innocampus / moodle-local_listcoursefiles

Moodle Plugin listcoursefiles

moodle-local_listcoursefiles

This extension allows teachers to view a list of all files in a course and to change the license for each file. It is also possible to download the files in a ZIP archive.

Adding a new license

Since Moodle version 3.9 you can add a custom license via Moodle's license manager in the Site administration.

Expired files

We are using this plugin at Technische Universität Berlin in order to conform to german law (§ 52a UrhG). Copyrighted texts have to be made unavailable after a course ends. Since only a few of our teachers upload copyrighted texts and we want our students to be able to view their old courses (and non-copyrighted files), we use this plugin as a solution.

Our teachers specify the license of each file (through this plugin or the Moodle file picker). That way, we can identify the copyrighted files and make only these unavailable. We replaced the default licenses from Moodle by "License unexamined", "Copyrighted (provided in accordance with §52a UrhG)", "Approved by author", "Open content", and "Public domain". "License unexamined" is the default license.

The files (documents) that are currently unavailable for students can be highlighted by the plugin. The following settings need to be defined in the config.php:

• array $CFG->fileexpirylicenses which licenses (shortnames) expire
• int $CFG->fileexpirydate when do files expire (unix time)
• array $CFG->filemimetypes['document'] mime types of documents

Some modifications to the Moodle core are required to restrict the download of copyrighted files. Our patch for Moodle 3.2 can be found here: https://github.com/innocampus/patches/blob/master/Moodle32-Check-file-license-and-expiry-date.patch

moodle-local_listcoursefiles's Issues

Add acceptance tests

Drop support for Moodle 3

Limit support to Moodle versions >=4.1.

Replace deprecated/old function calls and class uses to align with newer Moodle versions. (Example: \core_user\fields::get_name_fields instead of get_all_user_name_fields.

Update version number.

Update CI strategy matrix to reflect this.

Use core `license_manager` methods in the `licenses` class

We run into trouble here in line 50, when dealing with custom (i.e. non-core) licenses.

moodle-local_listcoursefiles/classes/licences.php

Lines 43 to 55 in 0388940

	public static function get_available_licenses() {
	global $CFG;
	if (self::$licenses === null) {
	self::$licenses = [];
	$a = explode(',', $CFG->licenses);
	foreach ($a as $license) {
	self::$licenses[$license] = \get_string($license, 'license');
	}
	}
	return self::$licenses;
	}

Those do not have language strings, which causes debug messages in the get_string call and prevents their full names from being rendered.

The core license_manager handles most of the relevant license logic already (e.g. handling custom licenses or filtering only active licenses). We should probably use either the get_licenses or the get_active_licenses method in the function above, then simply map each license object returned to its fullname property.

Add unit tests

Fails in Moodle 3.9

get_all_user_name_fields() is deprecated in Moodle 4.0 but the replacement \core_user\fields::get_name_fields() is not available in Moodle 3.9