AppSuite:Writing a portal plugin

Summary: This articles covers how to write a plugin that shows on the portal page. A portal plugin always gives a short overview on a piece of information (the so-called 'tile'). It can link a longer view that is opened when the tile is clicked, this we call the side pop-up. The side pop-up is optional.

Before we start: How to experiment efficiently

The AppSuite has a very efficient way of enabling or disabling potential plugins via manifests, which involves caching on the server side. This makes it somewhat cumbersome to just try things out, especially if you have not control over your server/backend and cannot restart it at will. Because of that, there is an array in io.ox/portal/widgets.js that is named DEV_PLUGINS. This will work around the caching mechanism.

Where and how we start

Plugins are collected in the folder ui/apps/plugins. Create your new plugin there: Create a folder and in this folder, create two files: register.js (where everything happens) and manifest.json

The simplest portal plugin: An advertisement

The simplest portal plugin comes without a side pop-up and shows static content on its tile. Two uses for this would be presenting an advertisement (or your daily creed, an often used check list....) or showing a link list (for example to other parts of an company's intranet that are not integrated into the AppSuite (yet)). We will now build an advertisement, which is just a slogan.

The beauty of this is that we do not have any dependencies (for example needing another module like the file store), so the content of our manifest.json is rather simple:

 
{
	namespace: "portal"
}

Nothing to see here. We say we belong in the portal namespace and that's it. We do not need to define any dependencies on other modules.

Our register.js is only slightly longer:

 
define("plugins/portal/myAd/register", ['io.ox/core/extensions'], function (ext) {

    "use strict";

    ext.point('io.ox/portal/widget/myAd').extend({
        preview: function () {
            var content = $('<div class="content">').text("Buy stuff. It's like solid happiness.");
            this.append(content);
        }
    });

    ext.point('io.ox/portal/widget/myAd/settings').extend({
        title: 'My advertisement',
        type: 'myAd'
    });
});

So what do we have here? We have two extension points:

The first one is for the ad itself, io.ox/portal/widget/myAd. This one contains a single method that we implement, preview. Preview is responsible for the tile you see whenever you look at your portal. Technically, this contains the container to which you can attach your content. If you are brave, you can do changes on the container, too. But that is not needed for now.

The second is less obvious: It creates an option in the settings area for the portal (the one you reach by "customize this page"). There you will have to enable your setting. The title is what is shown as the name of your plugin (so chose a readable one), the type references the one you used in the definition.

A typical portal plugin

A typical portal plugin uses the tile to display a short summary or teaser of its contents and uses a side-popup to show the whole content.

Special switches

• unique
• unmovable

Finishing touches

Now that you have learned all there is about portal plugins, it is time to clean up. Have you removed the plugin from DEV_PLUGINS? Good. Maybe we can interest you in preparing the text for readers from other countries? Splendid! Now you are good to go.