3. Extending the BDSS: Plugin DevelopmentΒΆ

Force BDSS is extensible through the Envisage plugin framework. A plugin can be (and generally is) provided as a separate python package that provides some new classes. Force BDSS will find these classes from the plugin at startup.

A single plugin can provide one or more of the following: MCO, DataSources or NotificationListeners. It can optionally provide DataView and ContributedUI objects to be used by the force_wfmanager GUI: these features will be dealt with in an extension tutorial.

An example plugin implementation is available at:

https://github.com/force-h2020/force-bdss-plugin-enthought-example

To implement a new plugin, you must define at least four classes:

  • The Plugin class itself.
  • One of the entities you want to implement: a DataSource, NotificationListener or MCO.
  • A Factory class for the entity above: it is responsible for creating the specific entity, for example, a DataSource
  • A Model class which contains configuration options for the entity. For example, it can contain login and password information so that its data source knows how to connect to a service. The Model is also shown visually in the force_wfmanager UI, so some visual aspects need to be configured as well.

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