About Pluggable Apps

tgext.pluggable permits to plug extensions and applications inside a TG projects much like the Django Apps.

tgext.pluggable IS STILL EXPERIMENTAL AND MIGHT CHANGE IN THE FUTURE

Installing

tgext.pluggable can be installed both from pypi or from bitbucket:

easy_install tgext.pluggable

should just work for most of the users

Plugging Apps

In your application config/app_cfg.py import plug:

from tgext.pluggable import plug

Then at the end of the file call plug for each pluggable application you want to enable (package_name must be already installed in your python environment):

plug(base_config, 'package_name')

The plug function accepts various optional arguments, for example if the plugged application exposes a controller you can mount it in a different place specifying a different appid:

plug(base_config, 'package_name', 'new_app_id')

Other options include:

• plug_helpers (True/False) -> Enable helpers injection

• plug_models (True/False) -> Enable models plugging

• plug_controller (True/False) -> Mount pluggable app root controller

• plug_bootstrap (True/False) -> Enable websetup.bootstrap plugging

• plug_statics (True/False) -> Enable plugged app statics

• rename_tables (True/False) -> Rename pluggable tables by prepending appid.

Partials

tgext.pluggables provides a bunch of utilities to work with partials. Partials in tgext.pluggable can be declared as a function or TGController subclass method that has an @expose decorator. Those partials can lately be rendered with:

${h.call_partial('module:function_name', arg1='Something')}

In the case of a class method:

${h.call_partial('module.Class:method', arg1='Something')}

The quickstarted pluggable application provides an example partial:

from tg import expose

@expose('plugappname.templates.little_partial')
def something(name):
    return dict(name=name)

which can be rendered using:

${h.call_partial('plugappname.partials:something', name='Partial')}

Replacing Templates

tgext.pluggable provides a function to replace templates. This is useful when you want to override the template that an application you plugged in is exposing. To override call replace_template inside your application config:

from tgext.pluggable replace_template

replace_template(base_config, 'myapp.templates.about', 'myapp.templates.index')

replace_template will work even with tgext.pluggable partials, but won’t work with templates rendered directly calling the render method.

Calls to replace_template must be performed before the application has started.

Creating Pluggable Apps

tgext.pluggable provides a quickstart-pluggable command to create a new pluggable application:

$ paster quickstart-pluggable plugtest
Enter package name [plugtest]:
...

The quickstarted application will provide an example on how to use models, helpers, bootstrap, controllers and statics.

In the previous example the pluggable application can be enabled inside any TurboGears using:

plug(base_config, 'plugtest')

After enabling the plugtest application you should run paster setup-app development.ini inside your TurboGears project to create the sample model. Then you can access the sample application page though http://localhost:8080/plugtest