This page is for programers and describes the programming of PicApport-Add-ons in the Groovy language.
General
Add-ons have to be written in the groovy-programming language and have been introduced in PicApport V9.0.
All Add-ons provided by Contecon are available in source code, so it's a good idea to understand our Add-ons before you start your own projects.
Development cycle / infrastructure
See PicApport Add-on Installation Guide for information about directory structure, naming conventions and the groovy run-time environment.
Because Add-ons are written in Groovy they can be updated while the PicApport-Server is running. This helps a lot to speed up the programming process of an Add-on.
To start we recommend to use one of our template-groovy-add-ons and copy it to a new directory below .picapport/groovy
The Add-ons will be loaded automatically during the server startup or when the reloadaddons command is entered on the server console or automatically when an add-on of type procedure is executed.
An Add-on must have the file extension .groovy.
If an Add-on needs special support of java library's (.jar files) make sure that these jar files are in the classpath of your picapport server.
Best practices
- For development use a separate PicApport Server with a small amount of photos
- Make a backup copy of the photos
- During loading and recompiling errors and problems are reported on the PicApport server console, so it's good to have access to the console.
check the .picapport\groovy\logfiles\currentConfiguration.log for problems and loaded configuration
Add-on types
Currently the following add-on type are supported:
Crawler filter (pagc)
see Add-on type: Crawler filter (pagc) for more Information
Procedures (pagp)
see Add-on type: Procedure (pagp) for more Information
Database Field extensions (pagf)
see Add-on type: Database Field extension (pagf) for more Information