Quiz

This seems an excellent idea. I have been working on exactly the same thing. I started with Tims 1.9 template and then did a combination of lifting out bits of my gapfill question and doing a count of occurances of the methods in existing question types.

It seems very likely that most new question types are going to have additional fields so my approach was to start with 

class qtype_QTYPENAME extends question_type {

public function extra_question_fields() {
 return array('question_QTYPENAME', 'additionalfield');
 }

And to include import/export for at least xml with code as follows...

public function export_to_xml($question, qformat_xml $format, $extra = null) {
 $output = parent::export_to_xml($question, $format);
 $output .= ' <extraquestionfieldname>' . $question->options->extraquestionfieldname .
 "</extraquestionfieldname>\n";
 
 $output .= $format->write_combined_feedback($question->options, $question->id, $question->contextid);
 return $output;
 }
  public function import_from_xml($data, $question, qformat_xml $format, $extra = null) { if (!isset($data['@']['type']) || $data['@']['type'] != 'QTYPENAME') { return false; } $question = parent::import_from_xml($data, $question, $format, null); $format->import_combined_feedback($question, $data, true); $format->import_hints($question, $data, true, false, $format->get_format($question->questiontextformat)); return $question; }

I have just looked at your repository Jamie, nice work. When I was first working with the question code I was confused as to what was the main purpose of the question and questiontype files were and when I came up with a brief description that I thought would be good to include as comments. They were

Questiontype.php

This file contains the static form of the question that reads and writes from 
the database. This is where you account for any new options fields and 
customise the import and export code.

Question.php

This is the code for when the question is live, i.e. being answered by a 
student or being graded. It is the backend code that supplies functionality
for the renderer code.

Anyway, let me know if my understanding of the general purpose of these files is incorrect.

Hello Jamie,

Thanks a lot for contributing to this template and documentation.

There is something to add for absent minded developers like me (if I can be called a developer ?) : the fact that now questions definitions are cached. This can lead to surprising effects if you modify them without purging the cache.

Guess how I know it ... Please don't laugh

There is something else to add to documentation for author upgrading a pre-question engine 2 question type : how to write the code in db/upgradelib.php to upgrade legacy attempts.

If I find some time I will try to write something. The master key is to use Tim's advice to adopt a test driven approach extracting data from old attempts using the queupgradehelper tool then writing phpunit tests at the same time you build the upgrade code.

Unless your question is quite similar to an existing one (in that case you can just adapt the existing code) I don't think another method can be easily used.