fix: course outline not found issue for ccx courses

[Anas12091101]

Description

CCX courses are created from LMS and the course publish signals are in CMS. This PR adds cms.djangoapps.contentstore.apps.ContentstoreConfig in INSTALLED_APPS for CCX feature in LMS production settings. Without this, the course publish signals are not triggered at the time of CCX creation resulting in a CourseOutlineData.DoesNotExist error for the CCX courses.

Useful information to include:

• Which edX user roles will this change impact? "Learner", "Course Author"
• Provide links to the description of corresponding configuration changes. Remember to correctly annotate these
  changes.

Supporting information

https://github.com/mitodl/hq/issues/3880

Testing instructions

To test this locally, follow the steps below

• In your private.py in LMS, add these settings to enable CCX:

FEATURES["CUSTOM_COURSES_EDX"]=True
INSTALLED_APPS += ['lms.djangoapps.ccx', 'openedx.core.djangoapps.ccxcon.apps.CCXConnectorConfig']
COURSE_IMPORT_EXPORT_STORAGE = 'django.core.files.storage.FileSystemStorage'
COURSEGRAPH_DUMP_COURSE_ON_PUBLISH = False
MODULESTORE_FIELD_OVERRIDE_PROVIDERS += ('lms.djangoapps.ccx.overrides.CustomCoursesForEdxOverrideProvider',)

• In your private.py in CMS, add this setting:

FEATURES["CUSTOM_COURSES_EDX"]=True

• In Studio, create a course and go to advanced settings. Toggle the "Enable CCX" setting there.

• Next, go to the course's instructor dashboard, open the membership tab, and add a CCX coach.

• Log in as the CCX coach, open the course you created, go to the CCX coach tab, and create a CCX. (You can find all the steps to create a CCX in the docs).

• Save your changes in the Schedule Tab, then check the course outline of the CCX course.

  • You’ll notice the course outline won’t load, and you’ll see a CourseOutlineData.DoesNotExist error in your LMS logs.

• To fix this, update the INSTALLED_APPS line in LMS settings to:

INSTALLED_APPS += ['lms.djangoapps.ccx', 'openedx.core.djangoapps.ccxcon.apps.CCXConnectorConfig', 'cms.djangoapps.contentstore.apps.ContentstoreConfig', 'openedx.core.djangoapps.content.search', 'openedx.core.djangoapps.content_staging']

• Go back to the Schedule Tab, make any changes, and save again.

• Finally, revisit the course outline page of the CCX course.

  • The outline will now load perfectly without any errors.

Deadline

"None"

Other information

Include anything else that will help reviewers and consumers understand the change.

• Does this change depend on other changes elsewhere?
• Any special concerns or limitations? For example: deprecations, migrations, security, or accessibility.
• If your database migration can't be rolled back easily.

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[pdpinch]

Is all this code behind the feature flag, FEATURES['CUSTOM_COURSES_EDX'] ?

[pdpinch]

Why is this needed?

[Anas12091101]

We included cms.djangoapps.contentstore.apps.ContentstoreConfig in the INSTALLED_APPS of the LMS to ensure the app is properly loaded and our course publish signals are triggered properly. The app relies on the COURSE_IMPORT_EXPORT_STORAGE setting, which must be defined in the LMS configuration.

Failure to define this setting results in an error, as demonstrated in this related build log.

[pdpinch]

I'd like to understand this better.

First of all, you're only adding 3 new apps here, right?

• ContentstoreConfig
• search
• content-staging

How is it that these aren't running already? Why does the CCX feature need them turned on?

[Anas12091101]

The problem is that a CCX course is created from LMS. All the above apps are already defined in CMS. The course publishing signals are not triggered in LMS until we define cms.djangoapps.contentstore.apps.ContentstoreConfig in our INSTALLED_APPS in LMS. The last 2 apps (openedx.core.djangoapps.content.search and openedx.core.djangoapps.content_staging) are required to be defined as they are being used in the code.

[pdpinch]

Is it feasible to add some tests for this?

[Anas12091101]

Is all this code behind the feature flag, FEATURES['CUSTOM_COURSES_EDX'] ?

Yes

Is it feasible to add some tests for this?

I am not sure, are suggesting adding tests for the feature flag?