Plugin tools

Plugin tools is a small developer/administrator utility which allows you to browse the various plugins provided by different modules. This information is normally hidden in the code layer. The aim is to provide some useful, extra tools to developers and interested maintainers.

This may be desirable for several reasons:

• To see which modules are providing plugins
• To check and debug plugins during development

The Drupal 7 version of this module works with Chaos Tools plugins. A possible future Drupal 8 version will utilise core plugins.

Writing compatible plugins

The aim of Plugin tools is to merely wrap existing plugin paradigms without requiring additions to each plugin, however Plugin tools does expect plugin settings arrays to provide some common keys...

name

The machine name of the plugin. Used when another title cant be found

title

Used in the Plugin tools UI as the Plugin's title. If not found, 'label', will also be tried, before falling back on the machine name.

description

If provided, will be used as the description in the Plugin tools UI

Using the API

A module can add a small plugin dictionary to its own configuration screens by using the following:

if (module_exists('plugin_tools')) {
  $output = plugin_tools_render_overview($my_module, $my_plugin_type)
}

Roadmap

Some possible further development ideas include:

• Wrappers for enabling/disabling plug-ins
• Deeper plugin exploration optionsdone!
• Plugin sanity checks

If you want help with Ctools Exportables, you may also be interested in the Chaos Tools Export UI Template module.