Summary

This chapter guided you through the development of nine different plugins. Each plugin taught you one or two new concepts that you can use when customizing your Elgg site. Whenever you need to add a plugin setting or create a form, you can return to this chapter and use the examples as a template. As you write more plugins, solving these types of problems will become easier for you. You will not need to look up the names and parameters of functions or search for the right input view. Instead, you can focus on writing really cool plugins.

If your goal is to write more elaborate plugins, then you will need to learn the Elgg data model (entities, metadata, annotations, and relationships). We briefly touched on entities (ElggObject is one) and metadata, but you will find a fuller explanation of the data model in Appendix A. Other topics not covered in this chapter include adding to the activity stream, sending notifications, using Ajax, and using the web services API. Besides Appendix...