Create a new course with just one section, create a new database module with comments enabled. Create a database record in the activity As a student and admin, add some comments to the record (comment1, comment2...) As admin, enable "Mobile services": Site administration ► Mobile app ► Mobile settings Create a Token for the user (student) your are going to test with: Click on Site administration ► Plugins ► Web services ► Manage tokens Click add, select user and service (Mobile Service) Next, you can do a CURL REST call simulating a WS client: You need to replace the wstoken and the URL of your moodle instance. And the following parameters: instanceid with the course module id (it's the "id" in the URL when you access to the activity from course page) itemid (it's the "rid" in the URL when you edit the created database record) curl 'http://localhost/m/stable_master/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'contextlevel=module&instanceid=84&component=mod_data&itemid=1&area=database_entry&page=0&wsfunction=core_comment_get_comments&wstoken=a70d553bbaf6d9b260a9e5c701b3c46e' --compressed Confirm that: You receive a list including all the comments in the database record entry The field count indicates the total number of comments There is a field "perpage" set to 15 The newer comments are displayed first Now, append &sortdirection=ASC just after the wstoken value and execute the curl request again Confirm that: The ordering has changed and now the older comments are displayed first