I have set-up my custom certificate template to print the date issued.
However, the date doesn't appear on the certificate when the certificate is viewed by the student or administrator. It does appear when previewing the certificate on the Reposition elements screen of the Edit certificate template option.
I'm running Moodle version 3.3.2 (Build: 20170911) with Custom Certificate version 3.3 release (Build: 2017050508).
Any idea what I might need to do to remedy this?
Thanks for the report and the images, helps me try and debug the issue.
Unfortunately I tried to replicating this with the exact version of the plugin you are using on Moodle 3.3 and could not.
On the page where you download the certificate does it display the date above the 'Download certificate' button (see screenshot) accurately?
Note: The reposition elements page just uses dummy data for some elements (grade, date etc) to display the element so that it can be repositioned - as the user doing the repositioning may not have a grade, or date that can be displayed.
Yes, the date does appear above the download button and it is accurate.
Do you have access to your database? If so, can you tell me what the values are in the mdl_customcert_elements table for that particular date element? Specifically the 'data' column.
Data column shows:
{"dateitem":"-2","dateformat":"1"}
Ok, so '-2' refers to the completion date, not the date it was issued. Can you re-edit the element and save and see if this value changes to -1?
Yes, it changes according to the option I choose, i.e., Date Issued = -1, Completion Date = -2
Ok, I am confused.
You said in your first post "I have set-up my custom certificate template to print the date issued" but when you posted the database details above it was set to -2 which is the completion date. Did changing it to -1 not solve the issue?
Sorry for the confusion. I think I may have misunderstood your question ... " re-edit the element and save and see if this value changes to -1". I thought you meant to change the template date settings to see if they change the value in the database. After changing the settings multiple times, I see the value in the database has changed accordingly each time but the issue still remains...date not being printed on the certificate...as far as I can tell.
The 'dateitem' value was '-2' when you first reported the issue (which was the completion date and not the date the certificate was issued), so if you were to change this to '-1' (the date it was issued which is what you want) then it should be displaying the date correctly.
My question - even with the change does the date still not display?
No, even with the changes the date still does not display.
Hm, if a file got corrupted then I would suspect you would receive a bogus fatal error, it wouldn't silently fail, but you could check your apache error logs to see if something is going on.
I think the problem is happening in the function render() in mod/customcert/elements/date/classes/element.php. It would be interesting to see what the values of $dateitem, $preview and $issue are to see if it is hitting the "if ($dateitem == CUSTOMCERT_DATE_ISSUES) {" condition there. It would tell me right away what was happening as it would explain what path it is taking to choose what date to display.
Another thing you could check would be to that in the customcert_issues table there is a value for the timecreated column for that user and certificate.
In response to your initial question - you could just replace the files, as it won't affect the database, but make sure you, or someone else, hasn't done any custom changes that may be overwritten.
I don't know how to report to you the values of $dateitem, $preview and $issue. Would that be a matter of sending you the code from the file or a database entry or something else?
I checked customcert_issues table and there are accurate values for timecreated except they are 2 hours off...probably to do with the server timezone vs Moodle's timezone?
Sending the code won't help (it's already open source and available ;)).
It would be good to see the values of those variables at run-time, ie
when the user clicks to download the certificate what are these values
equal to. This can be easily done with some PHP knowledge (using
print_object()). Do you have anyone in your business who can do this?
Re: Personal help, sorry I am very busy working on issues for the Moodle 3.4 release.
