plugin / intra process communication system

[Florian Ludwig]

On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 18:47 +0100, Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
> > Here there problem with the trac (and other plugin systems I've
> seen)
> > approach:
> >
> > You need to define something like:
> > |
> > | class IAuthPlugin(Interface): [...]
> > |
> > in your blog software.
> 
> Why? Any reason you can't define it in a separate package the 
> blog-software depends on, as well as your wiki?

That's actually my point - most plugin systems I've seen, like the one
trac uses, are not encouraging you to do so. Having a module that just
defines an Interface is kind of weird - and in the real world no one is
doing it.

> And then of course, this is not really needed. In Python, behavior 
> counts, not type-information. So you can get away without any explicit
> declared interface. You might chose to not do that, for aestetic
> reasons, or better documentation. But you aren't forced. 

Actually some plugin-systems in python do force you and they check if
your "implementation" comply with the "interface". 


Here is one solution I came up with. Based on the earlier example:
> >     Lets say you program a wiki and like to allow different kind of
> >     authentications. So you create two plugins (for example one for
> >     OpenID and one for Shibboleth).
> >
> >      Some time later you feel like reinventing the wheel again and
> >      you program a blog. Again you like to allow different ways of
> >      authentication and you already wrote plugins for exactly the
> >       same for your wiki, right?

auth_openid.py - providing the authentication service
http://dpaste.com/hold/159619/

wiki.py - providing the wiki
http://dpaste.com/hold/159634/

Now putting both together:

> import pbus
>
> import wiki
> import auth_openid
> # or: import auth_shibboleth
>
> pbus.get("wiki").run()

No interface definitions.


What do you think? Any obvious pitfalls (besides reinventing something)?

Please keep in mind that syntax/api is not "done" or anything its just
an concept presentation.

Thanks,
Florian


-- 
Florian Ludwig <dino at phidev.org>
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