Editor API
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The editor API lets you control Moodle text editors. It can be found in lib/editorlib.php.
important
Normally you do not need to use this API directly because you can include editors as part of a Moodle form, which will automatically set up the editor for you.
How to set up a text editor
To set up a text editor on an existing HTML text area field:
- Call function editors_get_preferred_editor(), which will return an object of the texteditor class.
- Call function use_editor()to enable the editor for the text area.
For example, assuming there is an HTML text area with id mytextareaid:
$editor = editors_get_preferred_editor(FORMAT_HTML);
$editor->use_editor('mytextareaid');
Editor options
The use_editor function allows an options array to be supplied.
General options
- context: set to the current context object
- enable_filemanagement: set false to disable the file management plugin
- autosave: set false to disable autosave
Atto-specific options
- toolbar: set to override which icons appear on the toolbar (normally it uses the admin setting - this is for special cases for example if you want a minimal editor in a particular plugin).
The following example will cause atto to show the four buttons indicated.
$attobuttons = 'style1 = bold, italic' .  PHP_EOL . 'list = unorderedlist, orderedlist';
$editor->use_editor($id, [
    'context' => $context,
    'autosave' => false,
    'atto:toolbar' => $attobuttons
], [
    'return_types' => FILE_EXTERNAL,
]);