6.0.0-beta13
4/11/26
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[[toc]]

  • Introduction

by Torben Dannhauer

The process of populating the new module with content/functionality is fairly straight forward and after learning how the Horde API' s work, you should be able to produce new modules in a minimum amount of time.

Jan Schneider talked about this at FOSDEM 2005. You can find his slides at http://www.horde.org/papers/fosdem2005/.

The new module's functionality could by separated in the following aspects:

  • Menus

  • Calling-procedure at entering the application

  • Permissions

  • All Content-Pages which are accessible through on oh the menus

  • Services offered to external modules

Usually it is useful to analyse another hordemodule to learn how this work. I analysed Kronolith and it helped me a lot.

Obviously it is necessary to know the provided horde API zu write a horde module. Because a beginner (and this tutorial is adressed to them) has no clue about it, it is very usefull to read the package-documentation at http://dev.horde.org/api/framework/.

  • Menus

In Horde there are two standard menus: The top menu an the side menu.

ToDo: Add links to Wikipages describing menus in detail.

++ Top Menu

The top menu is devided in to 4 sections:

  • left: menuitems provided by this module: see below

  • mid left: menuitems added manually: see below

  • mid right: menuitems added in the administrator's module setup

  • right: menuitems provided by horde as default

+++ left

the menuitmes this module intentionally provide are located in the file /lib/Module.php in the function ::getMenu()

Add Items like this:

$menu->add(Horde::applicationUrl('pagetoshow.php'), _("MenuItemName"), 'icon.png', $registry->getImageDir() );

+++ mid left

Items are added in /config/menu.php:

$_menu[] = array(

  'url' =>        'http://www.example.com/',

  'text' =>       'Example, Inc.',

  'icon' =>       'example.png',

  'icon_path' =>  'http://www.example.com/images/',

  'target' =>     '_blank',

  'onclick' =>    ''

);

++ Side Menu

  • Calling procedure at entering the application

If a module is entered via the side-menu, usualy the url to the module-folder was provided. The link ist http:/// without any file suffix. So the calling procedure starts by executing the index.php on the webserver.

Procedure:

  • Executing index.php: initialzing, load configfiles and load the page which should be displayed at the beginning (e.g. in Skeleton: list.php).

  • list.php calls >module>/lib/base.php to initialize the module and then proceeds with its content.

  • now lists.php is displayed. By Clicking on any menuitem another contentpage as list.php (but of course also list.php again) could be displayed (->executed).

  • Permissions

The module's permissiontree which includes the logical structure of all permissions available in this module is defined in /lib/api.php

Further information about permissions is available at http://wiki.horde.org/Doc/Dev/PermsPackage

  • Content-Page

The basic procedure to create Content-Pages is:

  • create .inc files that display the elements on the screen

  • create any php files needed to fill in forms

It is a good point to start a contentpage by copying the Skeleton's list.php

All viewable pages ar located in the module's root-folder. All businesslogic (classes etc,) are located in separate files in /lib.

  • Services

  • Misc