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Although we presented some of this concepts already in dradis reporting: quick & neat word export, here is the step by step guide to get an export plugin recognised by the dradis framework and ready to use!

Update (2009-04-09): Checkout the new import/export plugin generators at dradis community forums.

Generate the plugin skeleton

$ ./script/generate plugin my_export
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/lib
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/tasks
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/test
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/README
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/MIT-LICENSE
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/Rakefile
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/init.rb
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/install.rb
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/uninstall.rb
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/lib/my_export.rb
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/tasks/my_export_tasks.rake
      create  vendor/plugins/my_export/test/my_export_test.rb

Edit vendor/plugins/my_export/init.rb to include the main plugin library:

# Include hook code here
require 'my_export'

In the main library (vendor/plugins/my_export/lib/my_export.rb), define a module (choose a name, ideally it should match the plugin name):

# MyExport
module MyExport
end

This is all you really need to get it started. Now you have to put your code in the right place so the framework finds it (and creates an entry for you in the export menu).

Hooking into the framework

At the end of the day an export plugin provides a number of Rails actions. These are methods that will be invoked through the URL, for instance:-

/export/to_pdf
/export/to_xml
/export/to_excel
...

Each export plugin can define several actions. If more than one action is defined a nested submenu will be appended to the export menu with all the defined actions.

In order for the framework to find your actions, they have to be defined in a certain way, they have to be defined inside the Actions module (we are still editing the same file):-

# MyExport
module MyExport
  module Actions
    # first action
    def to_myformat(params={})
      # your action code goes here
    end
 
    # second action
    # [...]
  end
end

And that’s it, nice and easy, you can define as many actions as you like in you Actions module.

Finally, in order to make everything work together you need to include your module in the main repository of export plugins (Plugins::Export):

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# MyExport
module MyExport
  module Actions
    # first action
    def to_myformat(params={})
      # your action code goes here
    end
    # [...]
  end
end
 
module Plugins
  module Export
    include MyExport
  end
end

Remember to restart you dradis server. Your export menu should have an entry for your newly created plugin. And now is the time to be creative about what you implement!

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