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There following questions and steps are to help you plan and develop a plugin to fulfill a custom requirement.

1. What is the problem?

You have a custom requirement and you found that none of the built-in plugins provided by Joget Workflow nor plugins available in Marketplace are able to fulfill your requirement. 

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Example 3: Hash variable is convenient in used, but it does not provide the ability to do condition checking.

2. How to solve the problem?

Refer to the Plugin Types that supported by Joget Workflow, find the most appropriate plugin type that can help you to fulfill the custom requirement.

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Example 3: Develop a Hash Variable plugin that can do Bean Shell scripting.

3. What is the input needed for your plugin?

Find out what are the information needed by your plugin to function/work. Look at it from the user's perspective; how are you going to use the plugin. Then, look at it from a developer's perspective; to make the plugin reusable in more use cases.

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E.g. #beanshell.EnvironmentVariableKey[name=Joget&email=info@joget.org&message={form.sample.message?url}]#

4. What is the output and expected outcome of your plugin?

How and what a normal user (Not the admin user who use the plugin to provide functionality) will use and see your plugin result.

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Example 3: The Bean Shell Hash Variable plugin is for the admin user. Once it is used, the Hash Variable will be replaced by the output return from the Bean Shell interpreter.

5. Are there any resources/API that can be reused?

Always refer to existing plugins and tutorials to look for a similar plugin/plugin type that you can refer to whenever possible.  The Joget team will try their best to enrich the contents in the tutorials section.

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Example 3: To develop Bean Shell Hash Variable plugin, we can refer to the source code of all the Hash Variable plugin and Bean Shell plugin. Especially, we can refer to Environment Variable Hash Variable plugin on how to retrieve environment variable using a variable key. We can also refer to Bean Shell Tool or Bean Shell Form Binder plugin on what to execute the script with Bean Shell interpreter.

6. Prepare your development environment

a. You will need to have the Joget Workflow Open Source ready and built. We will use the "wflow-plugin-archetype" module to generate a maven project for our plugin.

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c. Open/Import the maven project with your favorite IDE. Joget team recommends NetBeans IDE.  

7. Just code it!

a. Extending the abstract class of a plugin type

Refer to the document of the plugin type listed in Plugin Types. Find the abstract class and interface that need to be extended and implemented by your plugin.

Example: To develop a Userview Menu plugin, the plugin class need to extends the org.joget.apps.userview.model.UserviewMenu abstract class.

b. Implement all the abstract methods

A plugin will have to implements the abstract method of Plugin Base Abstract Class and Interface and also the abstract method of the individual abstract class and interface for the plugin type. 

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• getCategory
• getClassName
• getDecoratedMenu
• getDescription
• getIcon
• getLabel
• getName
• getPropertyOptions
• getRenderPage
• getVersion
• isHomePageSupported

c. Manage the dependency libraries of your plugin

The generated plugin folder by "wflow-plugin-archetype" module is a maven project. So, we will using the Dependency Mechanism provided by Maven.

d. Make your plugin internationalization (i18n) ready

To make the plugin i18n ready, we need to create a message resource bundle property file for the plugin.

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public void start(BundleContext context) {
    registrationList = new ArrayList<ServiceRegistration>();

    //Register plugin here
    registrationList.add(context.registerService(MyPlugin.class.getName(), new MyPlugin(), null));
}

f. Build it and testing

Once you are done with all the steps above, you can build your project with your IDE using Maven. You can also run "mvn clean install" command in your project directory to build it. After building your project, a jar file is created under "target" folder in your plugin project folder. Upload the plugin jar to Manage Plugins to test your plugin.

Example: In NetBeans, right-click on the project name, then select "Clean and Build".

8. Take a step further, share it or sell it

You have completed a very useful plugin. Don't just keep it to yourself, share or sell your plugin in the Joget Marketplace or even better, you can write a tutorial in our Knowledge Base to share your effort with others. To share or sell your plugin, please send an email to info@joget.org.

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