openedx-forum 0.2.0

Open edX forum application

Open edX Forum

This application provides a forum backend for use within Open edX courses. Features include: nested comments, voting, instructor endorsements, and others. The frontend is provided by the frontend-app-discussions microfrontend application.

This project is a drop-in replacement of the legacy cs_comments_service application. The legacy application was written in Ruby, while this one is written in Python for direct integration in the edx-platform Django project. Moreover, forum data no longer resides in MongoDB, but in the relational MySQL database. The motivation for this rewrite is described more extensively in the Axim Funded Contribution Proposal.

Installation

Starting from the Open edX Sumac release, the forum app is distributed via the Tutor forum plugin.

The only prerequisite for installation is a working Open edX platform with Tutor, on the Sumac release (v19+) or the main branch. Enable the forum by running:

tutor plugins enable forum
tutor local launch

The forum feature will then be automatically enabled in the Open edX platform, and all API calls will be transparently handled by the new application.

Development

Run tests with:

make test-all       # run all tests
make test           # run unit tests only
make test-quality   # run quality tests only
make test-e2e       # run end-to-end tests only

When developing this application, it is recommended to clone this repository locally and mount it within the application containers:

git clone [e-mail]:openedx/forum.git
tutor mounts add ./forum/

Check that the forum repository is properly bind-mounted both at build- and run-time by running tutor mounts list. It should output the following:

- name: /home/path/to/forum
  build_mounts:
  - image: openedx
    context: mnt-forum
  - image: openedx-dev
    context: mnt-forum
  compose_mounts:
  - service: openedx
    container_path: /mnt/forum
  - service: openedx-dev
    container_path: /mnt/forum

Re-build the openedx-dev image and launch the platform:

tutor images build openedx-dev
tutor dev launch

Administration

Deployment of the forum v2 application is gated by two course waffle flags. In addition, this application provides a few commands to facilitate the transition from the legacy forum app.

Forum v2 toggle

In edx-platform, forum v2 is not enabled by default and edx-platform will keep communicating with the legacy forum app. To enable forum v2 in your Open edX platform, toggle the discussions.enable_forum_v2 course waffle flag:

./manage.py lms waffle_flag --create --everyone discussions.enable_forum_v2

Note that Tutor enables this flag for all forum plugin users, such that you don’t have to run this command yourself. If you wish to migrate your courses one by one to the new forum v2 app, you may create the corresponding “Waffle flag course override” objects in your LMS administration panel, at: http(s)://<LMS_HOST>/admin/waffle_utils/waffleflagcourseoverridemodel/.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ Even if the forum v2 toggle is not enabled, edx-platform will make a call to the forum v2 API in some edge cases. That’s because edx-platform needs to determine whether it should use forum v2 or cs_comments_service, based on the value of some course waffle flag. In order to access the course wafffle flag, we need to determine the course ID of the current HTTP request. In some requests, the course ID is not available: only the thread ID or the comment ID is. Thus, edx-platform needs to fetch the course ID that is associated to the thread or comment. That information is stored either in MySQL or in MongoDB. Thus, edx-platform needs to call the forum v2 API.

As a consequence, the forum v2 app needs to have accurate MongoDB configuration settings even if you don’t use forum v2. In a Tutor installation, these settings are set to the right values. In other environments, the following Django settings must be set:

# Name of the MongoDB database in which forum data is stored
FORUM_MONGODB_DATABASE = "cs_comments_service"

# This setting will be passed to the MongoDB client constructor as follows:
# pymongo.MongoClient(**FORUM_MONGODB_CLIENT_PARAMETERS)
# Documentation: https://pymongo.readthedocs.io/en/4.4.0/api/pymongo/mongo_client.html#pymongo.mongo_client.MongoClient
FORUM_MONGODB_CLIENT_PARAMETERS = {"host": "mongodb"}

MySQL backend toggle

To preserve the legacy behaviour of storing data in MongoDB, the forum v2 app makes it possible to keep using MongoDB as a data backend. However, it is strongly recommended to switch to the MySQL storage backend by toggling the forum_v2.enable_mysql_backend course waffle flag:

./manage.py lms waffle_flag --create --everyone forum_v2.enable_mysql_backend

Here again, Tutor creates this flag by default, such that you don’t have to create it yourself. If you decide to switch to MySQL, you will have to migrate your data from MongoDB – see instructions below.

