Creating a basic plugin

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Revision as of 17:48, 17 May 2006 by 70.155.66.187 (Talk)
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Contents

Introduction

This tutorial will walk you through the creation of a basic plugin that adds the text "Hello World" to Pro Edition's Main Menu, next to the "Basic Features Group" header.

Reccommended stuff you'll want for this tutorial

I'll be writing this under the assumption that you've already got the following covered...

  • A website with Soholaunch Pro Edition installed on it that you can screw around with. All feature modules should be enabled.
  • FTP client and FTP access to your test site
  • Some kind of code/text editor to edit php files with (Dreamweaver, UltraEdit, PHP Edit, Emacs, Notepad, etc.)
  • Decent profeciency working with html, css, and php
  • Some level of familiarity with Pro Edition's various folders and files (i.e. sohoadmin)

Create a folder for your plugin

Pop open Windows Explorer (or Mac/Linux equivalent) and create a folder on your local PC called "HELLO_WORLD". All of your plugin's files will go in this folder.

Download the source file you want to modify

Open Your FTP client and log-in to your test site. For this example, we want to modify Pro Edition's main menu, so download this file from your test site...

public_html/sohoadmin/program/main_menu.php

Stick this file in the "HELLO_WORLD" folder you created on your PC, and rename it to something like "main_menu-helloworld.php" (actual filename doesn't really matter, as long as you recognize it as your modified version of main_menu.php).

Modify source file

No pull up the file in your trusty code editor.

Do a ctrl+f (find) on "Basic Features Group", and you should get to a line that looks something like...

<td class="fgroup_title"><? echo lang("Basic Features Group"); ?></td>

Modify this line so it looks like this:

<td class="fgroup_title"><? echo lang("Basic Features Group"); ?> - Hello World</td>

Save the file.

Create install_manifest.php

Still in your code editor, create a new blank document (i.e. ctrl + n) and save to your HELLO_WORLD folder as "install_manifest.php".

install_manifest.php is the file that Pro Edition reads to know what to do when it attempts to install your plugin. All plugins must have a valid install_manifest.php in their folder.

There are two types of content in any given install_manifest.php:

  1. Information - plugin title, author, etc
  2. Instructions - "hook me in here, here, and here"

Include basic descriptive info

Let's start with the information part. Copy-paste the following lines into your new (and completely empty at this point) install_manifest.php file...

<?
# PLUGIN INFO
$plugin_folder = "HELLO_WORLD";
$plugin_title = "Hello World";
$plugin_version = "1.0";
$plugin_author = "John Smith";
$plugin_homepage = "http://example.com";

# Description text
$plugin_description = "Adds '- Hello World!' next to the 'Basic Features Group' on the main menu.";
?>

Tell Pro Edition how to plug-in your plugin

This is the part where you tell Pro Edition how and where to plug-in your plugin (heh). So our specific task at the moment is to tell Pro Edition (through our install manifest) to add our "- Hello World" change to the main menu.

Add this line to your install_manifest.php file...

hook_overwrite("sohoadmin/program/main_menu.php", "main_menu-helloworld.php");

Translation: "Use my version of main_menu.php instead of the regular one"

Completed install manifest

Here's what your completed install_manifest.php file should look like...

<?
# PLUGIN INFO
$plugin_folder = "HELLO_WORLD";
$plugin_title = "Hello World";
$plugin_version = "1.0";
$plugin_author = "John Smith";
$plugin_homepage = "http://example.com";

# Description text
$plugin_description = "Sample plugin for hook_overwrite --- adds 'Hello World' text to top-right of main menu (in Basic Features Group header).";

# Replace main_menu.php with my custom-modified version
hook_overwrite("sohoadmin/program/main_menu.php", "main_menu-helloworld.php");


Zip your plugin folder

At this point your plugin is essentially done.

Your plugin folder should look like this now... HELLO_WORLD

  • install_manifest.php
  • main_menu-helloworld.php

Using winzip, winrar, or other simliar archive app, zip-up your HELLO_WORLD folder. So if you've got zip options on your right-click menu in Windows, for example, you'd right-click on your HELLO_WORLD folder and click "Add to archive...".

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