Metadata

The “local metadata” plugin has been created to allow extra, “metadata” to be defined and assigned to various context level elements in Moodle. It is an abstraction of the current “user profile field” functionality in Moodle and contains much of the same code. This was written for the MUA as a proof of concept for a project to add extra profile data to courses, to see whether one metadata function could be used for multiple Moodle contexts. It is currently in Beta, and is open for participation and discussion.
The “local metadata” plugin has been created to allow extra, “metadata” to be defined and
assigned to various context level elements in Moodle. It is an abstraction of the current “user
profile field” functionality in Moodle and contains much of
the same code.
The data model includes context level identifiers to allow the same data tables and API’s to be
used for all of the different context levels. The plugin has been designed with the ability to be
adopted into core, and completely
replace the current user profile field feature if desired.
In its current concept state, the plugin provides metadata functionality for users, courses,
activity modules, groups, cohorts and course caregories. Other context levels can be
added through
the context subplugin. NOTE, that the user metadata provided by the plugin is “in addition to” the
current profile data rather than replacing it. For now, it is really intended to show/prove that
this could replace the user
profile data feature.
The plugin provides two subplugin types:
– Data contexts – These subplugins provide a Moodle context to apply metadata to.
– Data field types – These subplugins are the same as the user profile data types plugins.
Since