OpenBand

I'm the current owner of a pair of Drupal modules which help integrate the Drupal content management framework with the Moodle learning management system. Drupal and Moodle are among the best open-source packages in their respective spaces, and are likewise both very popular.

The two Moodle modules are named moodle and moodlesso. Recently, I committed a new branch to the moodle module tagged 6.x-2.0. This branch is the start of a new direction I want to take with both modules.

Previous versions of the moodle module provided an iframe within which the Moodle site was displayed, and allowed a form of Single Sign On (SSO). SSO was provided by configuring Moodle to use database authentication, using an HTTP GET request with the username and password loaded into the request parameters, and giving Moodle access to the Drupal installation's users table in its database.

This method was kind of hackish and also a security risk.

With the new moodle module branch, I am shifting the module's focus strictly toward data integration features. In fact, there is essentially nothing from the previous versions in the new version as far as code goes. Only the ability to have a menu link to take a user to the Moodle site remains as a common feature between the two branches.

The moodlesso module will become the focal point for any SSO capabilities. As originally coded, it used some unsupported session token capabilities. My plan is to try to add several different SSO methods to this module and allow the admin to choose the best method for his or her environment. Currently this module has no new code or releases, but I am hoping to have something useful in the next few months.

To allow data integration, the moodle module requires a plugin on the Moodle side. Because the existing methods for accessing Moodle as a web service had a number of shortcomings and complexities I didn't want to work with, I wrote a new web service interface for my Drupal module to query. It uses a RESTful model for services, and for lack of a better name, it's called the Quick API. The code can be obtained from the Google code repository for the moment. Hopefully, the whole thing can be hosted in a better arrangement in the future.