[DEPR]: Courseware Learner Sequence pages -> micro-frontend

RFC Start Date

2020-09-02

Target Plan Accepted Date

2020-10-05

Target Transition Unblocked Date

2024-09-01

Earliest Breaking Changes Unblocked Date

2024-10-01

Earliest Open edX Named Release Without This Functionality

Ulmo - 2025-07

Rationale

As part of our re-platforming effort, we are replacing Django-server-side rendered frontend implementations in favor of React-based micro-frontend implementations. This ticket covers the pages related to the Learner Sequence pages (often referred to as the “courseware experience”). The announcement of the Legacy implementation’s deprecation was shared on the Open edX forum.

Removal

We are removing edx-platform's older implementation of the Django-server-side rendering of the Learner Course Sequence and Unit pages.

Replacement

We are replacing this page with the new micro-frontend-based implementation:

'courseware' within frontend-app-learning

Deprecation

No response

Migration

No response

Additional Info

Still to-do (updated 03/29/2022)

Deprecation of old Mongo
- feat!: remove all access to Old Mongo courses #29848
Entrance Exams: MFE implementation of this feature
- done
Removal of legacy courseware view code
- merge of this planned for May 2

Original Jira Issue: https://openedx.atlassian.net/browse/DEPR-109

I'm not able to edit the description of this issue, but some updated information:

Technology Removal Date
May 2, 2022

First Open edX Named Release Without This Functionality
O* (we will merge these changes after Nutmeg release is cut and not cherry-pick over to the release branch)

Still to-do (updated 03/29/2022)

Deprecation of old Mongo
- remove LMS runtime access to draft modulestore to be merged Apr 4
Entrance Exams: MFE implementation of this feature
- done
Removal of legacy courseware view code
- merge of this planned for May 2

@jmyatt

Thanks @jmyatt I've updated the content.

@jmyatt

@jmyatt I've also added you as the assignee just so we can track who to talk to about this given that it's in progress. If it should be someone else, let me know.

Now that #30238 landed, the only place these legacy courseware templates/views are used is for Studio's preview mode feature.

The team that owns Studio has plans to eventually upgrade that feature into a version that can use the MFE, but for now, it will continue to use the legacy view. (I've asked for a link to a ticket for tracking this, can update when I have it.)

Learners and staff can no longer access the normal legacy views though. Has to be accessed via the (staff-only) preview mode.

I'd argue that from a "feature DEPR" point of view, this could be closed. But from a "code DEPR" point of view, the code still lives on for this one feature and maybe you don't want to close. Willl leave it up to you folks, but I'd vote for closing.

We believe this is still blocked on getting rid of content preview, but that needs some verification.

@dianakhuang

@dianakhuang I can verify that Studio course preview is one feature (and, as far as I know, the only feature) relying on the legacy courseware sequence views.

You can see this in action by going into Studio, choosing a course, clicking into a unit editor, and and clicking "View Preview". This should bring you to a variant of the LMS running on the PREVIEW_LMS_BASE domain, which causes this conditional to return True and send you the legacy sequence view: https://github.com/openedx/edx-platform/blob/open-release/palm.1/lms/djangoapps/courseware/toggles.py#L105-L112

@KristinAoki

@KristinAoki has moved Studio course preview over to the Learning MFE: openedx/frontend-app-learning#1455

Once that is confirmed as fixed, we can begin the process of removing legacy courseware logic, views, and flags entirely. The only view that should remain is the chromeless XBlock renderers, which is what the MFEs and the apps use.