NAME

LEGO::NXT::Manual::Plugins - Using and creating plugins for LEGO::NXT.

OVERVIEW

Plugins are useful for when you are writing a script and you need to add some extra functionality to your LEGO::NXT object.

The plugin system for LEGO::NXT is very simplistic and relys completely on Perl's OO design. The syntax of loading a plugin was inspired by DBIx::Class.

To use a plugin all you have to do is pass the plugin's name, minus the LEGO::NXT:: bit, to the use statment. So, for example, if you wanted to use the LEGO::NXT::Scorpion plugin you would:

  use LEGO::NXT qw( Scorpion );

This then extends the LEGO::NXT class to have all of the methods of the LEGO::NXT::Scorpion class.

CURRENT PLUGINS

None at the moment!

WRITING PLUGINS

Writing your own plugin is very simple. Just write a standard perl class, there are no requirements. Likely you will want to "use base(LEGO::NXT);" and/or one of the existing plugins.

A good way to get started is to look at the source of an existing plugin.

SUBCLASSING

Rather than using the plugin system you could instead subclass LEGO::NXT and whatever other modules you want. This gives you the ability to add your own custom methods to the LEGO::NXT object that apply only to your particular situation.

  package MyNXT;
  
  use base qw( LEGO::NXT LEGO::NXT::Scorpion );
  use LEGO::NXT::Constants;
  
  ...
  1;

Then in your script:

  use MyNXT;
  my $nxt = MyNXT->new();

AUTHOR

Aran Deltac <bluefeet@cpan.org>