Migration from MongoDB to MySQL

The forum v2 app comes with the forum_migrate_courses_to_mysql migration command to move data from MongoDB to MySQL. This command will perform the following steps:

1. Migrate data: user, content and read state data from MongoDB to MySQL.

2. Enable the forum_v2.enable_mysql_backend waffle flag for the specified course(s).

To migrate data for specific courses, run the command with the course IDs as argument:

./manage.py lms forum_migrate_course_from_mongodb_to_mysql <course_id_1> <course_id_2>

To migrate data for all courses, run the command with the all argument:

./manage.py lms forum_migrate_course_from_mongodb_to_mysql all

To test data migration without actually creating course toggles, use the --no-toggle option:

./manage.py lms forum_migrate_course_from_mongodb_to_mysql --no-toggle all

⚠️ Note that the command will create toggles only for the processed courses. Courses created in the future will not automatically use the MySQL backend unless you create the global waffle flag with the waffle_flag --create command indicated above.

MongoDB data deletion

After you have successfully migrated your course data from MySQL to MongoDB using the command above, you may delete your MongoDB data using the forum_delete_course_from_mongodb management command. This command deletes course data from MongoDB for the specified courses.

Run the command with the course ID(s) as an argument:

./manage.py lms forum_delete_course_from_mongodb <course_id_1> <course_id_2>

To delete data for all courses, run the command with the all argument:

./manage.py lms forum_delete_course_from_mongodb all

To try out changes before applying them, use the --dry-run option. For instance:

./manage.py lms forum_delete_course_from_mongodb all --dry-run

MongoDB Indexes

To optimize MongoDB query performance, it is crucial to create database indexes. The command will create or update indexes and skip them if they already exist.

To create or update MongoDB indexes, execute the following command:

./manage.py lms forum_create_mongodb_indexes

Search Indicies

Based on your search backend i.e Elasticsearch or Meilisearch, the commands will populate search indexes.

Initialize Forum Indices

To initialize search indices use initialize_forum_indices command. It allows you to force the creation of new indices even if they already exist:

./manage.py lms initialize_forum_indices

Pass --force flag to force the creation of new indices.

Rebuild Forum Indices

To rebuild search indices from scratch use rebuild_forum_indices command:

./manage.py lms rebuild_forum_indices

Getting Help

If you are having trouble, we have discussion forums at https://discuss.openedx.org where you can connect with others in the community.

Our real-time conversations are on Slack. You can request a Slack invitation, then join our community Slack workspace.

For anything non-trivial, the best path is to open an issue in this repository with as many details about the issue you are facing as you can provide.

For more information about these options, see the Getting Help page.

License

The code in this repository is licensed under the AGPL 3.0 unless otherwise noted. See LICENSE.txt for details.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. Please read How To Contribute for details.

This project is currently accepting all types of contributions, bug fixes, security fixes, maintenance work, or new features. However, please make sure to discuss your new feature idea with the maintainers before beginning development to maximize the chances of your change being accepted. You can start a conversation by creating a new issue on this repo summarizing your idea.

The Open edX Code of Conduct

All community members are expected to follow the Open edX Code of Conduct.

People

The assigned maintainers for this component and other project details may be found in Backstage. Backstage pulls this data from the catalog-info.yaml file in this repo.

Reporting Security Issues

Please do not report security issues in public. Please email [e-mail].

Change Log

Unreleased

0.1.0 – 2024-11-12

• First release on PyPI.