How to enable plugins for an IDA

Note

Enabling plugins only needs to be done once per IDA. If you are creating a plugin app for an IDA that already supports plugins, see how to create a plugin app.

If you are unsure if your IDA supports plugins, you can look for INSTALLED_APPS.extend(get_plugin_apps(...)) in your settings file.

Overview

Plugins are meant to be automatically discovered and installed by an Independently Deployable Application (IDA). In order for an IDA to recognize and install plugins, a one time setup is required in each IDA. This how-to guide is for this one-time preparation of an IDA.

Django Projects

In order to enable this functionality in a Django project, the project needs to update:

1. its settings to extend its INSTALLED_APPS to include the Plugin Apps

INSTALLED_APPS.extend(get_plugin_apps(...))

2. its settings to add all Plugin Settings

add_plugins(__name__, ...)

3. its urls to add all Plugin URLs

urlpatterns.extend(get_plugin_url_patterns(...))

4. its setup to register PluginsConfig (for connecting Plugin Signals)

from setuptools import setup
setup(
    ...
    entry_points={
        "lms.djangoapp": [
            "plugins = openedx.core.djangoapps.plugins.apps:PluginsConfig",
        ],
        "cms.djangoapp": [
            "plugins = openedx.core.djangoapps.plugins.apps:PluginsConfig",
        ],
    }
)

Note

For a plugin that will appear in a single IDA, you could create constants like ProjectType found in edx-platform. If the plugin is for many IDAs, we need to add a capability to this library with a global constant.