Development:Developer FAQ
Help for new coders
Where can "newbies" to Moodle get help?
The General developer forum! Feel free to ask any question, no matter how basic or advanced. Many people ask different levels of question every day, and the community is generally welcoming and quick to respond.
Moodle's database
Where can I see a schema for the structure of the Moodle database?
When installing Moodle, the database tables are generated and updated by various db-handling scripts located in various places. There is no canonical schema representation, although the coding guidelines for database structure give an outline of the general approach.
How to get/set information when writing new Moodle code
How do I find out the currently-logged-on user?
The global object $USER, which contains the numeric $USER->id among other things.
How do I find out the current course?
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How do I insert/retrieve records in the database, without creating my own database connections?
Always use the "datalib" functions, such as insert_record() or get_record(). This helps with database abstraction (e.g. running on either MySQL or Postgres) as well as maintaining a single database connection. Moodle uses ADODB for database abstraction.
Look at the documentation for datalib.php for the list of functions and details of use.
How do I get/set configuration settings?
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