Redmine

Is there a documented method to add functionnalities to controllers, helpers and models without overriding the original ones? I took a look at some existing plugins as it is said in the plugin_internals documentation, but I don't understand how it works.

Basically, without touching the original files, what do I have to do to :
- add an instance variable in the projects controller for instance?
- add a new method in the projects helper?
- add some features to the projects model?

Some informations can be found on the plugin_internals page as you said.

You should make a distinction between the 2 terms you mention :

• callbacks are a Rails concept : it allows you to do things before or after some event occur, such as save. I want to modify something on my object before a Project is saved to the DB, ok, I use before_save callback on Project model
• hooks are a Redmine concept : it litterally means crochet in French. It allows you to insert code at some specific points of the process. View hooks allow you to add view stuff, while controller or model hook allow you to add code or modify redmine's behavior on the fly

Now about your last 3 questions. On the plugin internals page, Eric points you to some good examples. He's an experienced developper and you may be afraid with his code, so you may find it unclear how he adds methods to existing classes/modules, but in reality what he does is approximatively the same as reopening the class and injecting code inside :

• add an instance variable in the project controller :

  in init.rb:
  
  require 'my_new_instance_variable'
  
  in lib/my_new_instance_variable.rb:
  
  require_dependency 'projects_controller'
  class ProjectsController
    @blah = "toh" 
  end
  

• add a new method in the project helper :

  in init.rb
  
  require 'my_new_method_in_project_helper'
  
  in lib/my_new_method_in_project_helper.rb:
  
  require_depencendy 'projects_helper'
  
  module ProjectsHelper
    def blahblah
      "bleh" 
    end
  end
  

As I said before, Eric would probably tell me I should do modules and then include them on original classes. But this is ok to me :)

There's just one thing about initialization : what I said might not work correctly if you work in development mode. So instead of :

require 'blah'

You should probably wrap your patches into a "to_prepare" block and use "require_dependency" so that Engines reloads it the right way :

config.to_prepare do
  require_dependency 'blah'
end

Hi Jean-Baptiste and thank you for your answer, it helped me quite a lot.
Still, I have a few questions regarding plugins development :

First, how does it work with models? Is it the same as controllers and helpers? Since models are linked to the database structure, I assume there must be some particularities? I had my migrations work fine by using rake db:migrate_plugins, but how do I implement methods and variables to existing models?

Then, it seems that the changes that I've made with my controllers and helpers (well, actually only one of each, since I'm currently trying to understand how it works) work properly when I launch the Webrick (I've made changes on the welcome index page), but if I refresh or navigate through the app and try to reach back the home page, I get error messages, telling me that all of my new instance variables and methods don't actually exist.

Could you help me out?

The same goes for models. You should read articles about common Rails model attributes/methods if you want to understand how it works. Some methods are auto-generated by active record if you have the corresponding column in your database.

About your errors, try to use "require_dependency" instead of "require" and see if it solves your problem. If not, you should post your exact error message here, somebody might be able to help you.