General developer forum

Re: how to add "common module settings" for a module

Mike Churchward — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:27:11 GMT

by Mike Churchward.

Unfortunately the version that works with Elluminate's hosted solution servers (SAS) has not been upgraded to the latest Elluminate module code. You need to bug them about it.

The version that runs with your own Elluminate (ELM) does fully support groups, but you cannot use it with an Elluminate hosted account.

mike

Re: SQL query (or API function) for counting course students?

Mike Churchward — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:16:38 GMT

by Mike Churchward.

Hi Alexander -

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to determine this. The concept of "student" in Moodle has changed since 1.7. Student is now an arbitrary role that has a number of defined capabilities (privileges).

To do what you want, you would really want to find all users with a defined capability at a specific course context. get_users_by_capability in accesslib does this (accesslib is in /lib/accesslib.php). It does not return a count though - just all users.

If you know for sure that what you really want is users assigned a specific role (say student) in a specific course context, you can use count_role_users or get_users_from_role_on_context in accesslib.

In either case, the code there will also show you how to construct SQL if you wanted to write your own.

mike

Re: Developing a new tool

Pol Monsó — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:14:24 GMT

by Pol Monsó.

Great!

I'll try it and come back to you when I got it working Thanks David

Re: Custom module

Luke Bridges — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:52:58 GMT

by Luke Bridges.

WOW! Didn't know that was there. I really must learn to use the search box .....

Thanks Daniele

Re: Custom module

Daniele Cordella — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:20:19 GMT

by Daniele Cordella.

Have a look here too.
Ciao.

Re: how to add "common module settings" for a module

Tim Hunt — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:55:05 GMT

by Tim Hunt.

Just adding those settings to the form won't magically make groups work with Elluminate sessions.

I think a new version of the Elluminate-Moodle link is due out soon-ish. It is probably easiest just to wait for that.

Re: Custom module

Luke Bridges — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:51:19 GMT

by Luke Bridges.

Doh !!!, Thanks Paul

Re: Developing a new tool

David Smith — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:35:49 GMT

by David Smith.

There is nothing to stop a block from linking to another page that would show further options - maybe a search box to get started, which then shows the results and further options on a separate page.

Re: Developing a new tool

Pol Monsó — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:58:07 GMT

by Pol Monsó.

Thanks David!

That may be it, but is it possible to gain focus as a single page when the teacher is aiming for a more complex search? The typical use case is a teacher wanting to create a pdf with problems 1,5,9,17 and 55 (to say some) and then, another one with the problems and solutions, or with the summary of the first topic and the notes he or she has made.

So it's more like building the target pdf, a kind of intense and not made every week like when searching something around. If we could gain focus, the block would do the trick as soon as the teacher has understood the query syntax.

Moreover, in the future (I haven't implemented yet), would be nice to have snippets of the text pieces to show off what has been included or not, prior to creating the PDF.

Sorry for the absolute beginner talk :/ I'm trying to figure out what may suit better to what we're doing to start with the right foot. I can explain more explicitly if you'd like.

Re: how to add "common module settings" for a module

Murad Jamal — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:51:25 GMT

by Murad Jamal.

Hi Patrick,

thank you for you prompt response, but this module (Elluminate Live Meeting) does not come with mod_form.php file, instead it has mod.html file to build up the settings form and i attached this file with this post for you to check.

when I looked at mod.html code, it's hard to add a new stdClass object (the one you wrote above) to the regular HTML form.

the settings form of this module is as in the following image :

as you notice, there is no common module settings section ...

is there any way to add this section to this form ?

any help would be highly appreciated ...

Re: how to add "common module settings" for a module

Patrick Pollet — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:44:30 GMT

by Patrick Pollet.

You have to add (at least in Moodle 1.9) the following lines at the end of the function definition() in the class xxx_mod_form defined in script mod_form.php, juste before the comment about standard buttons

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// add standard elements, common to all modules
$features = new stdClass;
$features->groups = true;
$features->groupings = true;
$features->groupmembersonly = true;
$this->standard_coursemodule_elements($features);
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

// add standard buttons, common to all modules

Cheers.

how to add "common module settings" for a module

Murad Jamal — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:33:44 GMT

by Murad Jamal.

