Filtered course list

The Filtered Course List block displays a configurable list of courses. It is intended as a replacement for the My Courses block, although both may be used. It is maintained by the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP).
Price option: Free

Supports Moodle 2.8-5.2 See all versions
Latest release: 2 days ago
Installations: 841
Downloads (last 90 days): 231

Frankenstyle name: block_filtered_course_list
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Hi again, Nicolas. So, in fact, the issue is not specifically related to multilang, but to any kind of filter. The Filtered course list block does not currently run course titles through filters, but I agree that it should (just as the native Moodle blocks do). Thanks for helping to identify this problem. I will work to fix it.
Hi Nicolas,
I'll be happy to look into this. Can you let me know which plugins you are using? It seems there is more than one that works with the {mlang} tags. It may not matter, but I may as well try to work with the same one you are using.
Cheers,
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Great plugin! I was just wondering if the plugin is compatible with a Multi language Moodle? My categories and courses are translated into many language and when I expand a category I see course name like this:
{mlang en}Day 1 - Course Content{mlang}{mlang ms}Hari 1 - Isi Kandungan Kursus{mlang}
Tell me how I can help further
Thx
Hi again, Brandon. First of all, thank you again for taking the time to let me know about this problem. I think you've raised two issues, one general and one specific. In general, it seems that you would like to display all the courses on your site, not just the courses a user is enrolled in. And then specifically, you are getting an error when you try to use the `enrolment` filter to show courses with manual enrolments.
To the general issue: Throughout its history, the primary intent of the Filtered course list block has been to organize and present the courses a user has access to. (Typically this means the courses a user is enrolled in, but I'll address a couple exceptions below.) Nearly all of the filters therefore start from the list of a user's enrolled courses and then return a subset of that already limited list. This principle is at the core of the block's behaviour, so it is no surprise that that is what you are seeing for most of the filter types. The line that you have suggested changing is indeed where that initial limitation applies. Changing it in the way you suggest fundamentally alters the behaviour of the block in exactly the way you describe, but that changed behaviour is at odds with the main intent of the block, so it is not something that I would include in a future version.
Admittedly, there are a couple exceptions to the general principle that a user sees only their own courses. 1) Anonymous users and admins (depending on certain settings) may see a "generic" list. A generic list shows either a list of all the courses or (if the number of courses is above a configurable threshold) all of the top-level categories on a site. The rationale behind showing a generic list is that anonymous users by definition do not have any enrolments while admins have access to all courses regardless of their enrolments. If you want everyone to see a generic list you can add this line to your filter `generic | expanded`. Please note, though, that unless you have disabled it, the Filtered course list block already automatically includes a link to Moodle's native "All courses" page where users can view and search all courses in the way that you seem to be looking for. Maybe that even solves your main issue?
To your specific issue: The other place where the Filtered course list block might show courses that a user is not enrolled in is with the `enrolment` filter. The rationale here is that a user may have access to (and so should see) certain courses they are not yet enrolled in. In particular, this is true for courses with `guest` or `self` enrolments, and that is why the documentation and examples emphasize those two types. That being said, what you are trying to do *should* also work, so I consider it a bug that you are seeing that error message, and I would love to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately I cannot reproduce the error. I've tried using exactly the versions you specify. I've tried on sites with no courses, with only a few courses, and with thousands of courses. I've tried on fresh installations as well as old ones, viewing them as an admin and as a regular user. I would really appreciate any additional information you can offer me on how to reproduce the error. If you have debugging set to full are you getting any kind of stack trace? Approximately how many courses/users/enrolments are on your site? Have you changed any other Filtered course list settings? Does the manual enrolment filter work correctly when you change line 133? Does the problem come back with your restore that line? Sorry to come back with questions rather than answers, and thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Hi, Brandon. Thanks for commenting here and even for identifying a possible code solution. I'll have a closer look soon and get back to you in the next day or two.
a little edit to my previous post:
i replaced line 133 in block_filtered_course_list.php from
$this->mycourses = enrol_get_my_courses(null, "$sortstring");
to:
$this->mycourses = coursecat::get(0)->get_courses(array('recursive' => true));
which solves the problem but doesn't allow me to keep updating your oh so good plug-in. Is there any chance this can be added as a preference in future versions?
Hi Kevin:
First of all, thanks for this amazing plug. Right now i'm trying to get a very simple filter to show all the active courses to the user even if he's not enrolled in them. My course structure is as follows (all courses have manual enrolment)
Category 1
- course 1 - shortname 1xx
- course 2
etc
Category 2
|
- course 3 - shortname 2xx
- course 4
etc
However, i haven't been able to produce the desired results, using the various methods you mentioned in your documentation:
e.g.
regex | expanded | 100-level courses | 1\d\d (as my shortname starts with 1xx
category | collapsed | 0 (= top level) | 0 (= all decendants)
regex | collapsed | All my courses | .
i tried
category | collapsed | 2 (to show only category ID 2) | 0 (= all decendants)
and finally:
enrolment | collapsed | guest, self | Available courses
however i changed "guest, self" to "manual" and it returned me a "Can not find data record in database table course." (i can't have them as self-register)
and always shows me only the courses that the user is registered in, and if a user has no courses enrolled, then a simple list of categories.
I have moodle 3.5.4+ and FCLv3.4.2
@MAG II: I've just released version 3.4.1 (for Moodle 3.3, 3.4, 3.5) that includes an "enrolment" filter. You can use it to show courses with guest enrolment, self enrolment or both. Usage details are here: https://github.com/CLAMP-IT/moodle-blocks_filtered_course_list/wiki/Filter-by-enrolment-method .
Don't worry about flooding the thread; I'm grateful for the questions and ideas.
You could make an "All my courses" rubric by using a regex filter like this: `regex | collapsed | All my courses | .` The dot at the end matches anything, but that won't include courses with guest access, so I think it's not what you're looking for, either. In general the filters start from a list of courses that the user is enrolled in, so it would take a different filter to show courses with guest access. I think it could be done, and I've added it as a possibility to the roadmap, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to have a closer look. Are you by chance a developer?
Apologies for flooding the thread, but to add to what I was saying about being able to access all courses from this block - I was hoping to have a courses link for all courses in this block, kind of like what is available with the standard Navigation block.
Yes there are a handful of courses that do not require enrollments to access. So courses with guest access, yes.
Unfortunately that is not one of the current options, though I can appreciate why it would be nice. Are you achieving this by adding guest access to the courses in question? I could imagine adding something like that to the roadmap.
Hello -
I've just download your plugin and I am liking it a lot so far.
Question - Is it possible, rather than via the "All Courses" link, to have all Course Categories displayed in this block for every user regardless if they are enrolled or not? I ask because I have a few informative courses that are open to everyone, with no kind of enrollment necessary.
I'm so glad to hear it. There had previously been an issue with ampersands, as you saw, but it should be resolved in more recent versions.
Thank you for your quick reply. Actually, it works fine on my Moodle 3.5 with the latest version of the plugin. The ampersand problem was on my 3.3 only with plugin v3.1.0.