Moodle UCA My Courses - Plugin and Block

Development made in order to intuitively display all user's courses in a Moodle block. The block will need the local plugin which will contain all libs and fonctions needed to this display and also for course bookmarks management (feature not available in a basic Moodle).

Requirements

• Moodle 3.3 (build 2017051500) or later.
  -> Tests on Moodle 3.3 to 3.11.0 versions.
  
• Moodle UCA My Courses Block (build 2018020801) to show plugin's informations.
• Bootstrap support in your moodle theme.
• JS Plugin Jstree => https://github.com/vakata/jstree (available in jstree/).

Installation

1. Local plugin installation

• Git way:

git clone https://github.com/andurif/moodle-local_uca_mycourses.git local/uca_mycourses

• Download way:

Download the zip from https://github.com/andurif/moodle-local_uca_mycourses/archive/refs/heads/master.zip , unzip it in local/ folder and rename it "uca_mycourses" if necessary.

2. Block installation

• Git way:

git clone https://github.com/andurif/moodle-block_uca_mycourses.git blocks/uca_mycourses

• Download way:

Download the zip from https://github.com/andurif/moodle-block_uca_mycourses/archive/refs/heads/master.zip , unzip it in blocks/ folder and rename it "uca_mycourses" if necessary.

3. To use the plugin we needed to change some moodle core elements like update the schema of one of the database tables (see /db/install.php file) and update a function in the lib/moodlelib.php file because we use the mdl_user_preferences table to save our bookmarks.

In function set_user_preference, the code fragment below must be deleted or at least in comment (it will throw an exception if the preference value length has more than 1333 characters):

// Value column maximum length is 1333 characters.
$value = (string)$value;
if (core_text::strlen($value) > 1333) {
    throw new coding_exception('Invalid value in set_user_preference() call, value is is too long for the value column');
}

4. Then visit your Admin Notifications page to complete the installation.

5. Once installed, you should see new administration options:

Site administration -> Plugins -> Blocks -> My courses block -> list_view_limit

This option will decide since how many courses we display the "My courses" block on tree view and it will be used only if the user has not chosen a preference view yet.

Site administration -> Plugins -> Blocks -> My courses block -> roles_to_exclude

This option will decide roles you want to exclude from the block. If users have this/these role(s) in a course it won't be visible in the block (and can not be bookmarked).

Usages

1. Display the list of your course in a block according 2 views (a tree view or a list view).
2. Display courses you chose to bookmark.
3. Advanced bookmarks management (filing in folders, renaming, display or not in the block, updates in cases of deletion).
4. Option to display or not finished courses.

About us

Université Clermont Auvergne - 2021.