I have downloaded a module named "Elluminate Live Meeting" module and I have an account on their server, but when I add a new Elluminate activity, it misses the "commom module settings" section in the settings page, there is no problem with it, this module comes like that (i.e. without the common module settings), I mean with these settings the ones like in this image :

so, is their any coding guide to add such section to the settings page ?

Re: IE8 issue: MS Office files download link

Nadav Kavalerchik — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:44:12 GMT

by Nadav Kavalerchik.

I saw this sad issue on one of the computers at a collage i work with.
No solution yet.

Tried to play with the http headers that were sent by the server
and it did not helped.

I guess it is a mis-recognition of the mime type by the browser.

If you could only send some bug report to MS

Re: Developing a new tool

David Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:02:41 GMT

by David Smith.

Sounds like you should be developing a block, which would sit down the side of the moodle course.

The teacher would then have a search box that they could type into.

Look here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Blocks
for more info

user_info_data show data in users list

Pedro Chavolla — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:51:51 GMT

by Pedro Chavolla.

Could you please let me know how to let the users list when taking attendance display an extra field.

I need to know to which (data) each student belongs (user_info_data) and see then in the users list. Please help

Re: Developing a new tool

Pol Monsó — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:48:55 GMT

by Pol Monsó.

Nope we're not trying to upload PDFs unto moodle. What we are providing is a module which given a specifically design TeX file is capable to generate a new PDF given a search criteria. Therefore, we would like to integrate this search form into moodle and call the php scripts we've made which create the PDF etc.

So, basically, I've developed a php application that upon a characteristics request generate a new PDF and provide its download. My question, basically, is how should we integrate this tool into Moodle, so the teachers can go to its page, submit the request, and obtain the PDF.

We've already done it by placing the code within a container in moodle, now we would like to follow the moodle structure and module organization to make it reusable.

I presume Activity module does not suit the tool module we would like, but I'm not sure about it.

Thanks!

Re: Developing a new tool

David Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:44:24 GMT

by David Smith.

If you are looking at ways of working with PDFs in Moodle, you could probably do worse than looking through my UploadPDF assignment plugin (source available here: http://cvs.moodle.org/contrib/plugins/mod/assignment/type/uploadpdf/ ).

That makes use of the TCPDF and FPDI libraries to parse PDFs and split/combine them.

As for whether or not you should create an activity for this, then that depends on exactly what you are trying to do - if you outline a specific use-case, then I'm sure someone could give further advice about that.

As for good example modules to look at, I've always found the built-in Forum module easy to read and use as reference (but I'm sure other's on this forum may have better suggestions). You should also try looking at these two pages that have lots of information to get you started:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:NEWMODULE_Documentation
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Modules

Davo

Developing a new tool

Pol Monsó — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:12:40 GMT

by Pol Monsó.

Hello!

I'll be working on a new PDF splitter and Documentation organizer and its integration with moodle. I'd like some advice upon the start of such tool within moodle. Would it be an Activity Module? Which module should I take as an example?

Thanks!

SQL query (or API function) for counting course students?

Alexander Noriega — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:30:43 GMT

by Alexander Noriega.

Hi folks, I'm coding a Drupal/Moodle integration module which requires the Drupal side of the system to be aware of the number of students that are enrolled in a given course at any point in time. The DB tables for the moodle installation are stored within the same DB for drupal, so I think it'd be faster if I do a SQL query, but at the same time, if the DB structure for Moodle changes in the future, everything will break, so I'd like to know if there's already a function available in the moodle API that abstracts this functionality.

Anyway, one of the things I need to do is generate a dynamic message (in Drupal) like:

/***********************************************************/

// In Drupal module
if (($students = get_number_of_students($course_id)) =< 10) {
echo "Be one of the first 10 students to enroll in this course";
}

function get_number_of_students($course_id) {
// communicate with moodle API through HTTP or do a direct SQL query
}

/***********************************************************/

Thank you,

--Alexander

Re: Custom module

Paul Holden — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:29:41 GMT

by Paul Holden.

Your install.xml file doesn't define any tables by that name