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 go through the Tutorial.
• 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.
• 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. Once you become confident enough, please consider adopting a plugin seeking a new maintainer.

Potential projects

This evolving page lists possible Moodle projects for new developers derived from community suggestions and lists projects together with experienced core developers willing to mentor new developers.

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

Improve SCORM plugin

There are a number of areas of SCORM that could be improved as part of a GSOC project, some of these are bigger projects and others could be combined to form a single project.

These are just some examples, take a look at the open SCORM issues in the Moodle tracker for a list of other issues.

• Improve Grading (MDL-51086, MDL-52871, MDL-37421)
• Improve validation of SCORM packages (MDL-38060, MDL-24057)
• Convert YUI Treeview to use Jquery (Moodle is moving away from YUI and the existing Treeview has a few issues)
• Choose where to send users after completing SCORM (MDL-61677)

Requirement for prospective students:

• We require prospective students to make an attempt at fixing at least 1 issue in the Moodle tracker before their proposal can be considered. This MUST be completed before your application can be considered valid.

Skills required: PHP

Difficulty level: Medium

Possible mentor: Dan Marsden

Acceptance tests for the Moodle app

Since Moodle 3.7 it will be possible to write and run acceptance tests for the Moodle app.

Tasks:

• Write new acceptance tests for the Moodle app

Requirement for prospective students:

• We require prospective students to set-up and run in a local environment the existing tests following this documentation: Acceptance testing for the mobile app, students must record a video of the tests running on a local machine.
• We also require students to create an additional simple test (detailed instructions for writing tests are available in the previous link)

Skills required: Behat (PHP)

Difficulty level: Medium

Possible mentor: Juan Leyva

Front-end editor for the plugin skeleton generator

This is a follow-up project for a successful GSOC 2016 project that resulted in a new tool allowing developers to quickly generate a skeleton (scaffolding, template) for a new Moodle plugin. The tool proved to be a helpful helper with significant impact on the quality of Moodle plugins code. This follow-up project aims at further improvements of the skeleton generator. The primary goal is to implement a developer-friendly user interface / front-end editor allowing to configure the plugin's properties (recipe file) easily. The UI should guide the developer through the process of designing and defining the plugin properties and facilitate the whole process.

• We require prospective students to make an attempt at fixing at least 1 issue in the Moodle tracker before their proposal can be considered. This MUST be completed before your application can be considered valid.

Skills required: PHP + JS

Difficulty level: Medium

Possible mentor: David Mudrák

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