VastPark developer zone

We don't have much documentation yet for server side plugins/extensions. We'll write some up soon, but for the moment here are the basics.

Dennis Ong wrote:

... Currently, I zipped the dll into my .plugin (i.e as a dependency source). Is it possible for me to reference the dll path in my code instead? ...

You don't need to include the Ionic DLL in the plugin, it should already be loaded into the server app domin, or will be resolved. Just reference it in your project and it should be fine.

Also note you don't need to zip server plugins into a *.plugin file. Rather, put all the dlls in a subdirectory of SERVER_ROOT/server/, and reference the main plugin DLL in the server IMML relative to SERVER_ROOT/server/.

For example, a convention we use looks like:

Put plugin dlls in "C:\root\CoolPark\server\plugins\CoolPlugin\".

Reference in server IMML:

   <Plugin Name="AReallyCoolPlugin" Source="plugins\CoolPlugin\CoolPlugin.dll" />

Another thing to note is that we now have server "extensions". These are like server plugins, except they do not need to be referenced from the IMML, they are loaded automatically and have a more detailed interface. They must implement VastPark.Server.Core.Extensibility.IServerExtension, and the DLL they are compiled into must be placed in SERVER_ROOT/Extensions/.

As I said, we still need to document some of the above, and give some examples. I'll let you know when we do.

Hi Dennis, if possible please let us know how you go with that and I'd encourage you to keep asking questions in the forums if you have any issues. We've recently refactored the wiki to suit the new work we've done on our platform but we still have much more documentation and improvements to make and your questions help us focus where to put the effort.

Hi Alex, Bruce,

I'm doing a client-side plugin, which will be reposited in Amazon S3. Not sure if I did it correctly, but here are the steps I did to reference the Ionic zip dll in VS 2010:

(i) I copied the Ionic dll (version 1.9.1.8) from the vastpark svn trunk to my packages folder containing the vastpark dlls:
<Project Folder>\packages\VastPark.PluginFramework.1.0.4.0\lib

(ii) In the solution explorer, References->Add References->selected the Ionic dll via the path above.

The plugin (see attached) without the Ionic dll worked perfectly fine on my terminal, but when I tried it on Jeremy's computer, it wasn't working. Only after I embedded the Ionic all into the plugin did it work.

Am I referencing the Ionic Zip dll the wrong way?

Thanks