WolfCMS Plugins XML file

dajare-wolfcms-plugins.xml

<wolf-plugins>
	<wolf-plugin>
		<id>ckeditor</id>
		<version>1.2</version>
		<status>stable</status>
	</wolf-plugin>
</wolf-plugins>

lol....

Maybe we should start auto-generating this from the plugin repo? :)

Not a bad idea! This is just an experiment: it can be used, but creates a VERY long URL. Could it be rolled into the repo somehow?

dajare: Why don't you just pass it to a URL shortener like bit.ly or goo.gl? Then you can track hits :)

Although, having said that, I don't know how the underlying Wolf code would handle the re-direction headers, if at all?

Hi Craig - it did cross my mind to try that (j.mp my shortener of choice :) but hesitated over just that issue. (And because I was rushing!) Worth experimenting with, though. I do like the bit.ly/j.mp stats tracking!

I like Martijn's suggestion as well though ;)

As for Wolf CMS being able to handle the redirection... don't think it will handle that correctly though I never tried. It also depends on whether it decides to use Curl or not. By default it doesn't use curl because of performance issues but if the default option isn't available and curl is, it falls back on curl.

We could combine the two suggestions? :) We can use the plugin repository as the source for the information and use j.mp at the same time. Though in order to be able to track the hits for a single plugin, we wouldn't be able to merge all plugins into a single XML... which would cost extra hits for the final Wolf CMS installation doing the checking.

Actually generating this information from the repo isn't difficult, assuming people keep the releases in the repo up-to-date.

Could Wolf cache the version information somewhere? Attach a TTL to it (X days?), and update when it's expired. Also update when new plugins are installed.

Instead of using another service and having separate XML files - what about having the repository doing both, dynamically? A) Generate a short-ish URL for each plugin (plugins.wolfcms.org/a12bc3) and B) have some code respond to that which sends the relevant XML header + content.

I was already planning to add some sort of cache to Wolf CMS for not only the plugin update information, but also the Wolf CMS version number information. It just been a low priority for now. There are more points (Gravatar results for example) where Wolf could cache information so perhaps the time is right to start thinking about and implementing a central cache directory for Wolf.

As for the XML... my plan was to dynamically generate the XML "file" from repo information. A short url available an accompanying "hits for the update information" is also very possible. We actually already have a short code available (more or less) http://www.wolfcms.org/repository/123 is the view for a plugin's details. Apart from adding a CNAME to DNS to create plugins.wolfcms.org, it shouldn't be much work to add a path to the dynamically generated XML.

By the way... as soon as I've cleaned up the code a bit, I'll make the repository plugin available through GitHub so the community can help add to / fix the repository.

@dajare - Sorry for the run away discussion here David. :P

Just another short additional remark concerning the repo... I want to add OAuth support so people can change plugin repository information through an API. This would allow developers to write/use a small command line script to create a release in one go:

• Tag release in GitHub
• Package up release in zip file
• Create new release in plugin repo
• Upload zip file to plugin repo
• Update other plugin repo information
• Done. (all automated)

Great ideas, I think all of those would be very valuable to and welcomed by the community.

mvdkleijn wrote:

@dajare - Sorry for the run away discussion here David. :P

Not at all! Putting up a gist like this that could spark a conversation like the one you and Craig are having is about right for my level of contribution! :D Great stuff!