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| author | Daniel Atallah <daniel.atallah@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:06:02 +0000 |
| parents | 17e8b8805688 |
| children | 52f3e904a250 |
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/** @page c-howto C Plugin HOWTO @section Introduction C plugins are native plugins. They have complete access to all of the API, and can do basically whatever they want. All of the protocol plugins, as well as the Mono, Perl, and Tcl loader plugins are written in C. @section getting_started Getting Started To develop a plugin you need to have the libpurple and (for UI plugins) the Pidgin/Finch source code or development headers. It is generally a good idea to compile against the same version of Pidgin that you are running. You may also want to develop against the code in our Monotone repository if you need to use a new feature. Please do not abuse our Monotone repository, however. All plugins must have @c PURPLE_PLUGINS defined and the definition must be before including any libpurple, Pidgin, or Finch header files. Failure to do so can lead to strange errors that are hard to diagnose. Just don't forget! @section hello_world Hello World! I know every tutorial has a hello world, so why should libpurple be any different? @code #define PURPLE_PLUGINS #include <glib.h> #include "notify.h" #include "plugin.h" #include "version.h" static gboolean plugin_load(PurplePlugin *plugin) { purple_notify_message(plugin, PURPLE_NOTIFY_MSG_INFO, "Hello World!", "This is the Hello World! plugin :)", NULL, NULL, NULL); return TRUE; } static PurplePluginInfo info = { PURPLE_PLUGIN_MAGIC, PURPLE_MAJOR_VERSION, PURPLE_MINOR_VERSION, PURPLE_PLUGIN_STANDARD, NULL, 0, NULL, PURPLE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, "core-hello_world", "Hello World!", VERSION, "Hello World Plugin", "Hello World Plugin", NULL, "http://helloworld.tld", plugin_load, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL }; static void init_plugin(PurplePlugin *plugin) { } PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN(hello_world, init_plugin, info); @endcode Okay, so what does all this mean? We start off by defining @c PURPLE_PLUGINS like described before. Next we include glib.h, mainly for gboolean and the glib wrappers of the standard C types. Next, we include plugin.h which has all the plugin specific stuff that we need. For example: @c PurplePlugin, @c PurplePluginInfo, @c PURPLE_PLUGIN_MAGIC, and @c PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN(). Our last include is version.h which defines @c PURPLE_MAJOR_VERSION, and @c PURPLE_MINOR_VERSION. There is not much you need to know about these, except that they are required and will stop your plugin from crashing Pidgin when something has changed that you plugin does not know about yet. plugin_load is not required. It is called when the plugin is loaded so that you can initialize any variables and so on. But in this plugin we'll just use it to display a message. Next we have the @c PurplePluginInfo structure. Every plugin MUST have one of these. Below is a code snipet of the same struct used in @c hello_world with comments describing what each is. @code static PurplePluginInfo info = { PURPLE_PLUGIN_MAGIC, /* Plugin magic, this must always be PURPLE_PLUGIN_MAGIC. */ PURPLE_MAJOR_VERSION, /* This is also defined in libpurple. It helps libpurple's plugin system determine which version of libpurple this plugin was compiled for, and whether loading it will cause problems. */ PURPLE_MINOR_VERSION, /* See previous */ PURPLE_PLUGIN_STANDARD, /* PurplePluginType: There are 4 different values for this field. The first is PURPLE_PLUGIN_UNKNOWN, which should not be used. The second is PURPLE_PLUGIN_STANDARD; this is the value most plugins will use. Next, we have PURPLE_PLUGIN_LOADER; this is the type you want to load if your plugin is going to make it possible to load non- native plugins. For example, the Perl and Tcl loader plugins are of this type. Last, we have PURPLE_PLUGIN_PROTOCOL. If your plugin is going to allow the user to connect to another network, this is the type you'd want to use. */ NULL, /* This field is the UI requirement. If you're writing a core plugin, this must be NULL and the plugin must not contain any UI code. If you're writing a Pidgin plugin, you need to use PIDGIN_PLUGIN_TYPE. If you are writing a Finch plugin, you would use FINCH_PLUGIN_TYPE. */ 0, /* This field is for plugin flags. Currently, the only flag available to plugins is invisible (PURPLE_PLUGIN_FLAG_INVISIBLE). It causes the plugin to NOT appear in the list of plugins. */ NULL, /* This is a GList of plugin dependencies. In other words, a GList of plugin id's that your plugin depends on. Set this value to NULL no matter what. If your plugin has dependencies, set them at run-time in the plugin_init function. */ PURPLE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT,/* This is the priority libpurple with give your plugin. There are three possible values for this field, PURPLE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, PURPLE_PRIORITY_HIGHEST, and PURPLE_PRIORITY_LOWEST */ "core-hello_world", /* This is your plugin's id. There is a whole page dedicated to this in the Related Pages section of the API docs. */ "Hello World!", /* This is your plugin's name. This is what will be displayed for your plugin in the UI. */ 1.1, /* This is the version of your plugin. */ "Hello World Plugin", /* This is the summary of your plugin. It should be a short little blurb. The UI determines where, if at all, to display this. */ "Hello World Plugin", /* This is the description of your plugin. It can be as long and as descriptive as you like. And like the summary, it's up to the UI where, if at all, to display this (and how much to display). */ NULL, /* This is where you can put your name and e-mail address. */ "http://helloworld.tld",/* This is the website for the plugin. This tells users where to find new versions, report bugs, etc. */ plugin_load, /* This is a pointer to a function for libpurple to call when it is loading the plugin. It should be of the type: gboolean plugin_load(PurplePlugin *plugin) Returning FALSE will stop the loading of the plugin. Anything else would evaluate as TRUE and the plugin will continue to load. */ NULL, /* Same as above except it is called when libpurple tries to unload your plugin. It should be of the type: gboolean plugin_unload(PurplePlugin *plugin) Returning TRUE will tell libpurple to continue unloading while FALSE will stop the unloading of your plugin. */ NULL, /* Similar to the two above members, except this is called when libpurple tries to destory the plugin. This is generally only called when for some reason or another the plugin fails to probe correctly. It should be of the type: void plugin_destroy(PurplePlugin *plugin) */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to a UI-specific struct. For a Pidgin plugin it will be a pointer to a PidginPluginUiInfo struct, for example. */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to either a PurplePluginLoaderInfo struct or a PurplePluginProtocolInfo struct, and is beyond the scope of this document. */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to a PurplePluginUiInfo struct. It is a core/ui split way for core plugins to have a UI configuration frame. You can find an example of this code in: libpurple/plugins/pluginpref_example.c */ NULL /* Finally, the last member of the structure is a function pointer where you can define "plugin actions". The UI controls how they're displayed. It should be of the type: GList *function_name(PurplePlugin *plugin, gpointer context) It must return a GList of PurplePluginActions. */ }; @endcode Finally we have @c init_plugin and @c PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN. @c init_plugin is a function that gets called when libpurple probes the plugin. Most plugins will add their preferences to the pref tree here--more about that later. @c PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN is a macro that EVERY plugin MUST have. @c PURPLE_INIT_PLUGIN tells libpurple some very basic things about your plugin, like what name to use if the plugin is compiled staticly, the @c init_plugin function, and the name of the PurplePluginInfo structure. As you may have guessed, this also gets read when libpurple is probing your plugin. If this is missing, the plugin will not load. */