Moodle javascript Cookbook

181 Pages·2011·2.79 MB·English

by  Alastair Hole

Moodle JavaScript
Cookbook
Over 50 recipes for making your Moodle system more
dynamic and responsive with JavaScript
Alastair Hole

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Moodle JavaScript Cookbook
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
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First published: April 2011
Production Reference: 1180411
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849511-90-2
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Cover Image by Rakesh Shejwal ([email protected])
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Alastair Hole Akshara Aware
Reviewers Project Team Leader
Anthony Borrow Priya Mukherji
Mauno Korpelainen
Project Coordinator
Susan Smith Nash
Srimoyee Ghoshal
Acquisition Editor
Proofreader
Chaitanya Apte
Joel T. Johnson
Development Editor
Production Coordinator
Roger D'souza
Kruthika Bangera
Technical Editor
Cover Work
Azharuddin Sheikh
Kruthika Bangera
Copy Editor
Neha Shetty
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
About the Author
Alastair Hole is a web software developer, who is currently specializing in educational
software, particularly that which pertains to Further and Higher Education in the UK. His
web development experience began in the post dot-com boom era, working on business-
to-business e-commerce web applications in the publishing industry with a focus on back-
office integration. He has since transferred his talents to the educational sector and has
created projects which have gone on to receive awards from organizations such as The
Times Educational Supplement and the IMS Global Learning Consortium.
Alastair is the author of the award-winning Moodle IMS Content Package repository plug-
in "MrCUTE—Moodle Repository: Create, Upload, Tag, & Embed", which is an Open Source
project commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) that has seen
significant use in Moodle sites worldwide, from Scotland to Australia.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this book's completion, be
it patience with missed deadlines or encouragement when all seemed
overwhelming. Thank you, Ma and Pa Hole for their foresight in recognizing
that one day I would teach myself how to reassemble everything that I
have ever unscrewed, detached, disassembled, or otherwise fiddled with.
Thank you to The Internet for being an ever expanding well of autodidactic
opportunity.

And remember, "It's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want."
About the Reviewers
Anthony Borrow, S.J. is a Jesuit of the New Orleans Province who has been active in
the Moodle community for five years. Anthony has an M.A. in Counseling from Saint Louis
University, and a Masters of Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara
University. Anthony has worked on the design and implementation of various database
systems since 1992.
Anthony serves the Moodle community as its CONTRIB Coordinator. In that role, Anthony
has presented at various MoodleMoots (conferences) across the United States and
provided in-house training opportunities for institutions learning how to implement
Moodle. Anthony is currently the Campus Minister at Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory
(http://cristoreyjesuit.org/) and provides technical advice to the Jesuit
Secondary Education Association (http://jsea.org) and the Jesuit Virtual Learning
Academy (http://jvla.org/).
Anthony is the co-author of the Honduras chapter of Teen Gangs: A Global View, and also
has been a technical reviewer of various Packt books.
I am grateful to the Moodle community for continually inspiring me to learn
more about educational technologies and fostering an environment where
every voice contributes to building that community.
Mauno Korpelainen teaches Mathematics for high school and adult students in
Hyvinkää, Finland, has been a PHM (Particularly Helpful Moodler) for several years, and is
one of the moderators of the moodle.org forums.
Susan Smith Nash is currently the Director of Education and Professional Development
for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and
an adjunct professor at The University of Oklahoma. She was the Associate Dean for
graduate programs at Excelsior College (Albany, NY). Previous to that, she was the
Online Courses Manager at the Institute for Exploration and Development Geosciences
and Director of Curriculum Development for the College of Liberal Studies, University
of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, where she developed an online degree program curriculum
for online courses at The University of Oklahoma. She also developed an interface
for courses, as well as administrative and procedural support, support programmers,
protocol and training manuals, and marketing approaches. She obtained her Ph.D.
and M.A. in English and a B.S. in Geology from the University of Oklahoma. Nash blogs
at E-Learning Queen (http://www.elearningqueen.com) and E-Learners, and has
written articles and chapters on mobile learning, poetics, contemporary culture, and
e-learning for numerous publications, including Trends and Issues in Instructional Design
and Technology (3rd ed), Mobile Information Communication Technologies Adoption in
Developing Countries: Effects and Implications, Talisman, Press1, International Journal of
Learning Objects, GHR, World Literature, Gargoyle. Her latest books include Moodle 1.9
Teaching Techniques (Packt Publishing, 2010), E-Learners Survival Guide (Texture Press,
2009), and Klub Dobrih Dejanj (2008).
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Combining Moodle and JavaScript 7
Introduction 7
Creating a new Moodle PHP page 8
Loading a JavaScript file 11
Loading a JavaScript file in <head> 13
Generating a JavaScript function call from PHP 14
Passing variables from PHP to JavaScript 15
Ensuring compliance with XHTML Strict 17
Retrieving language strings from Moodle 18
Chapter 2: Moodle and Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) 21
Introduction 21

Initializing the YUI 3 library 22
Loading additional YUI modules 24
Loading YUI 2 modules from YUI 3 25
Attaching basic event handlers 27
Attaching advanced DOM event handlers 29
Implementing event delegation 33
Debugging with the YUI console 36
Chapter 3: Moodle Forms Validation 39
Introduction 39
Adding a required field 40
Adding a field with a maximum length 43
Adding a field with a minimum length 44
Adding a field length within in a specified range 45
Adding a valid e-mail address field 46
Adding custom validation with a Regular Expression 47