by Jock Coats.
Some *very* general pointers!
It took us years to really understand the API system and just how powerful it is. Even though our hosting company and others were telling us all along that we could do most of our interfacing with student recrods systems and so on with the Moodle apis. SO it's worth persevering, but again, it is a part of IT management's mantra at the moment that everything can be linked up with APIs and thereby, they think, save them a salary or two. In fact I'd say learning about various APIs that might work together with Moodle has enabled us to do *more* good things rather than just the same quicker or more easily with fewer people!
But to your questions:
1. Do have a look at the documentation in your server admin area - /admin/webservice/documentation.php just seeing the names of the end points will give you a flavour of what areas of Moodle you can interact with out of the box - both fetching for injecting into other systems and posting things into Moodle from other systems.
2. Yes...the whole point about api endpoints in this case is that they are just smart web urls that with the right information in the urls can provide you with lots of data, or handle lots of input. All the administration of what Moodle users get access to what is done through the web in the Moodle admin areas.
3. Not entirely. Obviously you need someone who is proficient in some technology that can form the right requests and generate and execute url requests, but they needn't really be Moodle people. If you have people already integrating other different back office systems the principles are the same and they ought to be able to work out what to do to add Moodle to their mix.
4. Refer you back to 1. above. A lot of the moodle apis appear to have been designed to help builders of apps (Moodle mobile for instance) so stuff like fetch someone's results and allowing them to be displayed somewhere outside Moodle is already there. But yeah, if you find things the standard APIs don't give you access to you might find you need someone to develop new endpoints for you ( and someone to deploy new moodle code/plugins to your server). There are also new ways of creating apis - I'm afraid I'm the sort who takes a while to understand what's there just at the point someone cleverer comes along and starts to do it better. and then it takes mea nother age to work out what they're doing different.
But basically yeah, there's a lot of Moodle data you can get access to or modify using the various extisting web services apis. Start there. But bear in mind too that api to api connection of disparate systems has been a pipe dream of IT management types for ages. Some of them even really believe there's some magic web page somewhere where an office junior can go and link systems together through their apis and save them a a lot of money. But in practice even starting now I suspect you will likely be at the leading edge of integrating Moodle with other systems if you get going with it successfully now!
Cheers,
Jock
It took us years to really understand the API system and just how powerful it is. Even though our hosting company and others were telling us all along that we could do most of our interfacing with student recrods systems and so on with the Moodle apis. SO it's worth persevering, but again, it is a part of IT management's mantra at the moment that everything can be linked up with APIs and thereby, they think, save them a salary or two. In fact I'd say learning about various APIs that might work together with Moodle has enabled us to do *more* good things rather than just the same quicker or more easily with fewer people!
But to your questions:
1. Do have a look at the documentation in your server admin area - /admin/webservice/documentation.php just seeing the names of the end points will give you a flavour of what areas of Moodle you can interact with out of the box - both fetching for injecting into other systems and posting things into Moodle from other systems.
2. Yes...the whole point about api endpoints in this case is that they are just smart web urls that with the right information in the urls can provide you with lots of data, or handle lots of input. All the administration of what Moodle users get access to what is done through the web in the Moodle admin areas.
3. Not entirely. Obviously you need someone who is proficient in some technology that can form the right requests and generate and execute url requests, but they needn't really be Moodle people. If you have people already integrating other different back office systems the principles are the same and they ought to be able to work out what to do to add Moodle to their mix.
4. Refer you back to 1. above. A lot of the moodle apis appear to have been designed to help builders of apps (Moodle mobile for instance) so stuff like fetch someone's results and allowing them to be displayed somewhere outside Moodle is already there. But yeah, if you find things the standard APIs don't give you access to you might find you need someone to develop new endpoints for you ( and someone to deploy new moodle code/plugins to your server). There are also new ways of creating apis - I'm afraid I'm the sort who takes a while to understand what's there just at the point someone cleverer comes along and starts to do it better. and then it takes mea nother age to work out what they're doing different.
But basically yeah, there's a lot of Moodle data you can get access to or modify using the various extisting web services apis. Start there. But bear in mind too that api to api connection of disparate systems has been a pipe dream of IT management types for ages. Some of them even really believe there's some magic web page somewhere where an office junior can go and link systems together through their apis and save them a a lot of money. But in practice even starting now I suspect you will likely be at the leading edge of integrating Moodle with other systems if you get going with it successfully now!
Cheers,
Jock