Plugins

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Beginning with the 0.7.x branch, StatusNet has supported a simple but

powerful plugin architecture. Important events in the code are named,

like 'StartNoticeSave', and other software can register interest

in those events. When the events happen, the other software is called

and has a choice of accepting or rejecting the events.

In the simplest case, you can add a function to config.php and use the

Event::addHandler() function to hook an event:

    function AddGoogleLink($action)

    {

        $action->menuItem('http://www.google.com/', _('Google'), _('Search engine'));

        return true;

    }

    Event::addHandler('EndPrimaryNav', 'AddGoogleLink');

This adds a menu item to the end of the main navigation menu. You can

see the list of existing events, and parameters that handlers must

implement, in EVENTS.txt.

The Plugin class in lib/plugin.php makes it easier to write more

complex plugins. Sub-classes can just create methods named

'onEventName', where 'EventName' is the name of the event (case

matters!). These methods will be automatically registered as event

handlers by the Plugin constructor (which you must call from your own

class's constructor).

Several example plugins are included in the plugins/ directory. You

can enable a plugin with the following line in config.php:

    addPlugin('Example', array('param1' => 'value1',

                               'param2' => 'value2'));

This will look for and load files named 'ExamplePlugin.php' or

'Example/ExamplePlugin.php' either in the plugins/ directory (for

plugins that ship with StatusNet) or in the local/ directory (for

plugins you write yourself or that you get from somewhere else) or

local/plugins/.

Plugins are documented in their own directories.