Note:

If you want to create a new page for developers, you should create it on the Moodle Developer Resource site.

Making changes show up during development: Difference between revisions

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===Changing web services (db/services.php)===
===Changing web services (db/services.php)===


===Changing database strucutre (db/install.xml, db/upgrade.php)
===Changing database strucutre (db/install.xml, db/upgrade.php)===


===Adding a new PHPunit test===
===Adding a new PHPunit test===

Revision as of 16:27, 26 March 2019

Sometime, when you are trying to do Moodle development, you edit the code, and nothing seems to change as a result. This is because, to improve performance, Moodle now has all sorts of caching built in. When this is happening, this page will try to give you the quickest way to make your changes show up in all situation.

However, this page is still quite new, so please help build it.

General advice

  1. In your development site, change most of the admin settings like 'Cache language strings', 'Cache JavaScript' to be suitalble for development. (But note that doing this will slow down your development site.
  2. If in doubt, visit http://your.domain/moodle/admin to check that the Moodle install is up-to-date.
  3. And then http://your.domain/moodle/vle/admin/purgecaches.php and click the 'Purge all caches' button. This will slow things down for the next few requests, until the caches have re-populated.
  4. Depending on what you changed in your plugin, then in addition to the above, you may need to remember to increase the version number in version.php, or the changes will not show up.
  5. You may have forgotted to run grunt.
  6. If you have just added a new Behat or PHPunit test, you may need to re-run admin/tool/.../cli/init.php.

The above steps are a brute force approach. They will probably work, but are probably not the fastest way. Below, we list for all the various type of change you can make, the most efficient way to make the change show up.

Changes in the Moodle and Moodle plugins

Changing PHP (*.php)

You should just need to press reload (F5) in your browser.

Adding or removing an auto-loaded class

If you get class-not-found errors, you need to visit http://your.domain/moodle/admin.

Changing JavaScript (amd/src/*.js)

If you have Administration -> Appearance -> AJAX and Javascript -> Cache Javascript turned off, then you should just need to reload (F5) in your browser.

If JS caching is on, you need to re-run grunt. (Do you also need to purge a cache??? I don't think so.)

Changing CSS (*.css)

Changing SCSS/LESS (*.scss/*.less)

Changing language strings (lang/en/type_plugin.php)

Changing capabilities (db/access.php)

Changing scheduled tasks (db/tasks.php)

Changing web services (db/services.php)

Changing database strucutre (db/install.xml, db/upgrade.php)

Adding a new PHPunit test

Adding a new Behat test

You need to re-run

php admin/tool/behat/cli/init.php

or any newly-added *.feature file will not be found.


Changes in mobile support for plugins

If you are doing the kind of development descrived in Mobile support for plugins, using a pre-built version of the app like https://mobileapp.moodledemo.net/.

Note, these steps were originally written by people mostly on question type plugins. Hopefully they are generally applicable, but if they don't make sense in your case, that might be why. Please edit to improve them.

General note it you are seeing a lot of errors

If there are lots of red error messages appearing in the JavaScript console (but not the very common error 'ERROR Error: Uncaught (in promise): null...' that repeats every minute and fills the console logs!) it is often necessary to clear site data and restart.

  1. In browser developer tools, go to Application -> Clear storage.
  2. Close the browser, and re-launch.

Adding mobile support to a plugin for the first time

  1. Bump the plugin version number.
  2. Go to admin -> Notifications.
  3. F5 in the app to restart.

Change in existing template (mobile/*.html)

Just pull down in the app to refresh.

Adding a new template (mobile/*.html)

???

===Change to existing client-side JavaScript (mobile/*.js)

Press F5 in the browser developer tools to restart the app.

===New client-side JavaScript (mobile/*.js)

===Change to server-side classes/output/mobile.php - ???

Changing CSS

  1. bump version number in db/mobile.php
  2. purge caches (specifically the tool_mobile/plugininfo MUC cache)
  3. Press F5 to restart the app.

Changes in the Moodle mobile app

TODO.