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   1  This files describes API changes for the core question engine.
   2  
   3  === 3.9 ===
   4  
   5  1) In the past, whenever a question_usage_by_activity was loaded from the database,
   6     the apply_attempt_state was immediately called on every question, whether the
   7     results of doing that were ever used, or not.
   8  
   9     Now we have changed the code flow, so that apply_attempt_state is only called
  10     when some data or processing is requested (e.g. analysing a response or rendering
  11     the question) which requires the question to be fully initialised. This is MDL-67183.
  12  
  13     This change should be completely invisible with everything handled by the question
  14     engine. If you don't change your code, it should continue to work.
  15  
  16     However, to get the full advantage of this change, you should review your code,
  17     and look at every call to get_question or get_behaviour (on a question_attempt or
  18     question_usage_by_activity). The problem with these methods is that the question engine
  19     cannot know what you are planning to do with the question once you have got it.
  20     Therefore, they have to assume that apply_attempt_state must be called - which can be expensive.
  21     If you know that you don't need that (because, for example, you are just going to
  22     look at ->id or ->questiontext or something simple) then you should pass
  23     false to these functions, to get the possible performance benefit.
  24     In addition, there is a new method $qa->get_question_id() to handle that case more simply.
  25  
  26     Note that you don't have worry about this in places like the renderer for your question
  27     type, because by the time you are in the renderer, the question will already have been
  28     initialised.
  29  
  30  
  31  === 3.7 ===
  32  
  33  1) When a question is rendered, the outer div of the question has an id="q123"
  34     added. Unfortunately, this id was not actually unique, leading to bugs like
  35     MDL-52572. Therefore, we have had to change it. The id used now is what
  36     is returned by the new method $qa->get_outer_question_div_unique_id().
  37     The old code that you need to search for and replace with a call to this
  38     method is "'q' . $qa->get_slot()"
  39  
  40     Note, the new method has also been added to Moodle 3.5.6 and 3.6.4, but
  41     returning the old id. This is to help question types that want to support
  42     multiple Moodle versions.
  43  
  44  === 3.1, 3.0.3, 2.9.5 ===
  45  
  46  1) The field question_display_options::$extrainfocontent is now displayed in the
  47     outcomes (yellow) div by default. It used to be in the info div. If you have
  48     overriden the question renderer, you may need to make a corresponding change.
  49  
  50  
  51  === 3.0, 2.9.2, 2.8.8 ===
  52  
  53  1) The extra internal PARAM constant question_attempt::PARAM_MARK should no
  54     longer be used. (It should not have been used outside the core of the
  55     question system). See MDL-51090 if you want more explanation.
  56  
  57  
  58  === 2.9 ===
  59  
  60  1) Some new methods on the question_usage class (and corresponding methods on
  61     question_attempt, question_attempt_step, question_usage_observer, ... requried
  62     to implement them, but almost certainly you should only be calling the
  63     question_usage methods from your code.
  64  
  65     * question_usage::add_question_in_place_of_other($slot, $question, $maxmark = null)
  66  
  67       This creates a new questoin_attempt in place of an existing one, moving the
  68       existing question_attempt to the end of the usage, in a new slot number.
  69       The new slot number is returned. The goal is to replace the old attempt, but
  70       not lose the old data.
  71  
  72     * question_usage::set_question_max_mark($slot, $maxmark)
  73  
  74       Sets the max mark for one question in this usage. Previously, you could
  75       only change this using the bulk operation question_usage::set_max_mark_in_attempts;
  76  
  77     * question_usage::set_question_attempt_metadata($slot, $name, $value);
  78       question_usage::get_question_attempt_metadata($slot, $name);
  79  
  80       You can now record metadata, that is, values stored by name, against
  81       question_attempts. The question engine ignores this data (other than storing
  82       and loading it) but you may find it useful in your code.
  83  
  84     To see examples of where these are used, look at the chagnes from MDL-40992.
  85  
  86  2) New fields in question_display_options, ->extrainfocontent and ->extrahistorycontent.
  87     These default to blank, but can be used to inject extra content into those parts
  88     of the question display. If you have overridden the methods in
  89     core_question_renderer that use these fields, you may need to update your renderer.
  90  
  91  
  92  === 2.6 ===
  93  
  94  1) The method question_behaviour::is_manual_grade_in_range and move and become
  95     question_engine::is_manual_grade_in_range.
  96  
  97  2) The arguments to core_question_renderer::mark_summary changed from
  98     ($qa, $options) to ($qa, $behaviouroutput, $options). If you have overridden
  99     that method you will need to update your code.
 100  
 101  3) Heading level for number(), add_part_heading() and respond_history()
 102     has been lowered by one level. These changes are part of improving the page
 103     accessibility and making heading to have proper nesting. (MDL-41615)
 104  
 105  === Earlier changes ===
 106  
 107  * Were not documented in this way. Sorry.