Moodle App Customisation
Overview
Moodle Mobile can be customized in different ways:
- Changing the app appearance for your site.
- Adding support in your plugin for the mobile app.
- Configuring how the app should work via Moodle site settings.
- Creating a custom application (with your custom name and icon) based on the Moodle Mobile code.
With the first three options you are not required to compile or build your custom application, with the last 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.
Mobile support for plugins
You can create Moodle plugins to change how the app works, see Mobile support for plugins for complete information.
Creating a custom application
See Moodle Mobile custom apps or The Branded Moodle Mobile App service by Moodle HQ
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
Configuring how the app should work via Moodle site settings
The app can be configured via Moodle site settingss. You can disable features, rename strings, add new elements to the main menu or change how log out works in the app. This requires Moodle 3.3 or the [Moodle Mobile additional features plugin].
Please refer to the Configuring the app from your site section in this page: https://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_Mobile_guide_for_admins
Testing and developing
Chromium or Google Chrome browser
See Moodle Mobile development using Chrome or Chromium
Moodle Desktop
Refer to Moodle Desktop
