Moodle Mobile 2 (Ionic 1) Customization
Note: This page is a work-in-progress. Feedback and suggested improvements are welcome. Please join the discussion on moodle.org or use the page comments.
Overview
Moodle Mobile can be customized in different ways:
- Changing the app appearance for your site.
- Creating a set of remote add-ons in order to add additional functionalities to the app.
- Creating a custom application (with your custom name and icon) based on the Moodle Mobile code.
With the first two options you are not required to compile or build your custom application, with the third one you are required to compile and publish your custom app in the stores.
Changing the app appearance for your site
The Mobile app can retrieve your custom styles from your Moodle site. Since is an HTML5 app, you can apply safely CSS3 styles.
In your Moodle installation go to Plugins / Web services / Mobile and enter in the mobilecssurl field a valid URL pointing to a CSS file containing your custom styles (theme).
The CSS should be placed inside your Moodle installation (in your custom theme or inside a local plugin)
Once the user is logged in the app, there is a periodical process that retrieves your remote CSS files for applying your custom styles into the app.
Notice that on the first time a user opens the app, he will see the default "orange" style. Your custom styles will be applied once the user has added a site in the app.
Notice also that styles comes from a site, there is no way for changing the initial Add site / Manage account pages styles.
See Moodle Mobile Themes for additional information.
Remote add-ons
Remote add-ons are available since Moodle 3.1 and Moodle Mobile 3.1.
A Moodle Mobile remote add-on is the mobile app version of a Moodle plugin that will be loaded when a user accesses the site on the app.
Moodle Mobile remote add-ons are stored within a Moodle plugin and are downloaded and lazy-loaded by the Mobile app in every site that uses them.
Remote add-ons are the best choice if you just want to support a Moodle plugin in the Mobile app without having to create and maintain a custom version.
See Moodle Mobile Remote add-ons for complete information.
Creating a custom application
Building
There are two options for building the app, aka compile it to different devices:
Phonegap Build
Phonegap Build is an online service that lets you build the app automatically for different platforms. The main advantage is that it simplifies a lot the process of building.
You just put your www/ folder in a github account and Phonegaps automatically builds the app for different platforms pulling your github code.
Notice that the free version is for open repositories, but you can use the non-free version for private repositories.
In order to build your app using Phonegap Build you need to place a special config.xml file into the www/ folder, see the config.xml file for Moodle Mobile 2 (Please, note that this file is different from the one created by Ionic in the app root folder). Please follow the tutorial mentioned in Moodle Mobile custom apps to view all the steps required for building the app using Phonegap Build service.
Ionic CLI
You can also build the app using the Ionic CLI tools, see: http://ionicframework.com/docs/cli/run.html
