Plugins

You can replace components with a plugin or add new features to Hawron. Have a look at the included plugins like Jetty or the viewer to see what is possible. Note, every plugin becomes an own classloader (searches child-first), that should avoid problems with different versions of libraries.

Here is a short list of interfaces which can be used.

implement de.miethxml.toolkit.plugins.Plugin if you need the location of your plugin at runtime (for reading and storing files/resources)
implement de.miethxml.toolkit.components.PluginComponent if you want override an existing component
implement de.miethxml.hawron.gui.context.editor.Editor to provide a special content-editor
implement de.miethxml.hawron.gui.context.viewer.Viewer to provide a special view
implement de.miethxml.hawron.gui.context.action.Action to provide a special Action

Look at Avalon to find out more about the lifecycle of components.

The following descriptor-example shows which settings are needed.

The "instanceclass" is your implementation of one of the supported interfaces.
The "interface" is needed for the PluginReceiver, which listen for this plugin (as example the EditorManager).
Add all needed libraries as a classpath-element, relative to your plugin-directory

<?xml version="1.0"  ?>
<plugin>
   <name>My plugin</name>
    <instanceclass>MyPluginImpl</instanceclass>
    <interface>de.miethxml.hawron.context.viewer.Viewer</interface>
    <description>My plugin</description>
    <resources>
        <classpath src="my.jar"/>
    </resources>
</plugin>

Plugin-template

ant newplugin -Dplugin.name=foo

Will generate a new subdirectory "plugins/other/foo" and place there a generic buildfile and a plugins-descriptor. Optional you can add

-Dplugin.category=bar

this will create a subdirectory "plugin/bar/foo". Copy the plugin.properties to local.plugin.properties and uncomment your plugin there for building.

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Plugins

Plugin-template