feat: support rendering XBlocks in the Learning MFE [FC-0035]

[Agrendalath]

Rendering blocks directly in the MFE was developed for the Library Authoring MFE. The solution was then ported to the Learning MFE. This commit includes backend changes required to retrieve data of non-blockstore XBlocks from LMS.

Please see openedx/frontend-app-learning#1281 for the details and testing instructions.

Other information

• https://github.com/aximcollaborative/funded-contributions/issues/15
• Private-ref: BB-7872

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[navinkarkera]

@Agrendalath 👍

• I tested this: Followed test instructions from openedx/frontend-app-learning#1281 and tested different types of xblocks locally.
• I read through the code
• I checked for accessibility issues
• Includes documentation

[mphilbrick211]

Hi @ormsbee and @arbrandes! Just checking in on this. I think we're waiting on this to close the project.

[ormsbee]

My apologies, but I think there's something fundamental about how this is supposed to work that I'm not understanding–particularly around why we're doing branching based on isinstance checks against BlockUsageLocator, and why it's okay to change the contract for student_view_data.

[ormsbee]

Please add a comment about why this change is necessary.

[ormsbee]

Doesn't get_block_display_name just check for the display_name attribute with fallback? Why does it break?

[ormsbee]

Also, when would usage_id not be a BlockUsageLocator?

[ormsbee]

Isn't the content the HTML rendering? Shouldn't student_view_data always be a JSON serializable dict on the XBlocks that support it?

[mphilbrick211]

Hi @Agrendalath and @ormsbee! Just checking in on this.

[arbrandes]

We've found that the Library Authoring approach to using an iframe per XBlock doesn't give users a good enough UX. See my comment in the PR that was meant to add the same approach to Course Authoring:

openedx/frontend-app-authoring#964 (review)

We're going to need a better plan if we want to stop using the backend to render whole units.

To be clear, this is not to say that this PR is wrong. We might find a frontend-only solution to the performance issues. But we should probably hold off here until we've had that conversation.

[mphilbrick211]

We've found that the Library Authoring approach to using an iframe per XBlock doesn't give users a good enough UX. See my comment in the PR that was meant to add the same approach to Course Authoring:

openedx/frontend-app-course-authoring#964 (review)

We're going to need a better plan if we want to stop using the backend to render whole units.

To be clear, this is not to say that this PR is wrong. We might find a frontend-only solution to the performance issues. But we should probably hold off here until we've had that conversation.

FYI @ormsbee @Agrendalath

[Agrendalath]

Thank you for sharing it, @arbrandes. In this case, I suppose we should close this and openedx/frontend-app-learning#1281 for now.

cc: @ormsbee, @mphilbrick211

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