Extending Mura CMS with Custom Plugins

cf.Objective(ANZ) 2011

About the presenter

Java developer for early part of career Joined RISE in 2005 Developing in ColdFusion since… …and loving it!

Twitter: @am2605 Email: andrew@abm.id.au

About the audience?

Who is using a CMS? Who is using Mura?

Who is using Mura plugins?

About the presentation

Overview of Mura (brief)

Mura Plugins when & why? how?

walk through some simple plugin code

About the presentation (cont.)

What you will take away: Understanding of plugins & what they are Starting point for building your own plugins

(published on github) Development tips, techniques and pitfalls

to avoid

Mura

Open Source Content Management System (CMS)

GPL, with exceptions for plugins, themes and bundles*

* See https://github.com/blueriver/MuraCMS/blob/develop/index.cfm

Mura

Commercial licensing and support available, should you prefer

Mura (cont…)

Features Easy for front end users

to learn and use Novice users / no

knowledge of HTML

Templates and content styling

Mura (cont…)

Features Easily extensible

Mura MarketplacePlugins Templates

Create you own!Plugins Templates

What are Mura Plugins?

Extend Mura with new functionality

Examples from the Mura Marketplace include: eCommerce, Google

Maps integration, Survey module

What are Mura Plugins?

Extend Mura with new functionality Installable, distributable package Contains all the necessary elements

to build powerful custom applications within Mura CMS

How Mura Plugins work

Provide Display Objects

These are in turn embedded in Mura pages

Can be used across multiple sites

When use Mura Plugins?

Plugins are only one of numerous ways to extend Mura

So when use them? If planning to distribute Providing large or

complex functionality

Why use Mura Plugins?

Update safe Packaged and organised Easily distributable Licensing exception Framework-friendly

FW/1, Model-Glue, etc.

Credit: “Anatomy of a Mura Plugin” presentation – Sean Schroeder, Blue River Software

So how is it done?

Follow a standard file / directory structure

Package as a zip file Upload via the Mura Admin interface

The simplest example contains 3 files

A simple plugin

config.xml.cfm

dspHelloWorld.cfm

Build and install

Deployed as a zip file I prefer to use ant from within Eclipse

to package the plugin But you can create it any way you wish

My ant build.xml is available on github Link will be at end of slides

Demo 2 - More advanced

The previous example was interesting, but not very useful

Let’s hook up our plugin to Mura… …via events

Introducing the Mura Scope

Provides a standard, concise syntax for interfacing with Mura objects (and their properties and events).

Accessed as the “$” variable We’ll see an example of this shortly

Introducing the Mura Scope

Provides a standard, concise syntax for interfacing with Mura objects (and their properties and events).

In admin area Must include plugins/config.cfm to obtain

access to this

When included in Mura page Automagically available

More about PluginConfig

The <settings> element

Contains settings that the plugin requires to function

Specified by the user during plugin install

Accessed programatically via pluginConfig.getSetting(‘settingName’)

The <settings> element

EventHandlers

Map to Mura events, or events announced in your plugins

Mura has an extensive event model –more info in links at end of slides

Set up in config.xml.cfm:

EventHandlers (cont)

Plugin.cfc

Allows you to run code that is needed to properly install, update or delete a plugin

Plugin.cfc must extend mura.plugin.plugincfc

An example

See demo3/plugin/plugin.cfc

Resources

Mura – http://getmura.com

Mura Marketplace -http://www.getmura.com/marketplace/

Grant Sheperthttp://www.grantshepert.com/

Resources (cont.)

Source code for demos –https://github.com/am2605/cfoanz-2011-mura-plugins

Twitter: @am2605 Email: andrew@abm.id.au

Questions?

Thank you!