• Table of contents
• Plugin Tutorial
  • Creating a new Plugin
  • Generating a controller
  • Extending menus
    • Extending the application menu
    • Extending the project menu
  • Adding new permissions
  • Creating a project module

Plugin Tutorial¶

Creating a new Plugin¶

Open up a command prompt and "cd" to your redmine directory, then execute the following command:

% ruby script/generate redmine_plugin Pools

The plugin structure is created in vendor/plugins/redmine_pools:

      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/app/controllers
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/app/helpers
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/app/models
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/app/views
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/db/migrate
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/lib/tasks
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/assets/images
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/assets/javascripts
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/assets/stylesheets
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/lang
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/README
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/init.rb
      create  vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/lang/en.yml

Edit vendor/plugins/redmine_pools/init.rb to adjust plugin information (name, author, description and version):

require 'redmine'

Redmine::Plugin.register :redmine_pools do
  name 'Pools plugin'
  author 'John Smith'
  description 'A plugin for managing pools'
  version '0.0.1'
end

Then restart the application and point your browser to http://localhost:3000/admin/info.
After logging in, you should see your new plugin in the plugins list:

Generating a controller¶

For now, the plugin doesn't do anything. So let's create a controller for our plugin.
Go back to the command prompt and run:

% ruby script/generate redmine_plugin_controller Pools pools index vote
      exists  app/controllers/
      exists  app/helpers/
      create  app/views/pools
      create  test/functional/
      create  app/controllers/pools_controller.rb
      create  test/functional/pools_controller_test.rb
      create  app/helpers/pools_helper.rb
      create  app/views/pools/index.html.erb
      create  app/views/pools/vote.html.erb

A controller PoolsController with 2 actions (#index and #vote) is created.

Edit app/controllers/pools_controller.rb in redmine_pools directory to implement these 2 actions.

class PoolsController < ApplicationController
  unloadable

  @@pools = [ {:id => 1, :title => 'First pool', :question => 'This is the first pool question', :yes => 0, :no => 0},
              {:id => 2, :title => 'Second pool', :question => 'This is the second pool question', :yes => 0, :no => 0} ]

  def index
    @pools = @@pools # Pool.find(:all)
  end

  def vote
    pool = @@pools.find {|p| p[:id].to_s == params[:id]} # Pool.find(params[:id])
    # saves the vote
    pool[params[:answer].to_sym] += 1
    flash[:notice] = 'Vote saved.'
    redirect_to :action => 'index'
  end
end

For the sake of this example, we simulate a pool model in our @@pools class variable.
We could of course use a ActiveRecord model just like we do it in a regular Rails app.

Then edit app/views/pools/index.html.erb that will display existing pools:

<h2>Pools</h2>

<% @pools.each do |pool| %>
  <p>
  <%= pool[:question] %>?
  <%= link_to 'Yes', {:action => 'vote', :id => pool[:id], :answer => 'yes'}, :method => :post %> (<%= pool[:yes] %>) /
  <%= link_to 'No', {:action => 'vote', :id => pool[:id], :answer => 'no'}, :method => :post %> (<%= pool[:no] %>)
  </p>
<% end %>

You can remove vote.html.erb since no rendering is done by the corresponding action.

Now, restart the application and point your browser to http://localhost:3000/pools.
You should see the 2 pools and you should be able to vote for them:

Note that pool results are reset on each request if you don't run the application in production mode, since our pool "model" is stored in a class variable in this example.

Extending menus¶

Our controller works fine but users have to know the url to see the pools. Using the Redmine plugin API, you can extend standard menus.
So let's add a new item to the application menu.

Extending the application menu¶

Edit init.rb at the root of your plugin directory to add the following line at the end of the plugin registration block:

Redmine::Plugin.register :redmine_pools do
  [...]

  menu :application_menu, :pools, { :controller => 'pools', :action => 'index' }, :caption => 'Pools'
end

Syntax is:

menu(menu_name, item_name, url, options={})

There are 4 menus that you can extend:

• :top_menu - the top left menu
• :account_menu - the top right menu with sign in/sign out links
• :application_menu - the main menu displayed when the user is not inside a project
• :project_menu - the main menu displayed when the user is inside a project

Available options are:

• :param - the parameter key that is used for the project id (default is :id)
• :if - a Proc that is called before rendering the item, the item is displayed only if it returns true
• :caption - the menu caption that can be:
  • a localized string Symbol
  • a String
  • a Proc that can take the project as argument

• :before, :after - specify where the menu item should be inserted (eg. :after => :activity)
• :last - if set to true, the item will stay at the end of the menu (eg. :last => true)
• :html_options - a hash of html options that are passed to link_to when rendering the menu item

In our example, we've added an item to the application menu which is emtpy by default.
Restart the application and go to http://localhost:3000:

Now you can access the pools by clicking the Pools tab from the welcome screen.

Extending the project menu¶

Now, let's consider that the pools are defined at project level (even if it's not the case in our example pool model). So we would like to add the Pools tab to the project menu instead.
Open init.rb and replace the line that was added just before with these 2 lines:

Redmine::Plugin.register :redmine_pools do
  [...]

  permission :pools, {:pools => [:index, :vote]}, :public => true
  menu :project_menu, :pools, { :controller => 'pools', :action => 'index' }, :caption => 'Pools', :after => :activity, :param => :project_id
end

The second line adds our Pools tab to the project menu, just after the activity tab.
The first line is required and declares that our 2 actions from PoolsController are public. We'll come back later to explain this with more details.

Restart the application again and go to one of your projects:

If you click the Pools tab, you should notice that the project menu is no longer displayed.
To make the project menu visible, you have to initialize the controller's instance variable @project.

Edit your PoolsController to do so:

def index
  @project = Project.find(params[:project_id])
  @pools = @@pools # @project.pools
end

The project id is available in the :project_id param because of the :param => :project_id option in the menu item declaration above.

Now, you should see the project menu when viewing the pools:

Adding new permissions¶

TODO

Creating a project module¶

TODO