Projects for new developers

Getting started

Moodle uses PHP, JavaScript, SQL and a number of other Web languages, so learning those is a good place to start.

When you have some basic PHP programming skills, you may wish to start learning about how the Moodle code is organised. It is recommended that you complete the Introduction to Moodle Programming course on dev.moodle.org. To access this you will need to have an account on moodle.org first.

If you are looking for projects suggested in the tracker, look for issues with the 'addon_candidate' label.

If you are looking to make a quick contribution, look for tracker issues with marked as easy.

Please consider adopting a plugin seeking a new maintainer. See the Plugins adoption programme.

As you become more involved in Moodle development, you might like to learn more about the coding conventions used and how changes to Moodle core code are processed.

Potential projects

This evolving page lists possible Moodle projects for new developers derived from community suggestions.

If you have any ideas for new features in Moodle which might be suitable as projects for new developers, please see New feature ideas.

Plagiarism plugin (Moorsp)

There are various commercial plugins available that use the Plagiarism API in Moodle, but because these plagiarism systems can require paid subscriptions, testing them can be difficult. I'd like to see a basic plugin developed (called Moorsp) that could be used for testing the Plagiarism API and provides a structure that can be built on in future to add further functionality.

The initial aim of this project is not to develop a new Plagiarism checking tool but to develop a tool that provides complete Behat and unit tests for the Moodle Plagiarism API.

All files uploaded to Moodle are stored on disk using the contenthash of the file as the filename - this means that if a user uploads the exact file multiple times in different locations only one file is stored on disk. The plugin should implement a check to see if the exact file has been submitted to any other courses/activities and display related information if another match has been found.

Existing Plagiarism plugins (turnitin, urkund, compilatio etc) make use of the legacy log feature of the events api - the new plugin should use the new api and not rely on legacy logs.

Deliverables:

• All Plagiarism API functions should be implemented.
• Support for Assign, forum and Workshop modules should be implemented.
• Full Unit test coverage of all plugin functions.
• Full Behat tests for Assign, forum and workshop modules should be implemented to ensure that all Plagiarism API functions are working as expected.
• The code should pass 100% of the Moodle codechecking tools to ensure the code meets with Moodle Guidelines.
• The code should perform well with appropriate use of the Moodle caching tools.

Future Improvements (outside scope of initial project)

• Add Plagiarism API to the Moodle Glossary plugin.
• Implement functions that allow the plugin to post content to an external source - a future open source moorsp server that will receive content and generate a similarity report - we may be able to re-purpose some of the code from the old plagiarism_crot plugin to do this.

This project was proposed in previous GSOC years and some useful information is available in the older discussion here

Skills required: PHP

Difficulty level: Medium

Possible mentor: Dan Marsden

Message from the mentor: Tips for applying to the moorsp project

Initial code structure: [1]

Allow to crop/resize/rotate images when inserting them

This project is inspired by MDL-32183. There are two options on how to implement this functionality - as a repository plugin or as an atto plugin.

Skills required: Javascript (YUI), PHP

Difficulty level: Medium

Possible mentor:

See also

• GSOC - describing Moodle's involvement with Google in their Summer of Code program
• Popular new feature and improvement requests in Tracker that can be implemented as plugins
• Archive of outdated and/or inactive calls for projects