Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Extension Development

Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Extension Development

Overview of this book

Moodle gives you the power to create and customize feature-rich plug-ins. If you can write Moodle plug-ins, you can make it do just about anything. From making the site easier to administer, to new features, to completely changing the way it looks; plug-ins are the method Moodle offers to customize and extend its functionality. This book will show you how to build all sorts of Moodle plug-ins: admin plug-ins, Blocks, Activities, Grading components, Reports, Fliters that change the way your site works and looks. You will develop standard Moodle plug-ins such as Activities, Filters, and Blocks by creating functioning code that you can execute in your own Moodle installation. Writing modular plug-ins for Moodle will be a large focus of this book.This book will take you inside Moodle and provide you with the ability to develop code the “Moodle way”.This book will expose you to all of the core code functions in Moodle, in a progressive, understandable way. You will learn what libraries are available, what the API calls are, how it is structured and how it can be expanded beyond the plug-in system.You will begin by getting an understanding of the basic architecture that Moodle uses to operate in. Next you will build your first plug-in; a block. You will carry on building other Moodle plug-ins, gaining knowledge of the “Moodle way” of coding, before plunging deeper into the API and inner libraries. Lastly, you will learn how to integrate Moodle with other systems using a variety of methods.When you have completed, you will have a solid understanding of Moodle programming and knowledge of how to extend its functionality in whatever way you want.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Moodle 1.9 Extension Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface

Using Moodle messaging


Moodle provides an instant messaging type of communication that allows you to send messages to any Moodle user. If a user is online when a message is sent, they will receive it in their message box and can view it in a pop-up window. If the user is not online within a configured timeframe, the message will be sent to them via e-mail.

This mechanism can therefore be a more effective communication tool than just e-mail. It can alert a user in the Moodle environment and fall back to e-mail.

Let's complete our entry_notification_messaging function to use Moodle messaging.

Moodle messaging internals

Moodle messaging uses two data tables to handle message delivery: message and message_read. When a message is sent to a user, it is inserted into the message table. Its existence indicates an unread message to that user, and will trigger the message indicators when that user is online. Once the user has viewed that message, the record is moved to the message_read table. This...