Basic fact finding for Moodle local file integration

[jon-betts]

In order to guide future development effort we should gather some basic details about each of the integrations before we start to ensure we don't go down any blind alleys.

Questions to answer

What is the integration method? JSON API? XML RPC?

• JSON API

Where are the docs?

• https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_services
• https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_service_API_functions
• Actually inside Moodle mostly when logged in as an admin (it's horrible by you can print the page to PDF to make it more usable)

How do we authenticate?

• An API key is generated in the admin console
• We use this as a pre-shared key and pass it with every request

How do you get the list of files?

• Not sure, as the docs aren't good enough to work it out without building the code to actually call all the end-points
• Most likely candidates are:
  • mod_resource_get_resources_by_courses: "Returns a list of files in a provided list of courses, if no list is provided all files that the user can view will be returned."
  • core_files_get_files: "browse moodle files"
• There is also:
  • core_user_get_private_files_info - "Returns general information about files in the user private files area."
  • Probably not this as it says they are private
  • mod_wiki_get_subwiki_files - "Returns the list of files for a specific subwiki."
  • I think wiki is a different "activity type" in Moodle. We are activity type lti so I don't think the streams should cross here.

How do you get the file?

• mod_resource_get_resources_by_courses has various bits of likely looking data in it's output:
  • fileurl string Optional //Downloadable file url.
  • This is present under introfiles and contentfiles
  • All items are listed as optional here, but I bet they aren't really
  • core_files_get_files is a bit more opaque.
  • I can't see how this works from the docs and the above looks like a better bet

Do we need to proxy the file or can we return a direct URL?

• We'd need to see what we get back from the API, but I think we might be able to choose the URL we are given directly

Does a particular assignment have one list of files or many?

• Looks like there are many potential sources of docs, but I suspect we'll only pick one
• mod_resource_get_resources_by_courses returns files in different groups (introfiles and contentfiles)
  • It could turn out only one of these groups is interesting in practice
  • If we want both we could:
    • Flatten these into a single list (simple, single call)
    • Present these as separate lists (more complex, separate calls)
    • Have the concept of tags or other type meta information we could pass (simple, single call)
    • Present this as a single list with groups (more complex, single call)

[jon-betts]

I think Sean has given this a once over now.