Moodle in English: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Juan Leyva - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 4:31 PM

Hi,

we are working in a new feature for Moodle 3.1: "Supporting Moodle plugins in the mobile app", basically this means that we want to allow Moodle plugins developers to make their plugins compatible with the Mobile app.

With this new feature, plugins like the progress bar, certificate, questionnaire and any question type or quiz access rules would be able to be displayed in the Mobile app as a new option in the menu or in another place (depending of the type of plugin).

We've been working in a spec and a proof of concept, here you have the relevant links:

The first presentation we did about this new feature in the last developer meeting (where some terms are explained)
The first draft and feedback from other Moodle developers (please, read only the comments because the document was moved to the dev wiki - see following link-)
The initial spec in the dev wiki
The relevant Moodle issues: MDL-49279 and MOBILE-925

We'd like to hear your feedback in this discussion.

Regards, Juan

Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Dave Perry - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 5:50 PM

Firstly, all efforts to make this possible are to be applauded!

Development wise (core isn't my strongest point on this front), having something in each plugin that defines its mobile capabilities / requirements seems reasonable.

How about local_mobile being tasked with plugin mobile support indexing? Or, if local_mobile became a core plugin (not sure if there's something on the roadmap for that, but would help?) could CORE check for mobile support in plugins and update the list when a plugin is installed? Maybe with a button on the plugin settings page to update the index (e.g. if developers are working on their plugin) - as most of the time end users will just install or update a plugin and that index/cache shouldn't need updating once the plugin installation is complete (IMHO).

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Hittesh Ahuja - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 9:02 PM

Interesting idea ! Would that mean that the developers would have to write additional code for the angular JS counterpart using modules ?

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Juan Leyva - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 10:43 PM

Hi Hittesh,

yes, that means that developers will have to write an AngularJs module for the app, in some cases it would be just implementing a basic interface but in another cases (complex modules) it will require more work. Web Services in the plugins will be necessary too in most of the cases.

One example of a module that would be easy to implement is the certificate, the developer would have to:

- Create a web service for exporting your current certification status (if you have a certificate and if so the certificate download url)

- Create an angularJS that will display a message in case you don't have the certificate or will allow you to download your certificate.

We'll provide support, create tutorials and sample code to help plugins developers.

Juan

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Hittesh Ahuja - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 11:45 PM

Hi Juan,

Yup, thats what I thought. I was trying to emulate one of the mobile app modules and make one for myself. I didnt get very far but I could display the module in the mmSideMenu and get data from the web-service to the app. happy to share the code if thats needed and learn more from you and other guys . Also happy to be part of any new ( preferably small) projects to extend the Moodle mobile app.

Hittesh

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Juan Leyva - Thursday, March 31, 2016, 10:39 PM

Hi Dave,

thanks for your comments, in my initial implementation I noticed that maybe we wouldn't use a cache, the sha1_file function is fast and the plugins zip will be small in size.

In any case, I'll take into consideration your comments.

Juan

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Mike Churchward - Saturday, April 2, 2016, 1:04 AM

Thanks Juan -

This is definitely something we need. I'm not deep enough into the way the Mobile app works to offer up any real value to your proposal, but on the surface it looks like the right approach. I think what would help would be an example plugin with everything needed.

mike

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Samuel Than - Friday, June 24, 2016, 2:18 PM

Thanks for the Moodle Mobile 3.1 upgrade introduction.

So with new introduction we can convert out existing custom moodle plugin to work on Moodle Mobile app ?

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Re: Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app

by Juan Leyva - Friday, June 24, 2016, 3:57 PM

Yes, you can.

The 3.1 version for the certificate plugin is Mobile compatible now (you can take a look to the latest commits in the branch) to see how we added support.

Juan

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Moodle for mobile

Plans for supporting moodle additional (contributed) plugins in the Mobile app