Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Overview of this book

Moodle is the best e-learning solution on the block and is revolutionizing courses on the Web. Using JavaScript in Moodle is very useful to administrators and dynamic developers as it uses built-in libraries to provide the modern and dynamic experience that is expected by web users today.The Moodle JavaScript Cookbook will take you through the basics of combining Moodle with JavaScript and its various libraries and explain how JavaScript can be used along with Moodle. It will explain how to integrate Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) with Moodle. YUI will be the main focus of the book, and is the key to implementing modern, dynamic feature-rich interfaces to help your users get a more satisfying and productive Moodle experience. It will enable you to add effects, make forms more responsive, use AJAX and animation, all to create a richer user experience. You will be able to work through a range of YUI features, such as pulling in and displaying information from other websites, enhancing existing UI elements to make users' lives easier, and even how to add animation to your pages for a nice finishing touch.

Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Combining Moodle and JavaScript

Introduction

Creating a new Moodle PHP page

Loading a JavaScript file

Loading a JavaScript file in <head>

Generating a JavaScript function call from PHP

Passing variables from PHP to JavaScript

Ensuring compliance with XHTML Strict

Retrieving language strings from Moodle

Moodle and Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)

Introduction

Initializing the YUI 3 library

Loading additional YUI modules

Loading YUI 2 modules from YUI 3

Attaching basic event handlers

Attaching advanced DOM event handlers

Implementing event delegation

Debugging with the YUI console

Moodle Forms Validation

Introduction

Adding a required field

Adding a field with a maximum length

Adding a field with a minimum length

Adding a field length within in a specified range

Adding a valid e-mail address field

Adding custom validation with a Regular Expression

Adding a field that accepts only alphabetic characters

Adding a field that accepts only alphanumeric characters

Adding a field that accepts only numeric characters

Rejecting punctuation characters

Rejecting input without a leading zero

Comparing with another field

Adding a custom JavaScript validation function callback

Manipulating Data with YUI 3

Introduction

Using IO to request a URI

Using IO's alternative transport method for requesting external URIs

Using PHP as a proxy to load data from an external domain

Parsing XML with DataSource

Parsing JSON with DataSource

Working with Data Tables

Introduction

Initializing a YUI DataSource

Enhancing Page Elements

Introduction

Adding a text box with auto-complete

Adding a combo box with auto-complete

Displaying auto-updating data

Enabling resizable elements

Adding custom tooltips

Adding custom button controls

Advanced Layout Techniques

Introduction

Adding a fly-out navigation menu

Adding a drop-down navigation menu

Displaying a tree-view navigation menu

Animating Components

Introduction

Fading in an element

Fading out an element

Scrolling an element

Resizing an element

Animating with easing

Moving an element along a straight path

Moving an element along a curved path

Changing an element's color

Sequencing multiple animations

Integrating External Libraries

Introduction

Adding the jQuery framework

Adding the MooTools framework

Adding the Dojo framework

Adding the Prototype framework

Adding the script.aculo.us add-on to Prototype

Adding image enlargement with Lightbox 2

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Generating a JavaScript function call from PHP

Now that we have loaded our JavaScript file, we need a method to execute that code. Once again, we may use the Page Requirements Manager $PAGE to generate a call to our JavaScript function.

Note

This recipe describes a basic technique for executing your JavaScript code when the page is loaded. More sophisticated techniques based on handling DOM events with the Yahoo! User Interface library will be covered in later chapters.

Getting ready

Set up a page requirejs_init.php with the following content:

<?php
require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../config.php');
$PAGE->set_context(get_context_instance(CONTEXT_SYSTEM));
$PAGE->set_url('/cook/requirejs_init.php');
$PAGE->requires->js('/cook/requirejs_init.js');
$PAGE->requires->js_init_call('hello');
echo $OUTPUT->header();
echo $OUTPUT->footer();
?>

Set up the accompanying JavaScript file, requirejs_init.js, with the following content:

function hello(Y)
{
alert('Hello World!');
}

Now when we load the page, we see that our JavaScript alert is executed, assuring us that our code is loading and executing correctly, as seen in the following screenshot:

How to do it...

We wish to make a call to our JavaScript function named hello. This is achieved with the js_init_call method. We pass one parameter, which is a string containing the name of the function we wish to call, which is hello.

How it works...

When the document is rendered, the js_init_call method ensures that a call to our JavaScript function is generated. This example will generate the following JavaScript:

hello(Y);

This JavaScript is then included inside a <script> tag at the end of the <body> tag of the final page.

Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Overview of this book

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Moodle JavaScript Cookbook

Generating a JavaScript function call from PHP

Note

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...