Unable to import questions from an external file

Unable to import questions from an external file

by David Jackson -
Number of replies: 4

Hi folks,
The school I work for is looking at replacing their current static Intranet with  Moodle. Most features run like clockwork and people are suitably impressed. However, we are unable to import quiz questions from an external file of any type/format. After pressing the "Upload this file" button a 404 error is returned.

Have recently upgraded Moodle from v1.5.2 to v1.5.3 and tried various versions of the Quiz module, but it makes no difference. I am assuming the problem then lies with our server configuration. We initially had problems with viewing uploaded files but that was fixed by the slashargs variable in Moodle > Admin > Variables.

Please, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions no matter how small or obvious your input will be gratefully recieved. We have tried everything!

  • No other problems uploading / viewing uploaded files.
  • No problems exporting questions.
  • No other problems with the quiz.
  • Unable to reproduce the problem on testing server.
  • Nothing appears in PHP error log.

Server setup:

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In reply to David Jackson

Re: Unable to import questions from an external file

by Res Hotz-Pohlmann -

I observed that moodle can't import other xml files than xml files with 'encoding=utf-8'.

Other discussions with similar problems:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36210

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36076

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Res Hotz-Pohlmann

Re: Unable to import questions from an external file

by David Jackson -
Thanks Res. I have tried your suggestion (and several other flavours of encoding) but it didn't work. No matter what we throw at it, no PHP errors are returned, we just get a 404.


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In reply to David Jackson

Re: Unable to import questions from an external file

by N Hansen -
I had this same problem and filed bug 4368 about it. You should vote for it there and add any additional information that might help to troubleshoot it.
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Unable to import questions from an external file

by David Jackson -
Thanks N, but I'm not sure if it's the same issue. We have never recieved anything as useful as a fatal error, just a page not found. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with our server setup, as the problem re-occurs regardless of which versions of the quiz and moodle we use. Currently using the latest stable build.
I am new to moodle and fairly new to configuring PHP so it's likely I have overlooked something obvious. Its proving very hard to track down the cause since everything else in moodle works perfectly (so far smile).
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