The extensions brought by the plugins

Many types of extension are available :

• new portlet type [ Portlets ]
• new integrated application [ Application ]
• new administration feature [ Administration Features]
• new content service [ ContentServices ]
• new link indexing service [ InsertServices ]
• new page inclusion service [ PageIncludeServices ]

A plugin can contain one or more extension types. For example, it can introduce a new type of portlet and two administrative functions to manage this portlet type.

In summary, a plugin may contain :

• 0 to n applications
• 0 to n specific CSS style sheets
• 0 to n specific Javascript
• 0 to n back office features
• 0 to n portlets
• 0 to 1 content service
• 0 to 1 indexing link services of type LinkService
• 0 to 1 insertion services of type HtmlService
• 0 to n filters
• 0 to n dashboards

Plugins and databases

The plugin can access to two databases. It can access to the Lutece database through the AppConnectionService class. , but it is also possible to affect a specific connection pool by declaring it in the db.properties during the installation phase.

Plugins loading

The plugins are loaded when starting the webapp by the PluginService which searches for all XML files found in the /WEB-INF/plugins folder. To prevent loading of a plugin, the XML file must be removed from the folder.

The data concerning the local status(state installed/not-installed, specific connection pool, ...) are recorded in the plugins.dat located in the same folder.

If a plugin has a "properties" file, it must be placed into the /WEB-INF/conf/plugins folder. The property files will be automatically loaded and added to all the properties of the application. They will be accessible by means of AppPropertiesService. All plugin properties must be prefixed by the name of the plugin to avoid internal conflict.

Plugin Files

A plugin may need a large set of different file types.Here are the folders designed to contain these files.

The organization of source files is follows :

Configuration file for a plugin

The configuration file of the plugin is an XML file represented in the following structure :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<plug-in>
    <name>myplugin</name>
    <class>fr.paris.lutece.portal.service.PluginDefaultImplementation</class>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <description>Plugin description</description>
    <provider>Mairie de Paris</provider>
    <provider-url>http://lutece.paris.fr</provider-url>
    <icon-url>../../images/admin/skin/plugins/myplugin/myplugin.gif</icon-url>
    <copyright>Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Mairie de Paris</copyright>

    <!-- Does the plugin require a connection pool : 1 - yes, 0 - No -->
    <db-pool-required>1</db-pool-required>

    <!-- Specific CSS style sheets eventually used  -->
    <css-stylesheets>
         <css-stylesheet>myplugin/myplugin.css</css-stylesheet>
    </css-stylesheets>
    
    <!-- Specific scripts eventually used  -->
    <javascript-files>
         <javascript-file>myplugin/myplugin.css</javascript-file>
    </javascript-files>
    
    <!-- List of administrative features eventually intreoduced be the plugin-->
    <admin-features>
         <admin-feature>
              <feature-id>MYFEATURE_MANAGEMENT</feature-id>
              <feature-title>My Feature</feature-title>
              <feature-description>Description of my feature</feature-description>
              <feature-level>3</feature-level>
              <feature-url>plugins/myplugin/ManageMyFeature.jsp</feature-url>
         </admin-feature>
         ...
    </admin-features>

    <!-- Portlets List eventually added by the plugin-->
    <portlets>
        <portlet>
            <portlet-class>fr.paris.lutece.plugins.myportlet.business.portlet.MyPortletHome</portlet-class>
            <portlet-type-name>MyNew Portlet</portlet-type-name>
            <portlet-creation-url>plugins/article/CreatePortletMyPortlet.jsp</portlet-creation-url>
            <portlet-update-url>plugins/article/ModifyPortletMyPortlet.jsp</portlet-update-url>
        </portlet>
         ...
    </portlets>

    <!-- Applications made of XPages and evantually by a plugin -->
    <applications>
           <application>
                   <application-id>app_page_name</application-id>
                   <application-class>fr.paris.lutece.plugins.myplugin.web.MyPluginApp</application-class>
                   <application-roles>role1,role2</application-roles>
           </application>
    </applications>

   <!-- Content Service -->
   <content-service>
     <content-service-class>fr.paris.lutece.plugins.myplugin.service.MyContentService</content-service-class>
   </content-service>

   <!-- Links Service -->
   <link-service>
     <link-service-id>mylinkservice</link-service-id>
     <link-service-class>fr.paris.lutece.plugins.mylinkservice.service.MyLinkService</link-service-class>
     <link-service-bean-class>fr.paris.lutece.plugins.mylinkservice.web.MyLinkServiceJspBean</link-service-bean-class>
     <link-service-label>Link to my URIs</link-service-label>
   </link-service>

</plug-in>

A plugin dtd is availabe in the /WEB-INF/plugins folder from Lutece WebApp.

Modules

Some plugins need their own plugins. These are called modules. The plugins such as mylutece,formengine and codewizard have modules.

The rules concerning the modules are the following :