moodle-tool_uploadcourse

NOTE

This plugin is now available in Moodle core as of 2.6, so this repository is nolonger maintained. Please refer to https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-13114 .

Is a Moodle admin/tools plugin for uploading course outlines in much the same way that admin/tools/uploaduser works for users. These plugins became available from Moodle 2.2x and onwards, as this is when the admin/tools framework first appeared.

https://gitorious.org/moodle-tool_uploadcourse

There is also a bulk course category upload function available at https://gitorious.org/moodle-tool_uploadcoursecategory

If you need to manage course enrolments via bulk upload then you should look at the core user upload facility - http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Upload_users

This takes CSV files as input and enables override or augmentation with default parameter values.

All the usual add,updated,rename, and delete functions.

Thanks to Moshe Golden for help with getting the command line interface going.

!!!! NOTE !!!!

This plugin used to come with the full directory structure admin/tool/uploadcourse - this is nolonger the case so the installation proceedure has changed!

General installation proceedures are here: http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Installing_contributed_modules_or_plugins

The basic process is: Download https://gitorious.org/moodle-tool_uploadcourse/moodle-tool_uploadcourse/archive-tarball/master unpack the file (probably called master) with tar -xzvf master This will give you a directory called moodle-tool_uploadcourse-moodle-tool_uploadcourse Move this directory and rename it into its final position: mv moodle-tool_uploadcourse-moodle-tool_uploadcourse <Moodle dirroot>/admin/tool/uploadcourse

Alternatively you can use git: cd <Moodle dirroot>/admin/tool git clone [email protected]:moodle-tool_uploadcourse/moodle-tool_uploadcourse.git uploadcourse

Be careful about leaving the .git directory in your live environment.

CSV File format

Possible column names are: fullname, shortname, category, idnumber, summary, format, showgrades, newsitems, teacher, editingteacher, student, modinfo, manager, coursecreator, guest, user, startdate, numsections, maxbytes, visible, groupmode, restrictmodules, enablecompletion, completionstartonenrol, completionnotify, hiddensections, groupmodeforce, lang, theme, cost, showreports, notifystudents, expirynotify, expirythreshold, requested, deleted, // 1 means delete course oldshortname, // for renaming backupfile, // for restoring a course template after creation templatename, // course to use as a template - the shortname reset, // reset the course contents after upload - this resets everything - so you loose groups, roles, logs, grades etc. Be Careful!!!

An example file is:

fullname,shortname,category,idnumber,summary,backupfile Computer Science 101,CS101,Cat1,CS101,The first thing you will ever know,/path/to/backup-moodle2-course-cs101-20120213-0748-nu.mbz

As a general rule, the input values for fields are what you find on the data entry form if you inspect the HTML element.

Format

The options for the format value are 'scorm', 'social', weeks', and 'topics'.

Role Names

'teacher', 'editingteacher', 'student', 'manager', 'coursecreator', 'guest', 'user' are - where config permitting - you can substitute your own name for these roles (string value).

Category

For category you must supply the category name as it is in Moodle and this field is case sensitive. If Sub Categories are involved then the full category hierarchy needs to be specified as a '/' delimited string eg: 'Miscellaneous / Sub Cat / Sub Sub Cat'. The delimiter can be escaped with a back slash eg: 'some/category'.

Course Templating

add column backupfile which has the fully qualified path name to a file on the server that has a a Moodle course backup in it.

Add a column templatename which is the shortname of an existing course that will be copied over the top of the new course.

Course Enrolment Methods

Enrolment methods need special CSV columns as there can be many per course, and the fields for each method are flexible. The following is an example with two enrolment methods - manual, and self - firstly you need the column identifying the enrolment method enrolmethod_, and then add the corresponding field values subscripted with _. eg: fullname,shortname,category,idnumber,summary,enrolmethod_1,status_1,enrolmethod_2,name_2,password_2,customtext1_2 Parent,Parent,,Parent,Parent,manual,1,self,self1,letmein,this is a custom message 1 Students,Students,,Students,Students,manual,0,self,self2,letmein,this is a custom message 2 Teachers,Teachers,,Teachers,Teachers,manual,0,self,self3,letmein,this is a custom message 3

add the special columns for:

• delete - delete_ with value 1
• disable - disable_ with value 1

startdate enrol_startdate enrol_enddate

For startdate enrolstartdate, and enrolenddate the values should be supplied in the form like 31.01.2012 or 31/01/2012 that can be consumed by strtotime() (http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php) - check your PHP locale settings for the fine tuning eg: m/d/y vs d/m/y.

Enrolment method field 'enrolperiod' must be in seconds. If this is supplied then enrolenddate will be calculated as enrolstartdate + enrolperiod.

enrolperiod should be supplied in multiples of enrolment period measurements - 1 hour = 3600, 1 day = 86400 and so on. OR - you can pass a text string that php strtotime() can recognise eg: '2 weeks' or '10 days'

Enrolment Method Role

Default Role for an enrolment method is supplied by adding the 'role_' column. The expected value is the descriptive label for the given role eg: 'Student', or "Teacher'.

Enrolment example: fullname,shortname,category,idnumber,summary,enrolmethod_1,enrolperiod_1,role_1 a name,short1,Miscellaneous,id1,a summary,manual,864000,Manager

Update Course:

Make sure you have shortname in the csv. After uploading the file, select: Upload type: one of the update existing related options Existing course details: Overide with file Allow Renames: Yes

Update example: fullname,shortname new full name,short1

Run it in batch mode

Execute Course Upload in batch mode - this must be run as the www-data user (or the equivalent user that the web server runs under).

Options: -v, --verbose Print verbose progress information -h, --help Print out this help -a, --action Action to perform - addnew, addupdate, update, forceadd -m, --mode Mode of execution - delete, rename, nochange, file, filedefaults, missing -f, --file CSV File -d, --delimiter delimiter - colon,semicolon,tab,cfg,comma -e, --encoding File encoding - utf8 etc -c, --category Course category -s, --templateshortname Template course by shortname -t, --template Template course by backup file -g, --format Course format - weeks,scorm,social,topics -n, --numsections Number of sections

Example: sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/tool/uploadcourse/cli/uploadcourse.php --action=addupdate
--mode=delete --file=./courses.csv --delimiter=comma

Installation

git clone this repository into /admin/tools/uploadcourse directory.

Point your browser at Moodle, and login as admin. This should kick off the upgrade so that Moodle can now recognise the new plugin.

This was inspired in part by a need for a complimentary function for uploading courses (as for users) for the the NZ MLE tools for Identity and Access Managment (synchronising users with the School SMS): https://gitorious.org/pla-udi and https://gitorious.org/pla-udi/mle_ide_tools

Copyright (C) Piers Harding 2011 and beyond, All rights reserved

moodle-tool_uploadcourse free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.