Deds - Many thanks for sharing this plugin with the Moodle community. I like plugins that help to promote the use of badges. Before I get started reviewing this plugin I was wondering if you might say a little about your relationship with Credly and MMMoodle.com. It can help to know a little of the background behind a project and to be transparent about your role moving forward with the plugin. From what I can gather, I am guessing that you work on code development for MMMoodle.com, is that a good guess? Peace - Anthony

Deds - Just a cursory look at things after installing. It looks like this plugin requires a third-party subscription based service (Credly). Since I am unable to test the functionality of the plugin, might we be able to setup a quick demo so that I can see the plugin in action?

I noticed that the recommended boilerplate was not used in the version.php file. The full boilerplate is recommended at the beginning of each file.

One concern I have is storing the Credly password as plain text in the database. Moodle generally tries to avoid doing this for obvious security reasons.

For now, I am going to mark this plugin as needing more work until we get these issues resolved. Thanks for your patience with the review and approval process.

It is encouraged to follow Moodles coding style as outlined in: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Coding_style and http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Coding

The code checker plugin can be quite helpful in fine tuning your code and can be found at: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=local_codechecker

You may wish to consider using that tool to further improve your plugin. Below are the initial results:

Files found: 13

blocks/credly/block_credly.php - 22 error(s) and 5 warning(s)
blocks/credly/db/access.php - 1 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/edit_form.php - 1 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/editbadge.php - 11 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/grantbadge.php - 42 error(s) and 2 warning(s)
blocks/credly/lang/en/block_credly.php - 1 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/lib.php - 169 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/locallib.php - 11 error(s) and 7 warning(s)
blocks/credly/managebadges.php - 10 error(s) and 0 warning(s)
blocks/credly/settings.php - 2 error(s) and 2 warning(s)
blocks/credly/styles.css
blocks/credly/version.php - 1 error(s) and 2 warning(s)
blocks/credly/viewbadge.php - 35 error(s) and 3 warning(s)

Total: 306 error(s) and 21 warning(s)

In the latest upload, you forgot to mark for which version of Moodle the plugin was intended. i went ahead and added Moodle 2.8 to the list since that is about to be released.

With the developer.credly.com site I was able to create an app and test the plugin further by creating a badge from within Moodle and I was able to see it Credly a few moments later. I was also able to see the badges I had been awarded and the other that I had created on the Credly site. So basic functionality seems to work.

You may want to do some further testing with Developer Mode set to show all notices and errors. When testing plugins, I try to get the most feedback possible by setting Moodle debugging to Developer Mode. Here are some things I found while testing:

Did you remember to call setType() for 'title'? Defaulting to PARAM_RAW cleaning.

line 1310 of /lib/formslib.php: call to debugging()
line 282 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->detectMissingSetType()
line 202 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->_process_submission()
line 23 of /blocks/credly/locallib.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 57 of /blocks/credly/editbadge.php: call to block_credly_badge_edit_form->__construct()

Did you remember to call setType() for 'short_description'? Defaulting to PARAM_RAW cleaning.

line 1310 of /lib/formslib.php: call to debugging()
line 282 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->detectMissingSetType()
line 202 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->_process_submission()
line 23 of /blocks/credly/locallib.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 57 of /blocks/credly/editbadge.php: call to block_credly_badge_edit_form->__construct()

Did you remember to call setType() for 'description'? Defaulting to PARAM_RAW cleaning.

line 1310 of /lib/formslib.php: call to debugging()
line 282 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->detectMissingSetType()
line 202 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->_process_submission()
line 23 of /blocks/credly/locallib.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 57 of /blocks/credly/editbadge.php: call to block_credly_badge_edit_form->__construct()

Did you remember to call setType() for 'criteria'? Defaulting to PARAM_RAW cleaning.

line 1310 of /lib/formslib.php: call to debugging()
line 282 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->detectMissingSetType()
line 202 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->_process_submission()
line 23 of /blocks/credly/locallib.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 57 of /blocks/credly/editbadge.php: call to block_credly_badge_edit_form->__construct()

Did you remember to call setType() for 'expires_in'? Defaulting to PARAM_RAW cleaning.

line 1310 of /lib/formslib.php: call to debugging()
line 282 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->detectMissingSetType()
line 202 of /lib/formslib.php: call to moodleform->_process_submission()
line 23 of /blocks/credly/locallib.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 57 of /blocks/credly/editbadge.php: call to block_credly_badge_edit_form->__construct()

Notice: Undefined variable: course in /var/www/m27/blocks/credly/viewbadge.php on line 61

I was seeing a similar notice for line 84 in managebadges so we will want to be able to handle the case when there are no badges.

When adding a new badge - I see Notice: Undefined variable: rec in /var/www/m27/blocks/credly/lib.php on line 93

Peace - Anthony

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. I'll get to them as soon as I have time.

Hi Anthony,

I'm done with the changes.

Deds - Thanks for your great work to tidy things up. I installed the updated version and everything seems to be working nice and smoothly. I did not notice the short line height that I mentioned in an earlier email today when creating a badge with the revised code. I am going to go ahead and approve this plugin. Peace - Anthony

Thanks for the transparency, its refreshing to see.

Wasn't able to install on Moodle 3.5.3. A variety of errors were shown in after the "upgrade database" step was initiated. Would be great to have an updated version of the block!

Is this plugin working for Moodle 3.5.3 yet? This plugin would be incredibly helpful for a project that I am working on. Please let me know.

Thank you!!

The Open Credit API has reached its end of life, so this plugin will no longer work. Contact Credly support for access to the latest official Moodle plugin.

How to get api key and secrete for credly

It looks like development for this plugin has stopped since Moodle release 3.2. Is there any plans for this to be updated for more recent versions of Moodle?