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There are a number of changes that are were needed to support the ability for a new feature to be implemented purely within its own Django app:

• Stevedore extension points should be provided for each of the common UX changes that need to be made
  • See: How to add a new plugin entry point to edX platform
  • Note: see the Audit below for a comprehensive list
• The first such extension point has been implemented: 

  • Jira Legacy
    server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-2242

  • https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/8015
  • This allows any Django app to provide new tabs for a course
  • See Adding a new course tab for details
• Some important first extension points are as follows:
  • "Feature flag"
    • Note: this will be a ConfigurationModel derivative (which includes a built-in enabled column)
    • We recommend this over using a Django settings feature flag
    • It would be useful to allow all associated extensions to obey the feature flag automatically
  • URLs for new UI and REST APIs
  • Instructor Dashboard components/tabs
XBlocks should be extended to provide more capabilitiesCourse-scoped fields for configuration settings Jira LegacyserverJIRA (openedx.atlassian.net)serverId13fd1930-5608-platform needs to be extended to support pluggable user interfaces

Status
colour Green title DONE

• The Web Fragments library provides support for building view fragments in Django
• The edX platform has now started to use web fragments to support building course tabs
• OEP-12: Pluggable User Interfaces goes into more details
• XBlocks should be extended to provide more capabilities
  • Course-scoped fields for configuration settings

    • Jira Legacy
      server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-1804

  • Ability to add an xblock as a course tab

    • Jira Legacy
      server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-2319

  • Studio editing tabs for xblocks

    • Jira Legacy
      server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-850

    • Jira Legacy
      server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-851

  • Admin views for both Studio and LMS
  • Need built-in support for RequireJS or AMD compliant dependency management

    • Jira Legacy
      server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key PLAT-481

• The Django asset pipeline needs to be improvedHave the improved 

  Status
  colour Green title DONE

  • Have the pipeline pick up assets from all installed Django apps (to support CDNs, minification etc)
    
    • A spike was done to prove the approach: PR 7610: Django extension spike
    • The work was completed as part of the Teams epic:

      • Jira Legacy
        server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-2242

  • RequireJS Optimizer support should be added to the LMS
    • An order must be established for visual aspects such as tabs. Today the order is implicit in the hard-coded list.
      • If in doubt, sort the items alphabetically by name
    • How can page-level plug-ins render the correct page
      • For example, how does a new tab render the correct header and footer for the page that it renders?
      • The simplest solution is to document the boilerplate that each plug-in type is required to include
      • Miki suggests that maybe we should use inheritance to our benefit here, where the superclass renders the boilerplate
      • Eventually we might want to use a mechanism more like XBlock so that a plug-in only owns a block and not the entire page
        • Of course, supporting XBlocks themselves should also be supported
        • A possible challenge with this is that it is subverting the Django framework
    • It needs to be decided how mobile can benefit from these plug-ins
      • If they provide new UI as URLs then they won't just drop in to mobile
      • XBlocks will just appear, but only by using a web view to render the HTML
      • React, a JavaScript library from Facebook, might help with native rendering of HTML

        Jira Legacy
        server JIRA (openedx.atlassian.net) serverId 13fd1930-5608-3aac-a5dd-21b934d3a4b4 key TNL-1322

      • See also RequireJS in the LMS
    There are some interesting aspects of supporting arbitrary plug-ins
    

    • • TNL-1322

      • See also RequireJS in the LMS

  There are further complications if we want to move the Django app out to its own repo:

  • How do we write integration tests?How do assets get into the Django pipeline?
  • How can SASS build upon the base SASS from edx-platform?

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