OxOOL Module Development HOWTO

This manual will simply explain the file structures in a standard OxOOL module repository and how to develop an OxOOL module.

Default OxOOL Module File Structure

When you use oxool-module-maker to generate a template module repository, by default it will use the module template defined in the package oxool-dev. The important file and folder description in the template is described below:

ModuleConfiguration.md : Description of module configuration. module.xml.in : Module XML file template, it will be used to generate module XML file when executing configure. If you need to change some configurations after generating a module, you should follow the instructions in ModuleConfiguration.md to edit this file and re-run autogen.sh and configure. module.spec.in : It is used to generate RPM spec file. debian/* : It is used to generate DEB file. admin/* : If this module has a backend administration page you should put it in this folder. The name shown in the admin page is defined in the <adminItem> tag in module.xml.in, or assign --adminItem when running oxool-module-maker. See README.md in the generated git repository for reference. src/* : Module C++ source files. It will be compiled generated .so file for OxOOL to load. html/* : Module HTML frontend files. The default page is index.html. test.sh : When developing and testing a module, this file is used to pass the module XML file to OxOOL to load. See "OxOOL Module Compiling Manual" for detail.

C++ Class Methods in an OxOOL module

In the module repo generated by oxool-module-maker, by default there is a Module.cpp under src/ folder. In this Module.cpp there is the base class of this module, named by the module name. Besides constructors and destructors, there are some methods as well:

getVersion() : Get version number. initialize() : Initialize. handleRequest() : Handle requests from client (frontend). You should implement here to handle the requests from the frontend web client. handleAdminRequest() : Handle requests from admin pages. You should implement here to handle the requests from admin pages. handleAdminMessage() : Handle websocket messages from backend admin pages.