[Zabbix-developers] How easy would it be to add a 'plug-in'?

[Benjamin 'Q. C. V <qu...@be...>]

Hi

We need a feature which Zabbix doesn't have, and I'm just wondering how
easy it would be to add this feature without needing to modify core
Zabbix code.  I didn't know if Zabbix had an architecture which
allowed/encouraged plug-ins.

Here's what we need, to give you an idea.  I don't see anything in the
manual to indicate that Zabbix has this:

A URL check which fetches a page and looks for the presence or absence
of one or more regular expressions.  For example, I could say, fetch
this page, and fail if you find "Status: ERROR", which would be
something we might define our code to return if there was some error
condition.  Also, we might say, fetch this URL and fail if the URL does
NOT include one or more regular expressions (maybe the symptoms of one
web application's failure is the absence of specific content).  And we'd
store the failed page and would want to be able to have a link for that
cached failed page in the failure notification e-mail that goes out
through the Zabbix system.

Could anyone tell me whether this exists or could easily be done without
needing to significantly modify Zabbix?  (We really don't have the
resources to have to re-integrate our changes every time we want to keep
up with a Zabbix update.)

Quincy