accesslib: get_my_courses() rework, new get_courses_bycap_fromsess()
get_my_courses() goes from a bazillion queries (500 in some sample
cases) to 1 for the logged-in user, and 4 for a non-logged-in user.
One of those queries brings a *lot* of data across (all rows from
mdl_course) so there is room for serious optimisation.
However, this clocks at ~300 ms on my laptop, costly, but not
the end of the world. If your PHP-DB link has bandwidth probs
it might be a problem.
A few important changes to get_my_courses()
- (Compat ALERT!) the default fields are less than before --
(will be followed by patches that fix the callers!) our defaults
had grown to quite a bit because of the crazy caching scheme it had
- the $fields parameter is to name _additional_ fields you need, and
ideally wants them passed as an array. Will cope with old-style
strings too.
- the returned courses have an extra property "context" that is
a fully valid context object, so if the caller needs to perform
further accesslib checks, we save a query per course down the road
The work is done in the newfangled get_courses_bycap_fromsess()
which is brute-force but fast. I'm sure we can optimise the common
cases a lot in it if we try. It'd be worthwhile to
- reduce the rows we grab - that's really boneheaded
- if we copy and tweak the logic of has_cap_fromsess() in it
it can be made even faster