Tips for creating an extension for the admin interface?

Monday 26 March 2007 11:54:39 am

Greetings; I would like to develop an extension for the admin interface and was hoping someone could point me to any relevant tips, etc. I've searched through the forums, but my keyword mojo isn't digging up anything useful. What I would like to do is add a new menu item to the /visual section (e.g., /visual/menuconfig, /visual/templatelist, etc.) and have that link to the functionality of my extension.

How can I best add that menu item to the /visual section? I know I can override the parts/visual/menu.tpl in the admin interface, but is there a way to have the extension do it automatically when it is installed?

Are there any other general tips, tricks, advice for creating an admin extension? I've written a few content extensions, so I believe most of the same concepts apply. But is there anything special I should know for the admin side?

Thanks.

Tuesday 27 March 2007 6:58:54 am

Felix, thanks for the initial tips. However, I don't want to create a brand new top level navigation or an entirely new left hand navigation part. I want my extension to add a new item onto an existing navigation part (specifically, part/visual/menu.tpl). Is there a way to append an item to an existing navigation part, or do you have to override the entire part?

For example, part/visual/menu.tpl currently renders these items:
* Look and feel
* Menu management
* Toolbar management
* Templates

I would like the menu to read like this after someone installs my extension:
* Look and feel
* Menu management
* Toolbar management
* Templates
* My Extension

Ideally, I don't want the user to have to manually override their templates; install the extension, and it is done for you. I haven't found a way to do this in Exponential, but I'm not sure that means it isn't possible.

Thanks.

Monday 17 December 2007 9:32:13 pm

Felix wrote:
<i>If you want to have another leftnavigation you (...) create a new override template</i>

As distributed as Exponential'es template system is, pagelayout somehow remains this one, comparatively big file with lots of stuff in it, which means it generally has greater chances of being updated/upgraded ;). Making an extension dependent on admin's pagelayout override seems not very elegant to me, wouldn't you say?

However, there's way around that, right below the switch you mentioned, there is (at least in Exponential 4.0) this extra part:

{section show=is_set( $module_result.left_menu )}
    {include uri=$module_result.left_menu}
{/section}

So it is enough to place in your own module/view.php file something like this:

$Result['left_menu'] = 'design:parts/customnavigationpart/menu.tpl';

And we're home ;)

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