Forum plugin for Tutor

This plugin adds discussion forums to your Open edX platform, such that students can have conversations about the courses they are following right in your LMS.

Installation

tutor plugins install forum

Usage

tutor plugins enable forum
tutor dev|local|k8s launch

Configuration

• FORUM_DOCKER_IMAGE (default: ""{{ DOCKER_REGISTRY }}overhangio/openedx-forum:{{ FORUM_VERSION }}")
• FORUM_MONGODB_DATABASE (default: "cs_comments_service")
• FORUM_PORT (default: "4567"")
• FORUM_API_KEY (default: "forumapikey")
• FORUM_MONGODB_USE_SSL: (default: False)
• FORUM_MONGODB_AUTH_SOURCE: (default: "")
• FORUM_MONGODB_AUTH_MECH: (default: "")
• FORUM_REPOSITORY (default: "https://github.com/openedx/cs_comments_service.git")
• FORUM_REPOSITORY_VERSION (default: "{{ OPENEDX_COMMON_VERSION }}")

Customising Environment Variables

To add, or modify environment variables that are supplied to the forum service, you can use the FORUM_ENV hook.

To add or modify an environment variable, update the corresponding entry in the FORUM_ENV dictionary as follows:

from tutorforum.hooks import FORUM_ENV

@FORUM_ENV.add()
def _add_forum_env_vars(env_vars):
    env_vars.update({ "NEW_ENV_VAR": "VALUE" })
    return env_vars

If the environment variable already exists, it will be overridden, otherwise it will be added. Note that if multiple plugins override the same value, the last override will apply.

It is possible to use templates when setting the above values.

Caveats for the mongodb+srv:// syntax

While the newer mongodb+srv:// syntax for the MONGODB_HOST is supported, there are some tradeoffs:

• Query parameters in the URL will be ignored by the forum. Please use the provided configuration options instead.
• The username and password should form part of the URL in the format mongodb+srv://username:password@host/.

Debugging

To debug the comments service, you are encouraged to mount the cs_comments_service repo from the host in the development container:

tutor mounts add /path/to/cs_comments_service
tutor dev launch

If the list of dependencies Gemfile are modified, it is necessary to re-install all gems (ruby dependencies):

tutor dev run forum bundle install

Troubleshooting

This Tutor plugin is maintained by Ghassan Maslamani from Abstract-Technology. Community support is available from the official Open edX forum. Do you need help with this plugin? See the troubleshooting section from the Tutor documentation.

License

This software is licensed under the terms of the AGPLv3.