09MOD: Moodle Module Development - Adding Our Custom Code to the Module

TO START THE TUTORIAL FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE

 After the Module is setup and configured correctly, it's time to add our own logic.  This is what we had been waiting for!

The bulk of our logic goes into three scripts in our module's directory:

• view.php
• lib.php
• locallib.php

THE MODULE'S VIEW.PHP SCRIPT

This script handles the display of the activity once it is added to a course section.  If we look at the code provided in the template, it already handles the following:

• Determining the instance of the module for the current course
• Entering the view as an the activity to the Moodle log
• Displaying the Moodle header and footer

08MOD: Moodle Module Development - Generate Upgrade snippet with XMLDB Editor

TO START THE TUTORIAL FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE

During our initial setup of the Module we modified the install.xml file.  We are now faced with a dillema - while modifying the module's form we introduced a new database column.  This value is needed by the module's logic and needs to be saved to our inyourface table (mdl_inyourface if your installation uses the default table prefix).

To handle this new challenge, we have to set up our first module upgrade.  We accomplish the upgrade by following a number of simple steps:

• We generate XMLDB code that we use in our module's .\mod\inyourface\db\upgrade.php script
• We paste the new code into the upgrade.php script
• We update our .\mod\inyourface\version.php file
• We run notifications from the Moodle admin menu

When we finish these steps, we can verify that our changes took effect by changing the Post Limit value in our module's form, and making sure that the change took place.

07MOD: Moodle Module Development - Testing the module's form

TO START THE TUTORIAL FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE

We have just completed our changes to the module's form.  This form is called when the user adds our activity to a Moodle course.  Let's test the form, and make sure that it works correctly.
 
1. Let's navigate to a Moodle course

Click Image to Zoom

06MOD: Moodle Module Development - The module's form

TO START THE TUTORIAL FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE

Moodle follows a very specific pattern for activity modules:

• User selects a course
• User turns editing on
• User selects a topic or week
• User selects an activity to add

Once the activity has been selected from the dropdown box, the module's form is displayed.  In our case, selection of the "Facebook Integration" activity calls the form described in the .\mod\inyourface\mod_form.php script.

05MOD: Moodle Module Development - The module's language file

TO START THE TUTORIAL FROM THE BEGINNING, CLICK HERE

When we first set our module up, we simply completed a series of search & replace for the the phrase "NEWMODULE" and replaced them with our Module's name. This is enough to get the Module registered, but it leaves a very ugly footprint in Moodle.