Moodle: Automating user/course creation and enrolments - moodle

Question

I had a look at the documentation on enrolments, but all the enrolment methods seem to involve some interaction with the GUI.
Is there a way to script enrolments? Something like:
./moodle_do_enrolments imsdata.xml
Or even some web services calls that I can call from an external program?
I'd like to be able to do the following in an automated fashion:
1) Add a user.
2) Create a course with specified title etc.
3) Enrol that user in that course.
Of course at some point I'd hook this up with our user systems and other management systems, but for the moment, I'm just trying to do a proof of concept.
Where is some documentation that explains the process of automated enrolments?

Answer 1

You could try to create your own PHP script: parse the XML file and use internal moodle functions to solve the problem.
Basic ideas to solve these problems
1) Add a user:
In user/lib.php is a method: user_create_user($user).
Just include that lib.php and find out which information is needed in the user object.
2) Create a course
In course/lib.php is a method: create_course($data, $editoroptions).
Just include that lib.php and find out which information is needed in data array.
3) Enrol a user
I created the following method to do the job for me.
// enroll student to course (roleid = 5 is student role)
function enroll_to_course($courseid, $userid, $roleid=5, $extendbase=3, $extendperiod=0) {
global $DB;
$instance = $DB->get_record('enrol', array('courseid'=>$courseid, 'enrol'=>'manual'), '*', MUST_EXIST);
$course = $DB->get_record('course', array('id'=>$instance->courseid), '*', MUST_EXIST);
$today = time();
$today = make_timestamp(date('Y', $today), date('m', $today), date('d', $today), 0, 0, 0);
if(!$enrol_manual = enrol_get_plugin('manual')) { throw new coding_exception('Can not instantiate enrol_manual'); }
switch($extendbase) {
case 2:
$timestart = $course->startdate;
break;
case 3:
default:
$timestart = $today;
break;
}
if ($extendperiod <= 0) { $timeend = 0; } // extendperiod are seconds
else { $timeend = $timestart + $extendperiod; }
$enrolled = $enrol_manual->enrol_user($instance, $userid, $roleid, $timestart, $timeend);
add_to_log($course->id, 'course', 'enrol', '../enrol/users.php?id='.$course->id, $course->id);
return $enrolled;
}

Answer 2

Using a GUI is not necessary, you can create an enrolment/authentication plugin to achieve this or use one of the built in ones. I'm not too familiar with the ims enrollment plugin, but the standard ldap/database plugins have scripts which can be used to automate this sync process.
See for example:
enrol/database/cli/sync.php