MoodleNet: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:10, 6 July 2023

What is MoodleNet?

MoodleNet is a flexible Open Education Technology platform for curating collections of the best known Open Educational (and other) Resources. You'll find more general information in the MoodleNet user documentation.

If you are looking to get started as a MoodleNet developer, we recommend taking the MoodleNet for Developers course with Moodle Academy.

Current status

Take a look at MoodleNet releases in our Tracker.

Roadmap

The MoodleNet release schedule is available on the MoodleNet Roadmap.

Quick start guide

System Requirements

MoodleNet requires the followings to be available on your system

NodeJs ^16 [1]
npm ^8 [2]
ArangoDB [3]

Notice that the current nodejs LTSs frameworks are nodejs ^18 and npm ^9

We tested so far with the previous LTSs nodejs ^16 and npm ^8

Make sure to have nodejs ^16 installed and you should get npm ^8 as well

Deploy an ArangoDB instance

MoodleNet uses ArangoDB as main database

You can choose how and where to deploy your ArangoDB, as long as it can be reached by MoodleNet process

An easy way to install run ArangDB locally as a service is by using Docker[4] e.g. :

docker run -d --restart unless-stopped -e ARANGO_NO_AUTH=1 -p 8529:8529 --name=mn-3-db arangodb:3.10

Possibly tweaking some options as you like, e.g. mounting a volume|directory for data or setting a password

Install MoodleNet

Install Moodlenet by simply issueing the following npm command

npm create @moodlenet@latest path/to/installation/folder

That will install all MoodleNet core packages in the choosen folder

it will also create a default configuration file (default.config.json) and a default cryptographic key-pair for the system (default.crypto.privateKey , default.crypto.publicKey)

Start MoodleNet process

To start MoodleNet issue the following command from within the installation directory

npm start

open your browser on http://localhost:8080

Notice: on the first run the system will have to compile the webapp, so you'll get a 404 until ready. It should take a few minutes

MoodleNet configuration file

MoodleNet configuration file (default.config.json) holds all static system configs.

Here's how the default config looks like after install:

{
  "pkgs": {
    "@moodlenet/core": {
      "baseFsFolder": "/path/to/installation/dir/fs",
      "instanceDomain": "http://localhost:8080",
      "npmRegistry": "https://registry.npmjs.org",
      "mainLogger": {
        "consoleLevel": "info",
        "file": {
          "path": "./log/moodlenet.%DATE%.log",
          "level": "info"
        }
      }
    },
    "@moodlenet/crypto": {
      "keys": {
        "alg": "RS256",
        "type": "PKCS8",
        "private": "/path/to/installation/dir/default.crypto.privateKey",
        "public": "/path/to/installation/dir/default.crypto.publicKey"
      }
    },
    "@moodlenet/arangodb": {
      "connectionCfg": {
        "url": "http://localhost:8529"
      }
    },
    "@moodlenet/http-server": {
      "port": 8080,
      "defaultRpcUploadMaxSize": "5MB"
    },
    "@moodlenet/ed-resource": {
      "resourceUploadMaxSize": "1.2GB"
    },
    "@moodlenet/simple-email-auth": {
      "newUserNotPublisher": false
    },
    "@moodlenet/email-service": {
      "nodemailerTransport": {
        "jsonTransport": true
      }
    },
    "@moodlenet/system-entities": {
      "rootPassword": "eqhb30x9iq5"
    },
    "@moodlenet/react-app": {}
  }

here's some relevant configs you may want to check and tweak

@moodlenet/arangodb.connectionCfg.url : the default config assumes you installed ArangoDB without password with standard port on the same host
@moodlenet/core.baseFsFolder : path (better absolute path instead of relative to MoodleNet process cwd) to the system root folder for system filesystem persistency, if you want to change the system-filesystem-root after the system already run, move or clone the existing folder somewhere else and set this config properly to point to the new path
@moodlenet/core.instanceDomain : the public domain of your moodlenet instance (e.g. https://moodlenet.example.com) - the default one (http://localhost:8080) is ok for testing and dev
@moodlenet/email-service.nodemailerTransport : the nodemailer transport configuration for the system email service. It can be a simple smtp url string, or a nodemailer standard config object. Notice: with the default configuration { "jsonTransport": true } the system won't send any email, it will simply log them)
@moodlenet/system-entities.rootPassword : a static root password for edge cases - you'll use it to give the first admin permission to a user (see below) - this property is optional, if not set the root user is disabled
@moodlenet/http-server.port : the HTTP server port to listen

Moodlenet's HTTP service doesn't support HTTPS.

