Provide a nice error message on connection problems to etherpad lite server

[abias]

Hi,

if the Moodle plugin can't establish a connection to the etherpad lite server or does not get a valid response on opening the view.php page, the user is presented a general error page with a technical error message like "Empty or No Response from the server" or "JSON response could not be decoded" which leaves the user in a not understandable dead end situation with the only possibiilty to go back to his MyMoodle page (respectively the Moodle frontpage depending on the Moodle system configuration).

This is caused by the fact that you are throwing exceptions for connection problems, but do not catch and handle them properly in your plugin.

For connection problems, I would like to see a nicely styled and understandable error message which informs the user that there are - probably temporarily - problems with the etherpad lite server, asks him to come back later and redirects him back to the course overview page.

Thanks,
Alex

[tjwelde]

That's a good idea.
Are you already working on this?
If not, then I would look after this.