README.plugins

NfSen Plugins
=============

A detailed plugin guide is available in the doc directory. However,
to upgrade your current plugins, follow the procedure below:

Plugins of Nfsen version < snapshot-20070110 will be recognized as so called
legacy plugins, and will work with only little modifications:

Frontend Plugins:
Replace all notification Messages in your plugin:
   
	Instead of directly setting the message with

	$_SESSION['error'] = '.. '; 

	use the new provided function

	SetMessage('error', "...");

	The same is true for 'warning', 'alert' and 'info'

Backend Plugins:
Your plugins will continue to work unless you make access to profile
information such as NfSen::ReadProfile.
All Profile functions have been moved from NfSen module to NfProfile. So you
need to replace calls such es NfSen::ReadProfile(..) to NfProfile::ReadProfile

When accessing profile data, a legacy plugin runs correctly only, when the profile
is not in a subgroup. To access the profilegroup, add another parameter to your run
function:

sub run {
	my $name = shift;
	my $timeslot = shift;

	# add here group parameter
	my $profilegroup = shift;

You may also add the $profilegroup parameter to the ReadProfile(..) function in order 
to access plugin information in a subgroup

** IMPORTANT **
Replace the default sub END in the plugin by sub Cleanup. This is required as otherwise
Perl will call the standard END block, every time a comm service server exits. This
could cause unexpected results. 

If you are interested in more details, have a look at the demoplugin.pm in the plugin
directory and look into the Plugin Writers guide in the doc dir.