moodle/question/engine/upgrade.txt
Tim Hunt 64207dab65 MDL-67183 questions: get_question & get_behaviour only init if required
This reviews all the code code, and sets $requirequestioninitialised
whenever possible in these calls, which should improve performance.
2020-05-19 20:52:07 +01:00

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This files describes API changes for the core question engine.
=== 3.9 ===
1) In the past, whenever a question_usage_by_activity was loaded from the database,
the apply_attempt_state was immediately called on every question, whether the
results of doing that were ever used, or not.
Now we have changed the code flow, so that apply_attempt_state is only called
when some data or processing is requested (e.g. analysing a response or rendering
the question) which requires the question to be fully initialised. This is MDL-67183.
This change should be completely invisible with everything handled by the question
engine. If you don't change your code, it should continue to work.
However, to get the full advantage of this change, you should review your code,
and look at every call to get_question or get_behaviour (on a question_attempt or
question_usage_by_activity). The problem with these methods is that the question engine
cannot know what you are planning to do with the question once you have got it.
Therefore, they have to assume that apply_attempt_state must be called - which can be expensive.
If you know that you don't need that (because, for example, you are just going to
look at ->id or ->questiontext or something simple) then you should pass
false to these functions, to get the possible performance benefit.
In addition, there is a new method $qa->get_question_id() to handle that case more simply.
Note that you don't have worry about this in places like the renderer for your question
type, because by the time you are in the renderer, the question will already have been
initialised.
=== 3.7 ===
1) When a question is rendered, the outer div of the question has an id="q123"
added. Unfortunately, this id was not actually unique, leading to bugs like
MDL-52572. Therefore, we have had to change it. The id used now is what
is returned by the new method $qa->get_outer_question_div_unique_id().
The old code that you need to search for and replace with a call to this
method is "'q' . $qa->get_slot()"
Note, the new method has also been added to Moodle 3.5.6 and 3.6.4, but
returning the old id. This is to help question types that want to support
multiple Moodle versions.
=== 3.1, 3.0.3, 2.9.5 ===
1) The field question_display_options::$extrainfocontent is now displayed in the
outcomes (yellow) div by default. It used to be in the info div. If you have
overriden the question renderer, you may need to make a corresponding change.
=== 3.0, 2.9.2, 2.8.8 ===
1) The extra internal PARAM constant question_attempt::PARAM_MARK should no
longer be used. (It should not have been used outside the core of the
question system). See MDL-51090 if you want more explanation.
=== 2.9 ===
1) Some new methods on the question_usage class (and corresponding methods on
question_attempt, question_attempt_step, question_usage_observer, ... requried
to implement them, but almost certainly you should only be calling the
question_usage methods from your code.
* question_usage::add_question_in_place_of_other($slot, $question, $maxmark = null)
This creates a new questoin_attempt in place of an existing one, moving the
existing question_attempt to the end of the usage, in a new slot number.
The new slot number is returned. The goal is to replace the old attempt, but
not lose the old data.
* question_usage::set_question_max_mark($slot, $maxmark)
Sets the max mark for one question in this usage. Previously, you could
only change this using the bulk operation question_usage::set_max_mark_in_attempts;
* question_usage::set_question_attempt_metadata($slot, $name, $value);
question_usage::get_question_attempt_metadata($slot, $name);
You can now record metadata, that is, values stored by name, against
question_attempts. The question engine ignores this data (other than storing
and loading it) but you may find it useful in your code.
To see examples of where these are used, look at the chagnes from MDL-40992.
2) New fields in question_display_options, ->extrainfocontent and ->extrahistorycontent.
These default to blank, but can be used to inject extra content into those parts
of the question display. If you have overridden the methods in
core_question_renderer that use these fields, you may need to update your renderer.
=== 2.6 ===
1) The method question_behaviour::is_manual_grade_in_range and move and become
question_engine::is_manual_grade_in_range.
2) The arguments to core_question_renderer::mark_summary changed from
($qa, $options) to ($qa, $behaviouroutput, $options). If you have overridden
that method you will need to update your code.
3) Heading level for number(), add_part_heading() and respond_history()
has been lowered by one level. These changes are part of improving the page
accessibility and making heading to have proper nesting. (MDL-41615)
=== Earlier changes ===
* Were not documented in this way. Sorry.