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.
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.
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 git@github.com: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
This application provides a few commands to facilitate the transition from the legacy forum app.
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/.
The forum v2 app comes with the forum_migrate_course_from_mongodb_to_mysql migration command to move data from MongoDB to MySQL. This command migrates user, content, and read state data from MongoDB to MySQL.
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
After you have successfully migrated your course data from MongoDB to MySQL 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
Based on your search backend i.e Elasticsearch or Meilisearch, the commands will populate search indexes.
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.
To rebuild search indices from scratch use rebuild_forum_indices command:
./manage.py lms rebuild_forum_indices
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.
The code in this repository is licensed under the AGPL 3.0 unless otherwise noted. See LICENSE.txt for details.
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.
All community members are expected to follow the Open edX Code of Conduct.
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.
Please do not report security issues in public. Please email security@openedx.org.