Moodle plugins directory: Sandbox

Hi Alex, do you have plans to update this tool for Moodle 2.9 soon?

Hi Bernhard,

up to now, we didn't have the time to check our plugins on 2.9 thoroughly. I assume our testing period will start in June.

Did you test Sandbox on 2.9 and did encounter any problems? If yes, I might be able to have a look at it earlier and provide some quick fix.

Thanks,
Alex

Hi Sebastien,

> If so, is there a way to have moodle's course backup automatically be stored there?

Give Moosh a try. It's a command line tool and one of its functions, course-backup, allows you to specify the location where you want the backup file to be saved as well as the file name.

For more information, see http://moosh-online.com/commands/#course-backup

Best regards,

Michael

Thanks for this plugin! Is there a way to force the course ID to be the same as my 'original' sandbox course (happy to change code) - two reasons:
1. my sandbox is hardcoded into menus, so when the course id changes, the link breaks
2. the sandbox will reset every day, so my course ID number is going to increment very rapidly.

Obviously, the second is not a huge issue, but the first is quite important.

The course ID seems to in classes/task/restore_courses.php - I tried...

$newcourseid = $oldcourseid;

and

$newcourseid = '19';

at the start of the // Create new course section, but neither option works.

Any advice?

Jon,

I can't do anything about 2., that's just how the plugin works at the moment.

But for 1., you can change your hardcoded link form https://yourmoodle.com/course/view.php?id=1234 to https://yourmoodle.com/course/view.php?name=courseshortname. As the course's shortname will be kept for the resetted course, this link will continue to work. And you don't have to hack the plugin ;)

Alex

Oh yeh, why didn't I think of that! Doh!
Thanks

Hello,
Testing the plugin with:
moodle 3.03.
v3.0-r2 (2016021000)
/var/www/clients/client1/web1/private/moodledata/sandbox - (permission: -R 777)
getting email sandbox notification :
1 NOTICE: Sandbox has restored 0 courses
1 WARNING: There is no existing course with shortname "demo_lms", skipping
file...
backupfile name - backup-moodle2-course-6-demo_lms-20160328-1326.mbz
sandbox backup file "demo_lms.mbz"
what i'm doing wrong?
Thank you

James,

based on your posted message, local_sandbox is looking for a course which has a shortname called "demo_lms" which it can reset to the state saved in demo_lms.mbz. If such a course does not exist, you can either change the shortname of the course you want to reset to "demo_lms" or you can rename demo_lms.mbz to the shortname of the course you want to reset.

Alex

Is this the plugin that is in effect on demo.moodle.net to reset the course every hour?

Thanks!

Hi Matt,

no, it isn't.

Hello. I've just installed this plugin on my Moodle 3.1 and have noticed that new courses are being created instead of existing courses being reset. Instead of resetting the existing courses, the plugin seems to be deleting the existing course and creating a new one. I know this because the restored course has a new course ID. Not sure if I have set this up correctly. Any advice will be much appreciated.

Hi Abdul,

you're right, that's just how the plugin works at the moment. This topic has been discussed before in this comment seciton here, please have a look at the other comments - especially from Jon Bolton - if you like.

Thanks,
Alex

Thanks for the suggestion Alex!

Hi Alexander,

This is a nice plugin, I was wondering if it is possible to choose which courses are restored at what time. For example, only restore some courses weekly and some on a monthly basis if it is possible.

Thank you.
Sanjeet

Hi Sanjeet,

thanks for your proposal.

Your proposal is feasible, I would imagine to let the admin add a schedule for every course backup file like he can configure scheduled tasks in Moodle core. However, we don't have any need for this feature at Ulm University and thus don't have resources to implement it.

If you are a developer or have an experienced developer near you, I would be happy to discuss possible implementations with you on https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_sandbox/issues and get a pull request from you on https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_sandbox/pulls.

Thanks for understanding,
Alex