Vala Plugin Example

Vala Plugins

You MUST have the Vala bindings installed on your system for this to work. They are built by the default GPlugin build.

Example Vala Plugin

Due to the way GPlugin.PluginInfo info works, you must subclass it and set your values in the new constructor. It is recommended that you define this class in a namespace to avoid collisions with other plugins.

Like all plugins in GPlugin, Vala plugins must also implement the gplugin_query, gplugin_load, and gplugin_unload functions. These functions must be in the global namespace.

The following is a basic Vala plugin.

using GPlugin;

namespace BasicPlugin {

/* You need to create a class for your plugin info. This is pretty simple as you
 * can see in the example below.
 */
public class Info : GPlugin.PluginInfo {
    public Info() {
        string[] authors = {"author1"};

        Object(
            id: "gplugin/vala-basic-plugin",
            abi_version: 0x01020304,
            name: "basic plugin",
            authors: authors,
            category: "test",
            version: "version",
            license_id: "license",
            summary: "summary",
            website: "website",
            description: "description"
        );
    }
}

}

/* gplugin_query is called when searching for plugins. The function should
 * return an instance of the PluginInfo class you created above. If something
 * went wrong, you can set error with an error message.
 */
public GPlugin.PluginInfo gplugin_query(out Error error) {
    error = null;

    return new BasicPlugin.Info();
}

/* gplugin_load is called when your plugin is loaded in the application. If
 * something isn't quite right, you can return false and optionally set error,
 * to signify that something went wrong and stop your plugin from being loaded.
 */
public bool gplugin_load(GPlugin.Plugin plugin, out Error error) {
    error = null;

    return true;
}

/* gplugin_plugin_unload is called when your plugin is unloaded in the
 * application. The shutdown parameter tells your plugin whether or not the
 * application is shutting down. For example, if a user unloads your plugin,
 * shutdown will be false, but if the program is shutting down, shutdown will be
 * true.
 *
 * If something went wrong with the unload or the plugin isn't ready to be
 * unloaded, you can return false, and optionally set error, here to stop it
 * from being unloaded. Note if shutdown is true, the return value is not
 * honored.
 */
public bool gplugin_unload(GPlugin.Plugin plugin, bool shutdown, out Error error) {
    error = null;

    return true;
}