Moodle plugins directory: Drag-and-Drop Matching

Our school is a long time user of ddmatch and we find nothing in the new 3.0 question types 'matches' it for usefulness and ease of authoring. Unfortunately, it is so easy, that almost all of our teachers make questions and often cut and paste from Word. This results in backup/restore errors. Here is an error message we are getting when this happens: Data too long for column 'answertext' at row 1. INSERT INO mdl_ddmatch_subquestions. (plus a lot more error data). In short, when you cut and paste from Word, hundreds of formatting characters come along with the simple paste of a few words. ddmatch apparently cannot handle this and backup/restore errors result. I have not noticed this happening in other question types, so I imagine there is some database setting that could be adjusted to be more forgiving when teachers paste Word text into the text boxes of ddmatch. What do you think? Is it possible to fix this, or do we just have to warn teachers never to paste from Word?

I am having trouble importing Moodle XML of this type of question WHEN it contains an mp3 file. Does anyone know what might be causing this? We are also having problems restoring a course which contains many dd matching questions to other sites. Any information about this would also be appreciated. Or, if you have time to repair the plugin. Thanks, Dave

Hi,

I really like the drag and drop matching question type. We are using it in Moodle system in our higher education institution. Our institution use Moodle 3.1 and Moodle mobile 3.1.1. In the Moodle mobile 3.1, quizzes are integrated with the mobile app. https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_Mobile_3.1.0_release_notes. However, the question type is not integrated with Moodle mobile app. When clicking into a quiz with the question type, it appears a warning message, "This quiz cannot be attempted in teh app because it has access rules not supported by the app: quizaccess_ddmatch".

The developer of “gapfill" question type asked about this issue in the Moodle forum. The official Moodle mobile developer has replied the forum. Generally, some development need to be done in the question type plugin side. He also provides detailed guide in the reply: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=334322

I really hope you can integrated the drag and drop matching question type with Moodle mobile. It will also benefit a lot for other users.

A big thank to DualCube for keeping this plugin alive

Thanks David and Jean-Michel! We look forward to getting in touch and assist the users of this excellent plugin.

Thanks and Regards,
Arindam

I got the following error, when importing a course into Moodle v1.9.19
Import error:
...
Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub 339
Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub 338
Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub 340
Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub 339
Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub 338
...
Using $plugin->version = 2007081400;

Any idea what is the problem?

Hi Konrad,

This plugin supports from Moodle version 2.4
Please visit this link: https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=qtype_ddmatch

Thanks and Regards,
Arindam

I fixed the import problem of Question types: Drag-and-Drop Matching (qtype_ddmatch) for Moodle v1.9.
The error message of import problem was:
"Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub xxx"

The issue happened, when made a backup from Moodle v1.9.13 and imported into Moodle v1.9.19.

The fix is based on
Moodle Fix: match qtype: MDL-17326 backup and restore problems: "Could not recode question_ddmatch_sub" error, when importing.
https://github.com/moodle/moodle/commit/aa77a3d3def7dccdb6fb9fa166cad7021bd17454

Where can I submit the fix?
GIThub? or ZIP package to your email address?

Hello Conrad,
The version of this plugin for Moodle 1.9 was maintained by Adrian Boyd, but I think nobody is maintaining it since many years.
I began to maintain this plugin with Moodle 2.2 or 2.3, I don't remember exactly.
This problem is fixed in all the recent versions of this plugin (I fixed it when it was fixed in the match qtype).
To my best knowledge there is no github repository for the 1.9 version and I erased all files related to Moodle 1.9 long ago. Sorry.
I think that apart from creating your own github repository there is no way to submit your fix.

Ok, I understand.
If I create my own GIThub repository, will you link it as Moodle 1.9 version source?
Will you link the fixed ZIP as Moodle 1.9 version source?

Hi Konrad,
You can send us the ZIP package to our official email address admin@dualcube.com

Thanks and Regards,
Arindam

I have a problem upgrading DDMATCH plugin from Moodle v1.9.19 to Moodle v2.2.11.
This is required because to reach the latest Moodle version the following upgrade steps are required:
1.x -> 1.9.19+ -> 2.2.11 -> 2.7.20 -> 3.2

So I have to upgrade our DDMATCH plugin to 2.2.11 first.
But I get the error:
Plugin "qtype_ddmatch" is defective or outdated, can not continue, sorry.

More information about this error
Debug info: Plugin is not compatible with Moodle 2.x or later.
Stack trace:

line 314 of /lib/upgradelib.php: plugin_defective_exception thrown
line 1437 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
line 269 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()

Unfortunately the Moodle 2.4 is the first Moodle 2.x version available, the Moodle 2.2 version is missing.
This makes the whole Moodle 1.9 to latest upgrade process impossible, as shown in the required upgrade steps above.

Hi Konrad,

Unfortunately, this plugin supports Moodle V2.4.1 to moodle V3.2. There is no support for V2.2.
You can update your moodle from your version to latest version i.e., 3.2. After the Moodle up-gradation you can install the this version of Drag-and-drop Matching.

Let me know for any further clarification.

Thanks and Regards,
Arindam

Hello Konrad and DualCube Team,
I am not sure that Dualcube Team solution will work, here is why : In Moodle 2.2 there was a big change : Tim Hunt completely changed the question engine and to take this into account all question type have an upgrade script to upgrade their data to the new question engine. Fortunately I have added this kind of script to the ddmatch question type (it is in question/type/db/upgradelib.php) But I don't know if it will be executed after upgrading to Moodle 3.2 when Konrad will install the new version of ddmatch.
So my best advice is NOT to do this on your production server because there is a risk to loose all existing ddmatch data ! You need to Install a copy of your server and test if the upgrade is successful on this copy first. If it works then you can do the upgrade on your production server.
I tried to look if I can find any old version of ddmatch for Moodle 2.2 but my search was unsuccessful and I can't remember what I did when I upgraded to Moodle 2.2 (this is several years old and my memory is not good ).
If this method doesn't work the only way to solve Konrad's problem would be to start from the oldest version of ddmatch in my github (https://github.com/jmvedrine/moodle-qtype_ddmatch) and edit it so that it can work with Moodle 2.2. This would surely be doable but would require some knowledge of the changes between Moodle 2.2 and 2.4 (only minor changes if I remember correctly), of course you will also need to edit version.php so that Moodle 2.2 accept this version of the plugin.
Unfortunately I am not able to do this work.