and contrib)
• mod/quiz/theme - theme file in plugin folder (same for core and contrib)
• base theme as simple as possible, install theme will be different - nice-looking theme
• no more standard red, blue etc, config options to change colours instead, easier to customize
• 2.0 themes should have much better performance
• should be easy to install new icon sets e.g. tango
• sam going to convert/redevelop one theme for 2.0 then patrick to develop 20

Web services

• See Web services description
• Enable web services in advanced settings Admin > Plugins > Web services

Gradebook 2.0

Grade settings provided by gradelib like groups settings on mod_edit.php

Gradinglib also needs to provide more of the grading interfaces that modules use in their grading interfaces, such as ratings.

Separate ratings API (like comments) ratingslib.php ratings table, and ratings parameters on the course_modules table

Also, to deal with gradebook hiding issues:

1. Hiding of grades only applies to user report. Conditional activities and grader report always should show them.
2. Add one option to only aggregate visible items (or not).