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Editor API

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The editor API lets you control Moodle text editors. It can be found in lib/editorlib.php.

info

Normally you do not need to use this API directly because you can include editors as part of a Moodle form, which will automatically set up the editor for you.

How to set up a text editor​

To set up a text editor on an existing HTML text area field:

  • Call function editors_get_preferred_editor(), which will return an object of the texteditor class.
  • Call function use_editor() to enable the editor for the text area.

For example, assuming there is an HTML text area with id mytextareaid:

$editor = editors_get_preferred_editor(FORMAT_HTML);
$editor->use_editor('mytextareaid');

Editor options​

The use_editor function allows an options array to be supplied.

General options​

  • context: set to the current context object
  • enable_filemanagement: set false to disable the file management plugin
  • autosave: set false to disable autosave

Atto-specific options​

  • toolbar: set to override which icons appear on the toolbar (normally it uses the admin setting - this is for special cases for example if you want a minimal editor in a particular plugin).

The following example will cause atto to show the four buttons indicated.

$attobuttons = 'style1 = bold, italic' .  PHP_EOL . 'list = unorderedlist, orderedlist';
$editor->use_editor($id, [
    'context' => $context,
    'autosave' => false,
    'atto:toolbar' => $attobuttons
], [
    'return_types' => FILE_EXTERNAL,
]);