CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::HOWTO -- documentation on how to write your own plugins package CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::MyPlugin; ### return command => method mapping sub plugins { ( myplugin1 => 'mp1', myplugin2 => 'mp2' ) } ### method called when the command '/myplugin1' is issued sub mp1 { .... } ### method called when the command '/? myplugin1' is issued sub mp1_help { return "Help Text" } This pod text explains how to write your own plugins for "CPANPLUS::Shell::Default".

Registering Plugin Modules
Plugins are detected by using "Module::Pluggable". Every module in the "CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::*" namespace is considered a plugin, and is attempted to be loaded. Therefor, any plugin must be declared in that namespace, in a corresponding ".pm" file.

Registering Plugin Commands
To register any plugin commands, a list of key value pairs must be returned by a "plugins" method in your package. The keys are the commands you wish to register, the values are the methods in the plugin package you wish to have called when the command is issued. For example, a simple 'Hello, World!' plugin: package CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::HW; sub plugins { return ( helloworld => 'hw' ) }; sub hw { print "Hello, world!\n" } When the user in the default shell now issues the "/helloworld" command, this command will be dispatched to the plugin, and it's "hw" method will be called

Registering Plugin Help
To provide usage information for your plugin, the user of the default shell can type "/? PLUGIN_COMMAND". In that case, the function "PLUGIN_COMMAND_help" will be called in your plugin package. For example, extending the above example, when a user calls "/? helloworld", the function "hw_help" will be called, which might look like this: sub hw_help { " /helloworld # prints "Hello, world!\n" } If you dont provide a corresponding _help function to your commands, the default shell will handle it gracefully, but the user will be stuck without usage information on your commands, so it's considered undesirable to omit the help functions.

Arguments to Plugin Commands
Any plugin function will receive the following arguments when called, which are all positional: For example, the following command: /helloworld bob --nofoo --bar=2 joe Would yield the following arguments: sub hw { my $class = shift; # CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::HW my $shell = shift; # CPANPLUS::Shell::Default object my $cb = shift; # CPANPLUS::Backend object my $cmd = shift; # 'helloworld' my $input = shift; # 'bob joe' my $opts = shift; # { foo => 0, bar => 2 } .... } Please report bugs or other issues to <bug-cpanplus@rt.cpan.org<gt>. This module by Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>. The CPAN++ interface (of which this module is a part of) is copyright (c) 2001 - 2007, Jos Boumans <kane@cpan.org>. All rights reserved. This library is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. CPANPLUS::Shell::Default, CPANPLUS::Shell, cpanp