NAME

App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin - Netdisco Web UI components

Introduction

App::Netdisco's plugin system allows you more control of what Netdisco components are displayed in the web interface. Plugins can be distributed independently from Netdisco and are a better alternative to source code patches.

The following web interface components are implemented as plugins:

• Navigation Bar items (e.g. Inventory link)

• Tabs for Search and Device pages

• Reports (pre-canned searches)

• Additional Device Port Columns

• Additional Device Details

• Admin Menu function (job control, manual topology, pseudo devices)

This document explains how to configure which plugins are loaded. See App::Netdisco::Manual::WritingPlugins if you want to develop new plugins.

Application Configuration

Netdisco configuration supports a web_plugins directive along with the similar extra_web_plugins. These list, in YAML format, the set of Perl module names which are the plugins to be loaded. Each item injects one part of the Netdisco web user interface.

You can override these settings to add, change, or remove entries from the default lists. Here is an example of the web_plugins list:

 web_plugins:
   - Inventory
   - Report::DuplexMismatch
   - Search::Device
   - Search::Node
   - Search::Port
   - Device::Details
   - Device::Ports

Any change should go into your local deployment.yml configuration file. If you want to view the default settings, see the share/config.yml file in the App::Netdisco distribution.

How to Configure

The extra_web_plugins setting is empty, and used only if you want to add new plugins but not change the set enabled by default. If you do want to add to or remove from the default set, then create a version of web_plugins instead.

Netdisco prepends "App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin::" to any entry in the list. For example, "Inventory" will load the App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin::Inventory module.

Such plugin modules can either ship with the App::Netdisco distribution itself, or be installed separately. Perl uses the standard @INC path searching mechanism to load the plugin modules.

If an entry in the list starts with a "+" (plus) sign then Netdisco attemps to load the module as-is, without prepending anything to the name. This allows you to have App::Netdiso web UI plugins in other namespaces:

 web_plugins:
   - Inventory
   - Search::Device
   - Device::Details
   - +My::Other::Netdisco::Web::Component

The order of the entries is significant. Unsurprisingly, the modules are loaded in order. Therefore Navigation Bar items appear in the order listed, and Tabs appear on the Search and Device pages in the order listed, and so on.

Finally, you can also prepend module names with "X::", to support the "Netdisco extension" namespace. For example, "X::Observium" will load the App::NetdiscoX::Web::Plugin::Observium module.