Moodle development traffic 19/2010
Latest stable version 1.9.8+
There are 4 commits into the stable branch from the last development week. Tim Hunt fixed a wrong capability checking in Quiz module (MDL-22410) and several regressions in clean_param(), introduced when we were converting ereg to preg, because ereg functions are deprecated in PHP 5.3 (MDL-19418).
Martin Dougiamas committed a bunch of patches that kills the scripts expected to be included only, if they are called directly via URL (MDL-22388). During the initial setup of every script life time, Moodle core defines constant MOODLE_INTERNAL which shall be used to make sure that the script is included and not called directly (constants can’t be defined via URL even with bloody register_globals on). This trick helps to prevent libraries, forms definitions and other scripts from potential security holes. My mom told me not to talk to strangers so I personally prefer silent one-line check
defined('MOODLE_INTERNAL') || die();
instead of explaining the poor hacker that the direct access to the script is forbidden (Mahara uses this shorter form and I just like it).
Gordon Bateson found a way how to deal with an XHTML issue in Hotpot by using IFRAME instead of OBJECT for Internet Explorer, as HTML forms are not able to escape OBJECT in this browser.
Future version Moodle 2.0 Preview 2
There are 141 commits into the future release branch from the last week. It is now tagged as Preview 2. Since Preview 1, there are many improvements and bug fixes. Many thanks to all who help us with testing.
Quotes of the week
“Ha, some song just came on my radio station by a band called CSS. The song is called CSS Suxxx. Just when I was swearing at css”
– Martin Dougiamas experiences reaffirmation from the world
Watch your back!
Backup and restore support used to be my not very favourite part of Moodle modules coding. I was kind of scared (and bored) by all those direct fwrite() calls to generate XML representation of the module data. With the new backup/restore framework, written by Eloy Lafuente, this is not true any more! Eloy has prepared really well designed system that deals with a lot of tasks automatically, yet in a flexible way. Following his tutorial on backup support for Moodle 2.0 activity modules, I was able to quickly hack a working prototype of Workshop backups.
What I like the most so far is the way how module just defines a description of its database structure and lets the core to actually fetch the data a convert them into XML representation. Given the necessary amount of information, new backup system is able to “automagically” handle all relations, references to other tables and including embedded files (only those really needed by the module, of course!).
There are still parts to finish both in Moodle core and in modules – most notably the ability to backup subplugins information and to restore 1.9 backups. But I can sleep well again as backup and restore is not nightmare any more for module developers.
Post scriptum
After more than eight years, one of the characteristic symbols of Moodle, the default user icon (yes, that very well known smiley cake), was replaced by a bland avatar for the standard theme in Moodle 2.0. That is ironic that the smiley actually replaced the original “shadowhead with something a bit more positive”. The story of the “f1.jpg” image and how it resisted various attempts to replace it is sometimes quite interesting. Anyway, I will miss it… So long!
