Posted by Tyno Gendo on 04/04/07 17:08

Toby A Inkster wrote:
> Tyno Gendo wrote:
>
>> I have been pondering over building a "modular" site which accepts
>> add-ons built by other people. I was wondering if anyone has any links
>> to any reading material on how you build this kind of facility into
>> your site?
>
> The basic technique is this:
>
> 1. Provide a plugin registration function, which we'll call, say,
> "plugin_register". When a plugin is loaded, it will call your
> plugin_register function and tell your site at least the following
> information:
>
> 1. How to use the plugin -- i.e. provide a function name
> or a class name that the site can use to access the
> functionality of the plugin;
>
> 2. When to use the plugin -- this is normally done via
> a named hook.
>
> So a particular plugin might be defined like this:
>
> <?php
> function tobys_plugin ()
> {
> echo "<!-- Hello World -->\n";
> }
> plugin_register('tobys_plugin', 'onpagefinished');
> ?>
>
> Your plugin_register function would then add "tobys_plugin" to a list of
> functions that need to be run when the page has finished outputting.
>
> Then in the rest of your code, add you hooks. For example, at the end of
> each page, you'd have:
>
> <?php
> run_plugins('onpagefinished');
> ?>
>
> where run_plugins looks at the list of registered plugins and runs the ones
> that have registered using that hook.
>
> That's the simplified version. In real life, to allow the plugins to be
> more useful, you'll often want to pass them particular parameters, such as
> the current URL, the login name of the currently logged in user, etc. I'll
> leave you to figure that out on your own.
>

Excellent, thanks for that reply. I will have a toy around with
something and of course follow up my post with an example when I get
around to it.

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