UBIK® Plugins are dynamically loaded into the UBIK® Kernel using the Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF).
Basic Prerequisites
If you want to create a plugin which can be loaded into UBIK® you have to include references to
- System.ComponentModel.Composition
- UBIK.Injection
UBIK® Injection Management provides access to all the basic features used by the Kernel to identifiy and categorize the available plugins. This management is provided by a library called UBIK.Injection.
Interface: UBIK.Injection.IUbikPlugin
The plugin must implement the IUbikPlugin interface. Additionally, the plugin has to be registered for MEF composition by defining the export contract via the attributes.
public class myPlugIn : UBIK.Injection.IUbikPlugin
{
}
MetaData
Ubik needs some Meta Information to manage plugins correctly. The available MetaInformation are defined by the interface UBIK.Injection.IUbikInjectionMetaData
Mandatory information
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ID | string | Unique ID of the Plugin |
| Type | System.Type | Systemtype of the Plugin. Used for filtering the Plugins during loading. |
Optional information
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | string | Name of the plugin (for UI Presentation) |
| Description | string | Name of the plugin (for UI Presentation) |
| Version | int | Version of the plugin. As there are more plugins with the same ID, only the plugin with the highest Version is available. |
| TargetApplication | PluginTargetApplication | Possibility to limit the plugin for a single type of application. |
| MinimumKernelVersion | string | Minimum required Kernel version: Format x.x.x.x |
| MinimumDatabaseVersion | string | Minimum required Database version: Format x.x.x.x |
| Company | string | Information about the Company (for UI Presentation) |
| Copyright | string | Copyright Information (for UI Presentation) |
Example:
[ExportMetadata("ID", "23B72354-A26F-449E-A7DA-F874B4167248")]
[ExportMetadata("Type", typeof(myPlugIn))]
[ExportMetadata("Name", "my Plugin")]
[ExportMetadata("Description", "does fancy things in version 2.4")]
[ExportMetadata("Version", 3)]
[ExportMetadata("MinimumKernelVersion", "2.4.0.0")]
[ExportMetadata("MinimumDatabaseVersion", "2.4.0.0")]
[ExportMetadata("Company", "Augmensys GmbH")]
[ExportMetadata("Copyright", "2014, Augmensys GmbH")]
public class myPlugIn : UBIK.Injection.IUbikPlugin
{
}