View all courses

See Courses and Categories Lists Overview in 2.4 for the current screens

General proposal

Renderer has a base function, i.e. courses_and_subcategories_list() that accepts a number of options. Each interface - frontpage, /course/index.php, /course/category.php, etc. has it's own function than basically creates an array of options to be passed to the base function.

Some options are taken from $CFG. It should be very easy for the themes to overwrite just those functions if they want more flexibility. Actually themes may have their own settings that control courses listings.

There is also a script called from AJAX to load extended course contents, category, or another page of list of courses/categories. Options will be passed to AJAX script as arguments so it does not need to be changed by theme.

Suggested options

• displaycourses: [none, countonly, collapsed, expanded] how (if) display courses list
• parentcategoryid: if specified, display subcategories and courses in this category (0 means top level)
• expandsubcategoriesdepth: depth to expand subcategories in the tree (deeper subcategories will be loaded by AJAX or proceed to category page by clicking on category name)
• omitcategories: for small sites, do not display categories names just list all courses in all subcategories
• sortcourses: how to sort courses
• sortcategories: how to sort subcategories
• categorieslimit: limit the number of subcategories inside one category. If there are more categories, a link "More categories..." is displayed, which leads to the subcategory page, or displays the next page or loads more entries via AJAX
• courseslimit: limit the number of courses inside one category. If there are more courses, a link "More courses..." is displayed which leads to the subcategory page, or displays the next page or loads more entries via AJAX
• categorieslimit1, categorieslimit2, etc.: limits the number of subcategories on the 1st nested level (if not specified, defaults to categorieslimit, categorieslimit1, etc.)
• courseslimit1, courseslimit2, etc.: as above
• ajaxdisabled: completely disable AJAX loading even if browser supports it
• enrolledcoursesonly: show only courses where this user is enrolled

Sample implementation

class core_course_renderer {

/** basic function that displays tree of subcategories and list of courses */
public function courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions) {
  // ...
}

/** invoked from /index.php */
public function frontpage_course_list($displaytype) {
  global $CFG;
  if ($displaytype === 'categories' || $displaytype === 'combo') {
    $displayoptions = array(
      'parentcategoryid' => 0,
      'expandsubcategoriesdepth' => $CFG->maxcategorydepth,
      'displaycourses' => ($displaytype === 'categories') ? 'none' : 'collapsed',
      'courseslimit' => ($displaytype === 'categories') ? 0 : $CFG->coursesperpage,
    );
    return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
  }
  return '';
}

/** invoked from /course/index.php */
public function courses_list_all() {
  global $CFG;
  $displayoptions = array(
    'parentcategoryid' => 0,
    'displaycourses' => 'collapsed',
    'categorieslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'courseslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
  );
  return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
}

/** invoked from /course/category.php */
public function course_category($category) {
  global $CFG;
  $displayoptions = array(
    'parentcategoryid' => is_object($category) ? $category->id : $category,
    'displaycourses' => 'expanded',
    'categorieslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'courseslimit' => $CFG->coursesperpage,
    'sortcourses' => 'fullname',
    'sortcategories' => 'fullname',
  );
  return $this->courses_and_subcategories_list($displayoptions);
}

}