This document describes EWE modules which is how EWE operations are customized and extended.
Module code must use the method described in section 3.2 to locate the EWE include files.
Providing a module for EWE is fairly simple. Each module must exist in its own subfolder
under the /modules directory, whose name is the module name and (obviously) must be
unique among modules. Within that directory are all of the files necessary to support
the module. The only required one is "x.php", which contains a class named "x" (where
"x" is the module name and the name of the module subfolder) which has the following
methods defined:
Install() - installs the module into EWE. Creates all necessary tables and table entries.
If it returns non-null, it is the name of the file to execute to do the final installation
tasks (such as querying the user). One of the first things to do is to call the
Modules::Add_Module() method to register the module. If this fails, no further installation
tasks should be attempted.
Uninstall() - uninstalls the module from EWE. All tables created during the install
should be removed. EWE removes all hook references to the module, so that is not
necessary for the Uninstall() method's code.
Configure() - User configuration.
Description() - Returns a short description of the module.
Hook() - Respond to hooks (see documentation on hooks).
New_Update() - Returns True if a newer version of the module is available.
Update() - Performs an update to the latest version of the module.
Version() - Returns an integer value indicating the version of the module.
Note that the module name must not contain spaces, dollar signs, or any characters that are not valid for the file system on which EWE is installed.
Do not directly access EWE tables - use the appropriate class methods to maintain data consistency. For instance, use the User class to access user information. This will prevent your module from breaking when EWE is upgraded to new versions. If you are adding new tables, define a new database set name to use (see section 3.1.7). Also, to avoid collision with future EWE table names and the table names of other modules, prefix your table names with your module name.