How the Client Locates Plug-ins

The client tracks plug-ins by maintaining a list of jar files that the user has selected using the Configure Plugin Components dialog box. To display this dialog box, from Administration Services Console, select Tools, and then Configure components.

When a jar file is selected, the dialog scans through each package in the jar file looking for a class called MiscellaneousHandler.class. When a class with this name is found, the jar file name and the package name containing that class file are retained by the plug-in manager. Therefore, each jar file must contain exactly one package with a MiscellaneousHandler class in it.

When Administration Services Console starts, the plug-in manager scans each jar file in its stored list, looking for the MiscellaneousHandler.class file in the specified package. If this class is found, the plug-in manager adds this plug-in to its list of plug-ins. Other parts of the application, or any other plug-in can then call the plug-in manager to get a list of all plug-ins.

Basically, each plug-in consists of the following:

For the rest of this document, we will use the term “plug-in root” to refer to the package containing the MiscellaneousHandler class.

For example, the rest of this document uses a plug-in with a class named com.MyPlugin.MiscellaneousHandler; the plug-in root refers to the package com.MyPlugin.