Mnet Web services API

Overview

The Web Services API provides Moodle with a web service interface to allow exchange of data and information with other systems.

For example,

1. Manage user data - send and retrieve the information,
2. Manage course enrolments - add/remove teachers and students,
3. Course management - create new courses based on templates,
4. Gradebook info - extract grades information from Moodle.

XML-RPC background

The XML-RPC service allows other servers to contact your Moodle server and request that it call a function. The Moodle server might do something, like create a user, or it might fetch some data and serve it back to your host.

To communicate like this with another Moodle host, you'd normally use the Moodle Network [1] features, but it's also possible for other kinds of program to contact your Moodle, using plain-old-XML-RPC, with Moodle Network's encryption or signed-message features.

The server script

• allow trusted sites to access web services by configuring admin/mnet/trustedhosts.php
• start by pointing your browser to mnet/xmlrpc/server.php - this should show an XML error message
• use POST data in this format:

// $method is something like: "mod/forum/lib/forum_add_instance"
// $params is an array of parameters. A parameter might itself be an array.
// use only Whitelist characters that are permitted in a method name
// The method name must not begin with a / - avoid absolute paths
// A dot character . is only allowed in the filename, i.e. something.php

• use mnet/xmlrpc/client.php to make remote xmlrpc calls

See also

• Using Moodle Web Services forum