Re: [Bodington-developers] Plugin interface

[Alistair Y. <ali...@sm...>]

That's interesting Jon. I take you mean http://www.clan.uhi.ac.uk/ 
mymodules

Can you provide an exmaple of how a template would do  
RequestDispatcher.include() ?

if it can't then I'd argue not to bother implementing it as we're  
back to the same thing. The plugin is neither a facility nor a servlet.

It's a good idea for static output though, i.e. a news feed maybe and  
it's worth looking into. Be good for a /status servlet.

However, the plugin can't be accessed outwith it's context - it means  
nothing until it's invoked by a template and it can get access to  
current user environment.

Worth looking into though, thanks for the pointer.

My only concern is exposing functionality to the world - that's a lot  
of security updates to maintain as every plugin is accessible via  
it's servlet. Each parallel servlet will have access to the bod  
environment but the difference will be they're publicly accessible  
and attackable. A plugin isn't.

I'm still not convinced though. My Modules is just like a private JSP  
that lives in WEB-INF. It can't be accessed via a browser. Only a  
template can access it.

I don't think you can get a "private" servlet but I haven't looked  
into it enough.

I'm resisting labelling it anything other than a plugin - coz that's  
what it is.

Interesting discussions, keep 'em coming :)

Alistair

On 23 Mar 2006, at 12:47, Jon Maber wrote:

> Alistair,
>
> Basically your plugin is a servlet. You could implement it as a  
> subclass of HttpServlet, deploy it by referencing the class in the  
> web app config. file and access it from the Bodington template as a  
> servlet include. You could even update the class and the standard  
> Tomcat class loader will reload and instantiate the new version. If  
> there is something about the templates that stops the call to  
> "include" that could be easily fixed and should be fixed because  
> calling installed servlets is a very obvious thing that people will  
> want to do.
>
> In the future people might want runtime installable modules that  
> really interact with Bodington and that would require a more  
> involved solution.
>
> This is my recommendation as an unpaid consultant - if you don't  
> like it pay me to give you the answer you want ;-)
>
> Jon
>
>
> Alistair Young wrote:
>
>>> Instantiation of the Plugin
>>
>> at the moment, one instance per template with shared functionality  
>> in  that instance. It's in it's infancy just now so that's likely  
>> to change.
>>
>>> Initialisation
>>
>> at first instantiation
>>
>>> Calls out from plugin
>>
>> uses some bod methods to get current user
>
>
>>
>>> Calls into the plugin
>>> Does your plugin have multiple functionality?
>>
>> no
>>
>>> Does it use parameters to its method calls?
>>
>> no
>>
>> It's functionality is implied by it's interface contract - it's  
>> an  HTMLPlugin so that's all it does, outputs HTML. Facility just  
>> calls  it's run() method.
>>
>> It connects to a database to get the info to generate the HTML.
>>
>> Alistair
>>
>> On 23 Mar 2006, at 12:11, Jon Maber wrote:
>>
>
>
>
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