It's always a good practice to back Moodlenet with a HTTP reverse proxy (e.g. nginx, Apache) and it is a must if you want to publish over HTTPS, configuring TLS on it

Default authentication system

Moodlenet comes with a simple email+password authentication system (pkg @moodlenet/simple-email-auth) that lets users signup and login with a verified email

Users can sign up with their email, receive in their inbox a confirmation link to click and create their user-account

Assign admin privileges to user

As you deploy a new instance, no user is present in the system.

Signup with your email and create your user.

Test login, then logout and browse to the hidden page http://localhost:8080/login/root, here you can type in the rootPassword (specified in config file) to login as root.

Open the avatar menu on top right header, and click admin link

Click on Users section on the left, and see your user listed there. Activate the admin icon to give your user admin privileges

Now you can log out and login back with your email, see you gained the admin link in your avatar menu

Migrate from V2

If you have a v2 running and want to migrate it to v3 , you can use the @moodlenet/v2-migrate-v3

The v3 system must have access to Moodlenet-V2 persistencies: its running arangoDB instance and the MN2 filesystem as configured in V2 env variable STATICASSETS_FS_ROOT_FOLDER

After installed Moodlenet, issue the following command from the installation folder

npm install @moodlenet/v2-migrate-v3

Edit the default.config.json adding a @moodlenet/v2-migrate-v3 section beside the others, it should look like that

    "@moodlenet/v2-migrate-v3": {
      "v2DbConnectionCfg": {
        "url": "http://your-mn-v2-arangodb-host:8529"
      },
      "v2AssetFolder": "/path/to/v2/asset/folder"
    }

re/start the system, all the services will start after the migration done

MoodleNet architecture

MoodleNet is a full stack TypeScript/JavaScript system using:

NodeJs
- NPM Packages [5]
- ESM Modules [6]
Browsers
- ReactJs 18 [7]
- HTML5 [8]
- CSS3 [9]

MoodleNet development environment

NodeJs ^16 https://nodejs.org/
ArangoDB ^3 (we suggest using Docker)
We recommend the open source IDE Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com/

Setup development environment

From the command line interface (CLI):

Ensure ArangoDB is running on localhost. You may run it in a Docker container issueing a command as below:

docker run -e ARANGO_NO_AUTH=1 -p 8529:8529 --name=mn3-dev arangodb:3.10

Clone the repository, you may wish to fork it, but that's not required:

git clone https://gitlab.com/moodlenet/moodlenet.git

Change to the project's folder:

cd moodlenet

Install and initialize the project:

npm install

Install a development server:

npm run dev-install-backend my-dev # <- my-dev: an arbitrary dev-installation name

In the example we choosed my-dev as installation name, the tool will then setup a dev installation in ./.dev-machines/my-dev

You can create as many dev installations as you wish.

Run development backend:

npm run dev-start-backend my-dev # <- my-dev : the name you choosed when installed

The first run of the system may take some time to install.

The default configuration for dev includes the config @moodlenet/react-app.noWebappServer: true that prevents the server to serve the webapp, so you won't access the webapp on http://localhost:8080

Instead, you'll want to run a webpack+HMR serving the webapp issueing

npm run dev-start-webapp my-dev # <- my-dev: the installaton server to point to

Once all started, browse http://localhost:3000

Mono-Repository management with Lerna.js

MoodleNet project takes leverages lerna.js to manage multi-package mono-repository .

Please refer to Lerna documentation to understand how it manages mono-repo and project-packages dependency linking in the development environment.

Questions? Please take a look in the MoodleNet Community and Tracker for answers or to ask for help.

Documentation