** Changed in: mahara
Milestone: 1.10.0 => 1.11.0
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1315205
Title:
Make sideblocks into a normal plugin type
Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
In Progress
Bug description:
Sideblocks are the blocks that show up in the side column of the page.
These include the login form, the user file quota, the tag cloud, etc.
For more information about what sideblocks are and how they're
currently implemented, see the developer's docs:
https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Sideblocks_API
I'm filing this bug because sideblocks are currently implemented as an
API, and there's no easy way for a 3rd-party dev to add additional
sideblocks without patching core code. Gregor has supplied a patch in
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1314465 that adds a /local
function for adding sideblocks, but this is still a little clunky
because it requires the user to manually paste PHP code into their
/local/lib.php file.
I think the best thing to do, would be to turn sideblocks into a full-
featured plugin type, like blocktypes, artefacts, interactions, etc.
Then admins could install new sideblocks the same as they install any
other plugin, by simply copying it into the correct directory.
Some implementation ideas:
1. All the existing core sideblocks would also get turned into
sideblock plugins.
2. Sideblocks, like blocktypes, could live inside other plugin types.
So for instance an artefact plugin could include one or more sideblock
plugins.
3. Each sideblock class would have a static method that gets called on
each pageload and returns a boolean to indicate whether or not the
sideblock should be displayed on that page. (Tricky to figure out what
data should be passed to this method, though...)
4. Additionally, sideblocks could be added to page by the page itself
using the existing $sideblocks param to the smarty() method.
5. Also, this might be a good time to rethink the name "sideblocks",
since the term would now be exposed to our userbase and I foresee
endless confusion about the difference between blocktypes and
sideblocks.
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