Group self-selection

Nice plugin. I would like to see a 3.0 version with the possibility that students can book themselves in multiple groups. I also would like to hide groups form the student view. Is this possible?

Just wondering if it's my local config or a change in the plugin but the option to set limits on a group by group basis has disappeared. If that was removed from the plugin I'd be interested in the reasoning as I quite liked that feature.

if you would like students to become members of more than 1 group, just find the following line in groupselect\view.php;
$canselect = (has_capability ( 'mod/groupselect:select', $context ) and is_enrolled ( $context ) and empty ( $mygroups ));
and change it to;
$canselect = (has_capability ( 'mod/groupselect:select', $context ) and is_enrolled ( $context ));

Hi Pirkka, are you planning to release a new version of this at some point? We're looking forward to getting the fix for the "master password" issue that is only currently in your Github master version!

Another vote for allow students to be members of multiple groups.
We have a "student clinic", where "Clinic" itself is a course. We wish to allow students to sign up to each of the 4 or 5 clinic sessions running each week, using a group for each clinic session (Tuesday 7-11am, Tuesday 7.30-11.30am, Thursday 8-11, etc). Ultimately we hope to tie the group membership with the Attendance module, so we can take attendance for each clinic session (or group) rather than having all students in the Clinic course appearing in all sessions in the attendance module.

Yes I will backup Michael's recommendation on the mforms as well.
There is another small point that I have to change for my system. I modified style.css with the following:
.mod_groupselect .edit, .text_to_html, td {
word-wrap:break-word !important;
/*word-break: break-all !important;*/
}
I am not sure why you chose "word-break: break-all" for td. It creates text wrapping in the word for all columns in the system (e.g. report logs). Maybe you have some reason?
Thanks again.
Bei

Hello Pirkka,
also from me many thanks to you for your work. I also tested the plugin version 3.0.5 beta with moodle 2.8.5 and postgresql, and it works as expected.
Just one thing: In the mod_form.php I think will change the mforms for studentcancreate, studentcansetdesc & deleteemptygroups from true to false. Because I don't want to disconcert our teachers/lecturers.
Thanks a lot & Greatings,
Michael

Hi Pirkka,
I have upgraded mine to 3.0.5 beta (in Moodle 2.8.3 with Oracle DB as the back end db), and very glad to tell you that it is working perfectly now, no oracle errors and no password hunting any more.
Thank you for your hard work.
Bei

Hi all,
sorry for late response. I made the fixes and pushed them to the project GitHub repository: https://github.com/birrel/moodle-mod_groupselect
I'd appreciate if you Bei could confirm if it works now (I don't have an Oracle db) . I'll publish an official version here by the end of this week.
-Pirkka

Hi Pirkka,
That would be great if you can fix it from the source. I need the new version of this plugin asap for our Moodle 2.8.3 upgrade. Please keep me updated.
That "NULL" vs. '' (empty string) in the password field is what I have guessed too. Oracle is famous for being picky. Thanks Michael for bringing more info on it.
Cheers.
Bei

Hello Pirkka,
I've the same issue with moodle 2.8.5 and the 3.04 beta (20150107) version of the plugin. I also upgrade moodle and the groupselect plugin.
I've got the following debug error message during a fresh install:
XMLDB has detected one CHAR NOT NULL column (password) with '' (empty string) as DEFAULT value. This type of columns must have one meaningful DEFAULT declared or none (NULL). XMLDB have fixed it automatically changing it to none (NULL). The process will continue ok and proper defaults will be created accordingly with each DB requirements. Please fix it in source (XML and/or upgrade script) to avoid this message to be displayed.
line 1874 of /lib/datalib.php: call to debugging()
line 352 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_object.php: call to xmldb_debug()
line 255 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_field.php: call to xmldb_object->debug()
line 359 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_field.php: call to xmldb_field->setDefault()
line 543 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_table.php: call to xmldb_field->arr2xmldb_field()
line 259 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_structure.php: call to xmldb_table->arr2xmldb_table()
line 172 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_file.php: call to xmldb_structure->arr2xmldb_structure()
line 153 of /lib/xmldb/xmldb_file.php: call to xmldb_file->arr2xmldb_structure()
line 341 of /lib/ddl/database_manager.php: call to xmldb_file->loadXMLStructure()
line 362 of /lib/ddl/database_manager.php: call to database_manager->load_xmldb_file()
line 667 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to database_manager->install_from_xmldb_file()
line 420 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
line 1626 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
line 434 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
Maybe it will help you to fix the error.
Greatings,
Michael

Thanks for your detailed answer and especially for pointing out those Oracle errors. I'll publish a new version next week. The field in question is password in groupselect table. It's probably best that I change the upgrade functionality to remove that field completely and update the code accordingly.
-Pirkka

Hi Pirkka,
Thanks for your reply. This plugin is upgraded from 2.1beta1 so it is not a clean install for sure. There are some data already associated to it.
The test case is very straightforward. I have same test case in our production (running 2.6.2 with group self-selection version 2.1beta1 (20111018)) and it works fine. The user is enrolled in the class as a student. The course is not using enrolment keys for groups. And the groups don't have password protected set. However, it fails on "become a member" in our development (running 2.8.3 with group self-selection version 3.0.4 beta - I just upgraded it).
I don't recall we have set up something like a master password for all groups in the older version. If do, which field in the db that holds it? I am wondering if the plugin upgrade inserts a not-null value into it for us.
Also, there are a few Oracle-syntax-errors in view.php, particularly the ";" in front of the closing single quote for sql cmd. Once I removed that ";", it works with our Oracle.
For example:
ORDER BY groupid ASC;';
WHERE g.instance_id = ?;',
Can you remove them in your source code and include them in the new release? BTW when is the next release?
Thanks,
Bei

Ok I have found one possible solution, if you have used a previous version of this plugin (<=2.1) and then upgraded to the 3.02 version. In older versions there was a feature to set a master password for all groups. This feature has been removed since 3.0 but it still has a field in the database and if it is not null, then password will be asked. I'll release an updated version soon.
But if you did a clean installation, created a new groupselect activity and still got this bug, please let me know so I can check other possible causes.
-Pirkka

Hi Bei,
So it let's you select a group by clicking the "become member"-button and then says that it requires password even when the group has none?
Is your user enrolled in the course and what role (s)he has (if switched role to student)? Is your course using enrolment keys for groups? Are you absolutely sure that the group has no password set?
-PIrkka