Installation

The driver is a Node.js library with one peer dependency, playwright-core, which drives the browser.

Requirements

• Node.js 20 or later.
• A Moodle site the person can log in to, Moodle 4.x or 5.x (developed and checked against 5.2; see Compatibility).
• A browser: Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome installed on the system, or permission to download Playwright's Chromium (about 180 MB) the first time.
• A screen, the first time, so the person can log in by hand in a browser window. After that the driver runs headless, also on servers and in containers.

Install

From npm, with its one peer dependency:

npm install @falkenslab/moodle-driver playwright-core

Each GitHub release also carries the package, built, as a .tgz (npm install <its URL>). Or from a clone, to follow main or change the driver:

# From a clone, next to your program's folder
git clone https://github.com/falkenslab/moodle-driver.git
cd moodle-driver && npm install && npm run build

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@falkenslab/moodle-driver": "file:../moodle-driver",
    "playwright-core": "^1.64.0"
  }
}

npm install builds the library (prepare runs npm run build), so a file: dependency works as is. After changing the driver's sources, run npm run build in it again before your program sees the change.

The browser

The driver uses playwright-core, which brings no browser of its own. It looks for one in this order:

1. Microsoft Edge (msedge), installed on most Windows computers.
2. Google Chrome (chrome).
3. Playwright's Chromium (chromium), downloaded on first use when downloadBrowser is true.

You can force one with the channel option of createBrowserManager. While Chromium downloads, calls fail at once with BrowserDownloadingError (the download goes on in the background); try again a minute or two later. chromiumDownload() on the browser manager says whether it's downloading or failed. See The browser.

Chromium goes where Playwright keeps its browsers: PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH when set, else the user's ms-playwright cache.

Two entry points

Import	What it has
@falkenslab/moodle-driver	The library: the browser manager, logging in, every Moodle area, errors, data categories
@falkenslab/moodle-driver/testing	Helpers to test a program that uses the driver without a real Moodle: a fake Moodle served inside a browser context, a browser manager that launches nothing

Both are ESM with TypeScript declarations.

Next

Log in once, then write your first program.