How do I design plugins to work with codeigniter?

Question

So. I'm designing a CMS which is built upon the wonderful Codeigniter framework. The core of the CMS contains:

• a pages and content editor interface
• a media library
• some options and settings
• a users and permissions area

I'd like users to be able to extend the system with plugins which they can design. Ideally these would be self contained in a folder with the plugin name eg 'coolplugin'

which would be stored in a folder I create called plugins/. So this 'coolplugin'folder will contain (I'm imagining):

• Controllers
• Models
• Views
• Static (CSS and JS and IMG) Files

But this now does not work with codeigniter as the system expects controllers to be in the Controllers folder, Views to be in the Views folder etc.

How do I manage this process? Can anyone offer advice?

Answer 1

Interesting idea and concept. I would use Hierarchical Model View Controller(HMVC) pattern to do the job. HMVC allows "modules" to be created, and still have the CodeIgniter structure going.

Here's an excellent tutorial from Nettuts: HMVC: an Introduction and Application

Good luck! :)