Customization's in OpenedX

Customization in Openedx:

To Understand the customization in Openedx , First you need to understand
 the What is Openedx?, Objective of Openedx ?,Modules in Openedx? etc.
 

What is Open edX-:

“The Openedx is an  open source platform that powers edX courses. 
 Any universities,  institutions  or colleges can host their own instances of
Open edX and offer their own courses or classes .”

• The Open edX platform is a free and open source course management system 
  (CMS) and learning management system (LMS) that was originally developed by 
  edX.
• The Open edX platform is used all over the world to host Massive Open Online
  Courses (MOOCs) as well as smaller classes and training modules where 
  Instructor can manage courses, view the learners progress and learner can
  attend the courses & online test managed by instructor.   
  You can get some basic idea from below diagram:

Openedx work Flow -:

Objective of Openedx-:

• The goal of Openedx is to grow the worldwide community of
   Course teams, researchers, developers, learners and technologists 
  who share innovative solutions to benefit students by sittings from anywhere
   in the world.

• To increase the number universities, colleges & institutions using the edx
  by fostering innovation, creating an ecosystem for developing and 
  distributing content for broad use

• Further for anyone who does not wants to create a learning platform 
  from scratch for their colleges or universities , They can easily develop 
  their own organization or universities learning platform by creating the 
  instance of edx as a base.

• Provides easily integration of custom modules for newly created 
  feature.  For e.g:-  Custom Feature:  Let say instructor need to create 
  a module where a learners can write the essay context based on the
  essay-Title posted by instructor. Instructor should be able review &
  rate the essay context submitted by students. 
  Solution: Now here  Xblock comes in picture where you can develop
  your module as per need and can easily integrate with edx instance.

• Allow Instructors to easily create the multimedia course content.

• Easy to monitor the learners progress

• It’s a full-suit learning framework , including online course materials (text, video, etc), advance assessments, discussions, wikis, metrics & many more.

Modules in Openedx -:

There are several modules provided by the openedx:

• Open edX Studio

• The Open edX LMS (Learning Management System)

• The capa_module XBlock, which implements a set of problem types 
  that are based on LON-CAPA problem types

• The ORA2 XBlock, which implements an open response assessment
  problem type

• Discussion forum

• Open edX Insights

Customization in Openedx -:

Any Organization may be required custom modification in their edx instance:

1. Apply custom-theme.
2. Custom module integration
3. Custom Xblock

1. Apply custom-theme:
1. To apply custom theme in learning platform, make sure that your 
   theme is  located outside of openedx source directory 
   for e.g.-: /my-open-edx-themes.

2. Within that directory, you create a separate directory for each Open edX
   repository that you want to create a theme for, such as
   edx-platform and ecommerce.

3. Within each of those directories, you create another directory and name 
   it for your theme, such as my-theme. You can create a number of themes,
   each with their own name. Within each theme directory, you create 
   directories and files to parallel the structure in the corresponding 
   Open edX repository.

4. After you create these directories, you might have a structure like this 
   one.
1. my-open-edx-themes
   ├── ecommerce
   │   └── my-theme
   └── edx-platform
      └── my-theme
          ├── cms
          └── lms
5. Once you have the above directory structure, you can easily examine the
   default UI files in the source repository of the component that you want to 
   apply by the theme. For e.g. The default Open edX theme includes
   an image file named logo.png that appears in the header of most 
   LMS pages.The file path of that image in the edx-platform repository 
   is lms/static/images/logo.png.

The following example shows an absolute file path of the LMS 
logo image in a theme directory.

The file path after /my-open-edx-themes/edx-platform/my-theme/ matches the relative file path of that image in the default directory for the LMS UI.

/my-open-edx-themes/edx-platform/my-theme/lms/static/images/logo.png

6. You need to configure the theme once done with above step
   For the LMS, you edit :-  /edx/app/edxapp/lms.env.json to set
    "ENABLE_COMPREHENSIVE_THEMING": true,

"COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS": [
   "/my-open-edx-themes/edx-platform"
],

"THEME_NAME": "Your-custom-theme-name"

2. For Studio, you edit :-  /edx/app/edxapp/cms.env.json 
   to set "ENABLE_COMPREHENSIVE_THEMING": true,

"COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS": [
   "/my-open-edx-themes/edx-platform"
],

"THEME_NAME": "Your-custom-theme-name"

3. For the E-commerce service, you edit :- /edx/etc/ecommerce.yml 
   to set “ENABLE_COMPREHENSIVE_THEMING”: true,

COMPREHENSIVE_THEME_DIRS: ["/my-open-edx-themes/ecommerce"],

"THEME_NAME": "Your-custom-theme-name"

2. Custom module integration:
1. The custom modules can be easily added in Openedx, 
   adding a module in Openedx is similar to adding an app in your
   existing Project
2. In openedx you need to integrate the app depends on the requirements .
   For e.g.:  - If you your app is going to be used throughout the application,
   then you have to place that that app inside /common module. 
   Similarly if you need to limit the accessibility of your custom-module, 
   then you have to integrate that module specific to existing module.

Please refer the below diagram to get clear understanding:

3. Custom Xblock
1. What is an XBlock?
1. XBlock is the SDK for the edX MOOC platform.
2. It's a framework that allows the open source software development 
   community to extend and enhance edX to meet future needs and is 
   written in Python2 and is a little of one year old.
3. XBlock is one of the aspects of edX that makes it such a powerful
    tool.
4. XBlock is a component architecture that enables developers to
    create independent course components, or XBlocks, that are 
   able to work seamlessly with other components in the construction
    and presentation of an online course.
5. Instructors are able to combine XBlocks from a variety of 
   sources - from text and video to sophisticated wiki-based 
   collaborative learning environments and online laboratories -
    to create rich engaging online courses.
6. FYI refer link : https://youtu.be/dTS-nsf7d3Q

2. How to create custom Xblock?
1. To create custom xblock you should have basic 
   nowledge of the following technologies.
1. - Python
2. - JavaScript
3. - HTML and CSS
4. - Python virtualenv
5. - Git
2. There are several steps are required to create custom blocks run
    the following commands:
1. Setup the Xblock SDK in a virtual environment, by executing
    following commands:
1. mkdir  your_dir_name
2. cd your_dir_name
3. virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7  venv   # create virtual environment
4. source venv/bin/activate # activate virtual enviroment
5. Clone the XBlock Software Development Kit by executing commands:  
   git clone https://github.com/edx/xblock-sdk.git
6. cd xblock-sdk
7. pip install -r requirements/base.txt
8. cd ..  # Return  to the name_that_you_prefer directory, where you 
   will perform the rest of your work.
9. xblock-sdk/bin/workbench-make-xblock # this command will help to 
   create skeleton files for the xblock.
10. You will be prompted for two pieces of information:
1. Short name: ‘myxblock’
2. Class name: ‘MyXBlock’
11. Once the skeleton of Xblock files are created the install it in the Xblock SDK.
12. Pip install -e myxblock
13. Create the SQLite database before running the XBlock SDK.
14. python xblock-sdk/manage.py runserver. #run the SDK server.
15. To check your XBlock SDK is running , go to http://localhost:8000. Now you should be able to see the below screen:

k