External Services

Moodle has a full-featured Web Service framework, allowing you to use and create web services for use in external systems. The Web Service framework and the External API work closely together providing a number of Endpoints, and self-describing classes to support a wide range of uses.

Moodle uses these web services internally for:

• AJAX interactions in the Moodle Web Interface; and
• The official Moodle Mobile App.

The following example shows a typical authentication and protocol workflow.

Developer documentation

The External Service API has two categories of documentation:

1. this documentation details how to write a web service and use the External API; and
2. API documentation for a live Moodle site, which can be found under Site administration > Server > Web services > API Documentation .

In addition to the standard API endpoints, several additional API endpoints are available for the purpose of uploading, and downloading, files. For more information on these endpoints, see the file handling documentation.

• How to contribute a web service function to core
• Adding a web service to your plugin
• Code example: Adding a web service, using APIs by (Tim Hunt)
• Implement a web service client
• Web services files handling
• Web service Listing & Roadmap

Specification and brainstorming

• External services security
• External services description

See also

• Web service API functions
• Web services FAQ
• How to create and enable a web service
• How to enable the mobile web service
• Web services user documentation
• Mastering Moodle Web Services development - Last session of the Hackfest in the MoodleMoot UK 2016