Extending Mura CMS with Plug-Ins
Posted At : June 24, 2009 10:42 AM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories: ColdFusion, Mura CMS
I've been using Mura CMS on and off for the past few months, trying to integrate a bunch of functionality from an existing site into a Mura installation. At first it was a fairly daunting task, as although Mura is an excellent tool which is easily extendible, it is also quite complicated and there is not a heck of a lot of documentation available for back end development. I was lucky enough to get some help from Matt Levine, the architect and lead developer, who helped me get an understanding of the plug-in architecture, after which I was able to integrate much of my existing functionality into Mura.
Blue River has made a start at producing some back end development documentation, and I decided to attempt to help the cause by documenting what I've learned about developing plug-ins for Mura. To that end I'm starting a series about extending Mura with plug-ins. This first entry will be an introduction to plug-ins. I plan to follow it up with articles containing much more detail. As I'm about to head off for three week's vacation in beautiful British Columbia, those additional articles will not appear until some time in July.
Thanks,
Darren
I don't know of any existing examples of Model-Glue apps as plugins.
I might just try to throw together an example for Steve Good's CFThrowdown Mura Plugins contest. If I do I'll add a comment here.
however what it installed is: /plugins/3/myPlugin/plugin/config.xml
I went through the pluginManager.cfc file to see what it is doing. I see in the getConfigXml function that it is missing the package name in the string. At first I attempted to update that file to add the package name to the path, but then realized I could just zip my file differently. So I opened the "myPlugin" folder, selected all the files, right clicked and zipped it that way. It still makes a zip file named myPlugin, but now Mura made directory under the main plugins directory called 'myPlugin_4' and finds the file correctly.
So is this an issue others have come across or is this just an isolated issue with how WinRar zips folders of files? If other have the issue, should the pluginManager.cfc be updated to handle getting a folder with plugin files inside instead of a zip of just the root files? Thoughts?
Having said that, I have unfortunately been away for Mura for some time (due to being busy with other things), so I may not be the best person to ask. You may want to try the Mura forums at http://www.getmura.com/forum/
It depends on how you want to "integrate" the other information. If you want to intermingle outside data with Mura site content (ie pages you create in Mura), then perhaps a web service is a better way to go. You would make calls and pull in only the content you need when you need it.
If you want a section of your mura site that is all about your outside data, then yes a plugin is the way to go. Read Bob's series on setting up plugins. His posts are a really good resource for new plugin developers. If you use Eclipse, then install the Mura Tools as well. They give you 3 menu items to generate the plugin files and then to bundle them once you're done. Also, if you've never developed a plugin before, one obvious/not-so-obvious trick is to install a plugin shell (default folders/files) and then start developing on the installed files. That way you can literally load your plugin over and over in your site as you develop to see if things work or not.
Finally, just because your data is on a different database doesn't mean you can't use it in Mura. You can still make query calls to outside databases as long as you have the datasource. Just keep in mind that you would not be able to directly use it in built in Mura displays such as Portals, Galleries or Feeds. I say directly, because you could always call your data, build it into objects that mimic native Mura objects and pass those into a custom display to simulate a Portal, or whatever. I've done that before for navigation menus. It works but is sometimes a big pain.
Hope that helps.