Orion/Documentation/Developer Guide/Simple plugin example

This page explains how to write a plugin for Orion. It's intended for developers who want to extend Orion's functionality.

What's a plugin?

A plugin is basically just an HTML file that knows how to connect to the Orion client. A plugin can be hosted on any web server. Plugins are written in HTML and JavaScript.

In order to be useful, a plugin should provide one or more services. When Orion needs a service contributed by a plugin, it loads the plugin inside an IFrame.

Orion currently supports a small set of extension points — service types that plugins can contribute to, in order to customize the client and add more functionality. These include:

• Adding more commands to the editor toolbar
• Adding more commands to the navigator view
• Adding content assist for new file types
• Adding syntax highlighting rules for new file types

What you need

Every plugin must include the following JavaScript dependencies:

• OpenAjax: defined in OpenAjaxManagedHub-all.js
• Orion Provider API: plugin.js

The easiest way to satisfy these is to get orion-plugin.js, which is a minified file that includes both of them. You can then copy-paste its contents into a <script> tag in your plugin, or load it externally like so:

<script src="orion-plugin.js">

Services

TODO

Examples

Here are some existing plugins we've written. View their source code to see how they work:

http://bokowski.github.com/format-js.html

Contributes a "Beautify JS" button to the editor toolbar by using the editorAction service type.

http://mamacdon.github.com/m6/uglify/uglify-plugin.html

Contributes an "Uglify JS" button to the editor toolbar byusing the editorAction service type.

http://orionhub.org/plugins/sampleCommandsPlugin.html

Contributes several sample actions to the Orion navigator by using the fileCommands service type.

http://orionhub.org/plugins/htmlSyntaxHighlightPlugin.html

Contributes syntax highlighting support for HTML files by using the ISyntaxHighlight service type.

See also

• Installing a plugin
• eclipse.PluginProvider JSdoc