Moodle 5.3 developer update

This page highlights the important changes that are coming in Moodle 5.3 for developers.

Linear navigation support

Since 5.3

Moodle 5.3 introduces support for sequential linear navigation controls within course views. By default, third-party course formats do not display linear navigation elements. To explicitly opt in and declare support for this feature, course formats must override the uses_linear_navigation() method.

Activity modules can also take part in this navigation: the \core_course\cm_info class provides get_navigation_url(), set_navigation_url(), and reset_navigation_url() methods so a module can override the URL the "Previous" and "Next" controls lead to, or remove itself from the navigation flow altogether.

For a comprehensive integration guide, structural configuration examples, and page-state API controls, see the Linear navigation support guide.

Supplementary content in the sticky footer

Since 5.3

The moodle_page class now includes set_supplementary_content() and get_supplementary_content() methods, allowing any part of Moodle to inject an action_link as supplementary content into the sticky footer, regardless of whether the current course format supports linear navigation.

For instance, mod_forum uses this new mechanism to display a "Go to all discussions" link in the sticky footer when viewing an individual discussion.

For more information, see the Adding supplementary content to the sticky footer section.

Scopes for API routes

Since 5.3

API routes can now declare the scopes required to call them, using the #[scopeset] attribute alongside the existing #[route] attribute. When a request is authenticated with an OAuth2 access token or Personal Access Token, the router checks that the token was granted a scope combination which satisfies the route's requirements, in addition to any existing capability checks.

Every API route must now declare its scope requirements, either with one or more #[scopeset] attributes, or by explicitly opting out with #[unscoped_resource]. This is enforced by a core PHPUnit test that scans all routes in the route\api namespace, so any new route which omits this declaration will fail the test suite.

For details on declaring scopes on a route, and on defining new scope classes for a subsystem, see Scopes and Defining Scopes.