Moodle

I've been thinking about this for a while - (there are also several tracker items that elude to this issue), and this is partly different to the expected behaviour of Moodle courses when a user is unenrolled from the course - the data stays there, but as the user is unenrolled, it is no longer displayed....

But this causes problems. - specifically with the Choices.

Since there is a role_unassign function - I presume there is also a Role_assign function we can leverage too?

perhaps a better solution would be to leverage the role_assign function, and check if the user has submitted to any choices which impose a limit, then check to see if their selected choice puts the choice over the limit, and if so, remove their currently selected choice?

any thoughts?

Dan

Adding MartinL to this - I've got a function here that might work (haven't tested it completely) but it should do all the right stuff - is this function too heavy on performance to add to role_assign?

function choice_role_assign($userid, $context, $roleid) {
$responses = get_records("choice_answers", "userid", $aa->userid); //get all choice answers for this user
foreach ($responses as $responses) { // check each answer - if no answers, we don't need to do anything!
$choice_instance = get_record("choice", "choiceid", $response->choiceid); // get the details on the choice for this answer
if ($choice_instance->limitanswers==true) { //if this choice uses the limit function, we need to check to make sure there is still a free space.
$option = get_record("choice_options", "choiceid", $response->choiceid, "id", $response->optionid);

$all_responses = get_records("choice_answers", "choiceid", $response->choiceid);
$numresponses = 0;
foreach ($all_responses as $res) {
if (has_capability('mod/choice:choose', $context)) { $numresponses++; }
}
if ($option->maxanswers > $numresponses) { //re-enabling this answer for this user will cause the limit to be exceeded. so delete this option. delete_records('choice_answers', 'id', $response->id); }
}
}
}

Hi Dan - would it be possible to set things so that ...?

• choice_role_assign() does something very cheap, like marking a "we have a new role-assignment for user X" somewhere, like cached_flags for example.
• the rest of the job is done by choice_cron(), which checks if there's anything "interesting" in cached_flags

The tricky thing IMHO would be that cached_flags entries are not considered sacred, so they may be lost / timeout if cron.php isn't being run / etc – so a low-frequency cronjob that does a wider sanity check on those choice slots would be good, OR a more reliable storage place.

hmm what about something like this:

add a new field to choice_responses something like "newenrol".

When choice_role_assign runs, it finds all responses from that user and sets the newenrol flag to "1"

as the user has enrolled, until the cron runs, the user will show up in the choice as selecting the option, and it will exceed the limit..

in choice_cron, we check all responses with the newenrol flag set to 1 and make sure the limit isn't exceeded.

If the limit is exceeded, we send an e-mail to all teachers notifying them that a user has re-enrolled, but their choice response has been removed as it exceeds the limit currently set.

....we could even make this a setting in the choice config.....
admins could set "what to do with responses that tip the limit over the edge." - email admin, email teacher, email student,

and also whether or not to "remove" the existing response....

I'm liking that solution better myself - what do you think Howard?

Dan

Hi Dan and Howard, any update on this? Thanks!

as mentioned in my last comment, I'd like some feedback on this before I make any changes - Wen, what are your thoughts on the way to implement this?

Hi,

I was able to reproduce a bug in the choice module which may be connected to this issue: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=118433#p606048

yep - this is a known issue, but no-one has given any feedback on what they think "should" happen in this situation.

Hi Dan,

I've created a branch on my github that adds an event handler to the choice module that removes response data from a user when they are unenrolled from a course; https://github.com/paulholden/moodle/compare/master...MDL-12083

Thanks Paul - my problem is that I'm not sure that removing response data when a user is unenrolled is correct behaviour.