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Basic usage

This page explains how to drive the hosted app at moodle-playground.com from the browser: the toolbar, the side panel, loading blueprints, and resetting state.

If you just want the fastest path to a running site, see Quick start. To run the app on your own machine, see Run it locally.

Open the playground

  1. Go to https://moodle-playground.com (mirrors: https://moodle-playground.pages.dev/ and https://ateeducacion.github.io/moodle-playground/).
  2. Wait for the first boot. A full Moodle site is compiled to WebAssembly and installed in memory, so the first load takes a few seconds. Boot progress is shown in the Logs tab.
  3. The app is ready when the address bar becomes editable. By default you land logged in as the site administrator on the site home page.

Default credentials

Username admin, password password. A blueprint can override these via an installMoodle step — see Blueprints.

The toolbar

The top bar is a minimal browser chrome for the Moodle site running inside the iframe:

  • Home (house icon) — go to the site root (/).
  • Refresh (↻) — reload the current Moodle page.

  • Address bar — the URL inside Moodle. Type a path and press Enter to navigate. For example:

    /admin/index.php
/course/management.php
/user/preferences.php

  • Documentation — opens these docs in a new tab.

  • Toggle sidebar (panel icon, far right) — show or hide the side panel.

Tip

The address bar takes paths relative to the Moodle site, not full URLs. Internal runtime routing (scope, runtime, service worker) is handled for you; see URL parameters for the parameters on the app URL.

The side panel

Click the Toggle sidebar button to open the panel. It has four tabs.

Info — choose Moodle and PHP versions

The Info tab holds the runtime configuration:

  • Moodle version — pick a built branch (4.4, 4.5, 5.0 default, 5.1, 5.2, or main).
  • PHP version — pick a PHP version compatible with the selected branch (8.1–8.5; the list updates automatically, default 8.3).
  • Apply & Reset — appears only after you change a version. Applying is destructive: it boots a fresh, clean install on the new versions and wipes the current site.
  • Runtime ID — a copyable identifier for the active runtime.
  • Reset Playground — see Reset the playground.

Warning

Switching the Moodle or PHP version reinstalls from scratch. All current courses, users, and data are lost.

You can also set versions from the app URL without opening the panel:

https://moodle-playground.com/?moodle=4.4&php=8.3

See URL parameters for the full list.

Logs — runtime log

The Logs tab streams boot and runtime messages, including blueprint step progress and errors. Use Copy to grab the full log or Clear to empty it. For more verbose tracing, open the app with ?debug=true:

https://moodle-playground.com/?debug=true

PHP Info — diagnostics

The PHP Info tab captures the running runtime's phpinfo() output (PHP version, loaded extensions, limits). Use Refresh to re-capture it.

Blueprint — view, import, export

The Blueprint tab shows the active blueprint as JSON (read-only):

  • Export — download the active blueprint as moodle-playground.blueprint.json.
  • Import — load a .json blueprint from your computer (see below).

Load a blueprint

A blueprint is a JSON file that provisions the site at boot (courses, users, plugins, and more). See Blueprints for the format.

  1. Open the Blueprint tab in the side panel.
  2. Click Import and choose a .json blueprint.

The app reloads with the blueprint applied to a fresh runtime.

Pass blueprint-url on the app URL (relative or absolute):

https://moodle-playground.com/?blueprint-url=/assets/blueprints/examples/minimal.blueprint.json

Pass the blueprint directly with blueprint (raw JSON, base64, or a data: URL). Inline blueprints take the highest precedence:

https://moodle-playground.com/?blueprint=%7B%22steps%22%3A%5B%7B%22step%22%3A%22installMoodle%22%7D%5D%7D

Ready-made examples live under assets/blueprints/examples/ — see the Blueprint examples.

Reset the playground

Click Reset Playground in the Info tab to discard the current site and boot a clean install of the active configuration. Unless a blueprint was supplied via ?blueprint= or ?blueprint-url=, reset also clears any imported blueprint so you start from the default.

Note

Reset is the supported way to recover a stuck or broken session. Do not add ?clean=1 to the app URL — that is an internal parameter the shell manages itself.

Ephemeral state

The playground is fully in-memory. Keep this model in mind:

  • Within a tab session, your data survives a page reload — but only for the same blueprint source. Loading a different blueprint, or clicking Reset Playground, starts fresh.
  • Each tab is independent (the session scope lives in sessionStorage). Opening the app in a new tab starts clean.
  • Closing the tab loses everything. Nothing is written to disk. This is a sandbox, not a place to store real data.

Limitations & troubleshooting

  • Ephemeral by design — there is no persistence after the tab closes. Export a blueprint if you want to reproduce a setup later.
  • Browser support — Chromium-based browsers work best. On Firefox and Safari, outbound network calls from WASM PHP are restricted, so installing plugins, themes, or language packs from external URLs may fail or fall back to a proxy.
  • Memory-bound — very large courses, backups, or plugins can exhaust WASM memory and crash the runtime. Prefer smaller fixtures.
  • Experimental SQLite driver — the database runs on an experimental SQLite PDO patch, so behavior is not a full production-parity Moodle.

If a boot gets stuck or a page misbehaves:

  1. Open the Logs tab (and reload with ?debug=true) to read what failed.
  2. Click Reset Playground to force a clean boot.
  3. Try a Chromium-based browser if network-dependent steps fail.

For how the pieces fit together, see Architecture.