I’m currently involved with developing a C# CMS-like web application which will be used to standardise our development of websites. From the outset, the idea has been to keep the core as simple as possible to avoid the complexity and menu/option overload that blights many CMS systems. This simple core is now complete and working very well.
We envisisaged that the system would be able to accept plugins or modules which would extend the core functionality to suit a given projects needs. These would also be re-usable across projects. For example, a basic catalogue and shopping basket might be needed. All the code for such extensions should be in seperate assemblies. They should be able to provide their own admin interfaces and front-end code from this library. The system should search for available plugins and give the admin user the option to enable/disable the feature. (This is all very much like WordPress plugins)
It is crucial that we attack this problem in the correct way, so I’m trying to perform as much due dilligence as possible before jumping in.
I am aware of the Plugin Pattern (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972962.aspx) and have read some articles on it’s use. It seems reasonable but I’m not convinced it’s necessarily the correct/best technique for this situation. It seems more suited to processing applications (image/audio manipulation, maths etc).
Are there any other options for achieving this kind of UI extensibility functionality? Or is the plugin pattern the way to go?
I’d also be interested if anybody has links to articles that explain using the plugin pattern for this purpose?
The managed extensibility framework (MEF) provides a way that is focused specifically towards building composeable and extensible applications. It’s on codeplex for .net 3.5 and will be bundled with .net 4 when it’s released here in a couple of weeks. It’ll help provide the plumbing that you’ll need for what you’re trying to do.