Plugins

BrickLayer has a dynamic plugin subsystem. In fact the templating engine uses some of the same concepts as the plugin subsystem uses. All Bricklayer plugins are of two general types. There are on demand loading plugins, and preloaded plugins. Out of those two general categories there are 6 plugin flavors each with their own location.

• access
• action
• content
• data
• error
• publish
• store

Each of the plugin types handles a particular type of job in the Bricklayer environment. Access plugins handle sessions and authentication. Action plugins are general purpose workhorse plugins. Content plugins are used to filter content before publishing. Data plugins are database drivers for the database interface. Error plugins are used for error handlers and logging. Publish plugins handle actually publishing the content to the browser or wherever else you want to write one for. You can load a plugin using the load_plugin method. It gets called with the following syntax:

$pluginObj = $BK_Obj->load_plugin($Name, $Type, $ParamsRef);
$pluginObj->run($argument1, argument2, ...);

Plugin Development and how the plugin system works will be covered in more detail in the Plugin Chapter.