Tutorials, instruction, classes, workshops

I'm having some difficulty trying to understand how to create plugins.  I created some very simple ones by staring with an existing plugin and making minor changes but anything more complicated is difficult.  My programming experience is meager at best.   I tried to follow the tutorial for elgg 1.8bi "creating a blog plugin"but couldn't make it work ( spent a day on it).

So my question is, are there other sources of instruction available?  I checked youtube but the ones I could find relate to installing elgg and I can do that.

  • Hi,

    you can read some general php guides to understand how php works (because elgg is entirely based on php..), then a good idea could be to take some sources, that is a plugin, and starting from the start.php file of the plugin try yo figure out how it works. 

    For this purpose you need the php documentation so you can understand what every php function does (search the function in the search box). Then you need the elgg documentation to understand qualitatively how elgg works (view system, hooks etc...). Be aware that some function are php built-in function, and others are defined by elgg framework, so you have to use the elgg reference for them, everyway don't worry, because they're recognizable because they're used for elgg-specific task!

    Now you need another tool, the most powerful one: pencil and paper!!! :D

    I good way (for me) to learn (and remember) plugin working way (and engine one) is to draw a flow chart of the plugin, that is, which page calls which page, who generate that view etc... a good help for this is a recently released plugin, used to track elgg views calls...views can be extended, overwritten and nested, so you could spend a lot of time trying to reach the code that generate some view/html element...this plugin helps a lot!

     

    I hope to be useful

     

  • @ Hi Tanggo,

    Thank for sharing, it's very useful for newbie to start develop plugin.