Overriding plugin renderer moodle

Question

I have site running Moodle 2.9.3+ and i was trying to customize the renderer of one existing plugin, so i found this:

How to override a renderer such that the functi

Answer 1

Hmmm are you sure there isn't an error in the script inclusion? If you have error_reporting off in your ini settings you won't see the E_WARNING PHP might be raising. Set this to on, or use require_once() instead. See the accepted response to this SO post for the differences: Difference between require, include and require_once?

Answer 2

You need to do two things to get a theme renderer to override a core renderer:

1. You need to edit the theme's config.php to add the line: $THEME->rendererfactory = 'theme_overridden_renderer_factory';
2. You need to name your renderer class 'theme_NAMEOFTHEME_format_topcoll_renderer' (and extend 'format_topcoll_renderer', as you have done).

The theme_overridden_renderer_factory works by extending the process of instantiating a renderer to look for a class that matches the name 'theme_NAMEOFTHEME_NAMEOFRENDERER' - as long as that class exists, then it should be used (otherwise the original renderer is used).

See https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Overriding_a_renderer for more details.