Plugins enhance the functionality of Jive Messenger. This document is a
developer's guide for creating plugins.
Structure of a Plugin
Plugins live in the plugins directory of messengerHome. If
a plugin is deployed as a JAR file, it will be automatically expanded into
a directory. The files in a plugin directory are as follows:
The web directory exists for plugins that need to add content
to the Jive Messenger Admin Console. Further details are below.
The plugin.xml file specifies the main Plugin class. A sample
file might look like the following:
Your plugin class must be implement the
Plugin
interface from the Jive Messenger API. The Plugin interface has
methods for initializing and destroying the plugin, as well as methods for retrieving meta-data
such as the plugin name, description, version, and author.
Modifying the Admin Console
Plugins can add tabs, sections, and pages to the admin console. There
are a several steps to accomplishing this:
An <adminconsole/> section must be added to the
plugin.xml file.
JSP files must be compiled and put into the classpath of the
plugin. A web.xml file containing the compiled JSP
servlet entries must be put into the web/ directory
of the plugin. Note: the Jive Messenger build script
can assist with compiling JSPs and creating the web.xml. This
is detailed below.
Any images required by your JSP pages must live in web/images/
directory. Only GIF and PNG images are supported.
The <adminconsole /> section of plugin.xml defines additional
tabs, sections and entries in the Admin Console framework. A sample
plugin.xml file might look like the following:
In this example, we've defined a new tab "Example", a sidebar section
"My Plugin" and a page "My Plugin Admin". We've registered my-plugin-admin.jsp
as the page. You can override existing tabs, sections, and items by using
the existing id attribute values in your own <adminconsole> defintion.
Using the Jive Messenger Build Script
The Jive Messenger build script will help you build and develop plugins. It
looks for plugin development directories in the following format:
The build script will compile source files and JSPs and create a valid
plugin structure.