Developing your own plugin

The architecture of FIR is very modular and can be extended using plugins.

A plugin is a set of files in a folder, which are defined like this:

fir
├── fir_<yourplugin>   # name of your plugin
│   ├── urls.py        # URLs file. This is the only required file in a plugin
│   ├── hooks.py       # Hooks file. Can contain code to enrich existing functionalities of FIR (eg, add a keyword that that be used in the search bar, etc...).
│   ├── views.py       # The controller (and not the view, as its name would imply). Will handle response to HTTP requests
│   ├── models.py      # Should contain "objects" of your plugin, the ones that will be stored in DB. Examples of "object" are todos,  incidents, comments, etc...
│   ├── migrations
│   │   └── 0001.py    # Django migrations related to changes in models.py. Can be generated using 'manage.py makemigrations'
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── fir_<yourplugin>
│   │       └── sometemplate.html  # May contain some Jinja2 templates
│   ├── templatetags
│   │   └── <exemple-of-tag>.py    # If you are using Jinja2 tags in your templates, the code of those tags should be placed here
│   ├── admin.py       # Can contain code to customize Django Admin panel
│   ├── forms.py       # Can contain code relative to forms.
│   ├── fixtures
│   │   └── 001-<yourplugin>.json  # May contain initial data relative to your plugin. Can be generated using 'manage.py dumpdata'
│   ├── locale
│   │   └── <country-code>
│   │       └── LC_MESSAGES
│   │           └── django.po      # Localization: language file of your plugin. Can be generated using 'manage.py compilemessages -l <country-code>'
│   ├── static
│   │   └── fir_<yourplugin>
│   │       ├── vendor
│   │       │  └── <public library folder>  # Location of library code: bootstrap, javascript libraries, etc...
│   │       └── <yourplugin>.js              # Location of custom javascript, font or CSS files
│   ├── README.md           # Readme describing what your plugin does and how to install it
│   └── requirements.txt    # Python requirements of your library, if any.

In order to create your own plugin, you just need to create a folder named fir_<yourplugin> in the root directory of FIR.

The only required file in a plugin is urls.py. This file MUST contain two variables:

• app_name, which should contain the name of your plugin: app_name = "fir_myplugin"
• urlpatterns, which should be a list of URLs that can be called. If your plugin doesn't have any HTTP endpoint, you can set this variable to an empty list (urlpatterns = [])

The other files are all optional, you are free to create them or not depending on your plugin's purpose.

Jinja2 templates and plugin_points

During development of your plugin, you may want to add additional content into an existing HTML page of FIR.

This is exactly what plugin_points are designed for!

Plugin points are a way for your plugin to embed additional content into an existing Jinja2 template of FIR.

For instance, if a plugin point named dashboard_tab has been defined somewhere in any FIR template, then you can create a file at fir_<yourplugin>/template/fir_<yourplugin>/plugins/dashboard_tab.html. This file will be included automatically at the location of the plugin point.

Here is how Plugin points are declared in FIR templates : {% plugin_point 'dashboard_tab' %}. Plugin points have been defined in most existing HTML files of FIR, feel free to use them!