Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

This updated fourth edition of the classic Moodle Administration guide has been written from the ground up and covers all the new Moodle features in great breadth and depth. The topics have also been augmented with professional diagrams, illustrations, and checklists. The book starts by covering basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and perform day-to-day administration activities. You’ll then progress to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage authentication and enrolments, and work with roles and capabilities. Next, you'll learn how to configure pedagogical and technical Moodle plugins and ensure your LMS complies with data protection regulations. Then, you will learn how to tighten Moodle’s security, improve its performance, and configure backup and restore procedures. Finally, you'll gain insights on how to compile custom reports, configure learning analytics, enable mobile learning, integrate Moodle via web services, and support different types of multi-tenancy. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

Understanding Moodle web services

This section will familiarize you with web services, how they work, and when to use them.

It has always been possible to extend Moodle via code (PHP and JavaScript). Due to Moodle’s open source code base, there is no limitation on what code a developer can modify or extend. As an administrator, this was not a satisfactory situation, as you have no control over what parts of Moodle are being changed as a result, and, equally importantly, what data is being accessed or altered.

Moodle has various APIs that provide abstract layers for certain functionalities. Examples are the Privacy API, Repository API, and File API. These are great for programmers, as they reduce the amount of code that has to be rewritten. In addition to these interfaces, Moodle provides us with an ever-growing number of web services.

Important note

Web services enable other systems to perform operations inside Moodle, and vice versa.

Why would we want this? Well...