Add Custom Page

You should understand the Request Lifecycle and be familiar with the application architecture, especially Handlers, before proceeding.

You may want your plugin to add a new page to the application. This may be a separate settings page or editorial dashboard on the backend, or a new public page on the reader-facing website. A generic plugin can do this by hooking into the request lifecycle and loading its own PageHandler.

Consider a request to the following page.

http://example.org/publicknowledge/example

The plugin hooks into LoadHandler and routes the request to a custom PageHandler.

namespace APP\plugins\generic\exampleCustomPage;

use PKP\plugins\GenericPlugin;
use PKP\plugins\Hook;

class ExampleCustomPagePlugin extends GenericPlugin
{
    public function register($category, $path, $mainContextId = null)
    {
        $success = parent::register($category, $path, $mainContextId);
        if ($success && $this->getEnabled()) {
            Hook::add('LoadHandler', [$this, 'setPageHandler']);
        }
        return $success;
    }

    /**
     * Route requests for the `example` page to a custom page handler
     */
    public function setPageHandler(string $hookName, array $args): bool
    {
        $page =& $args[0];
        $handler =& $args[3];
        if ($this->getEnabled() && $page === 'example') {
            $handler = new ExampleCustompageHandler($this);
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

The PageHandler displays the example.tpl template.

namespace APP\plugins\generic\exampleCustomPage;

use APP\template\TemplateManager;
use PKP\controllers\page\PageHandler;

class ExampleCustompageHandler extends PageHandler
{
    public ExampleCustomPagePlugin $plugin;

    public function __construct(ExampleCustomPagePlugin $plugin)
    {
        parent::__construct();

        $this->plugin = $plugin;
    }

    public function index($args, $request)
    {
        $templateMgr = TemplateManager::getManager($request);

        return $templateMgr->display(
            $this->plugin->getTemplateResource(
                'example.tpl'
            )
        );
    }
}

A custom PageHandler can support more than one op by adding public methods in addition to index(). Read more about Handlers and be sure to add authorization checks to secure access to your page.

View more examples.

Add Custom Page

Summary