xblocks-extra

A collection of XBlocks for the Open edX platform.

Purpose

This repository serves as the consolidated home for several previously standalone XBlock packages, brought together to streamline maintenance and simplify dependency management. These XBlocks are not installed by default in the Open edX platform but can be added as needed. Each XBlock preserves its original package path to serve as a drop-in replacement when migrating from the standalone packages.

The following XBlocks have been migrated here from their respective repositories:

• AudioXBlock migrated from
• FeedbackXBlock migrated from
• Free Text Response XBlock migrated from
• xblock-image-modal migrated from
• xblock-qualtrics-survey migrated from
• xblock-sql-grader migrated from
• xblock-submit-and-compare migrated from

Migrating from Standalone Packages

If you currently have any of the standalone packages listed above installed, you should migrate to xblocks-extra. See the Migration Guide for the instructions.

Installation

pip install xblocks-extra

Development

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+
• Django 4.2 or 5.2

Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/openedx/xblocks-extra.git
cd xblocks-extra

# Install in development mode
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Running Tests

make test

Linting

make lint
make format  # Auto-fix formatting issues

Translating

Internationalization (i18n) is when a program is made aware of multiple languages. Localization (l10n) is adapting a program to local language and cultural habits.

This project follows OEP-58 for centralized translation management via the openedx-translations repository. The daily extraction workflow in openedx-translations clones this repo, runs make extract_translations, and pushes the combined source .po file to Transifex for the translation community to translate.

Prerequisites

• edx-i18n-tools (included in [dev] dependencies)
• gettext system package (brew install gettext on macOS, sudo apt install gettext on Ubuntu)

Translation Workflow

1. Mark translatable strings in Python and JavaScript using gettext / ugettext.
2. Extract source strings: make extract_translations
3. Compile translations: make compile_translations

Make Targets

How It Works

Each XBlock in src/ has its own conf/locale/ directory with a config.yaml and .tx/config. During extraction:

1. i18n_tool extract runs in each XBlock directory, producing django.po (and optionally djangojs.po).
2. If djangojs.po exists, it is merged into django.po using msgcat.
3. The merged file is renamed to text.po.
4. All per-xblock text.po files are combined via msgcat --use-first into a single conf/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/django.po at the repository root for the openedx-translations pipeline.

Verifying Translations

# Dry-run extraction
make extract_translations

# Check the combined output
cat conf/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/django.po

# Build and test with dummy translations
make build_dummy_translations

# Verify Transifex config (requires tx CLI)
cd src/<xblock_name> && tx status

Note: The .gitignore ignores *.po and *.mo files. This is expected — translation source files are managed in the openedx-translations repository, not committed here.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our contributing guidelines before submitting a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.