Login as admin Navigate to Courses > Course custom fields in site administration Press Add a new category Press Add a new custom field and select Date and time Choose a Name and Short name and press Save changes Navigate to Courses > Add a new course in site administration Use Course full name: My course 101 & Course shortname: mycourse101 Expand Other fields Enable the custom field you created in step 4. and choose a date Press Save and display Enable web services Execute the core_course_search_courses external method, e.g.: curl -s 'http://localhost:8000/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'wsfunction=core_course_search_courses&criterianame=search&criteriavalue=mycourse101&wstoken=fd5dddfbb27a6435dfe1aa4908a2275f' | python -m json.tool Execute the core_course_get_courses_by_field external method, e.g.: curl -s 'http://localhost:8000/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'wsfunction=core_course_get_courses_by_field&field=shortname&value=mycourse101&wstoken=fd5dddfbb27a6435dfe1aa4908a2275f' | python -m json.tool Execute the core_course_get_courses external method, e.g.: curl -s 'http://localhost:8000/webservice/rest/server.php?moodlewsrestformat=json' --data 'wsfunction=core_course_get_courses&options[ids][]=2&wstoken=fd5dddfbb27a6435dfe1aa4908a2275f' | python -m json.tool For each external method call, confirm the returned data contains custom fields data containing both value and valueraw properties: "customfields": [ { "name": "My date field", "shortname": "mydatefield", "type": "date", "value": "1 December 2020", "valueraw": "1606780800" } ],