Creating Your First Plugin

Your First Plugin

Your first plugin will have no functionality. It will merely contain the code necessary to declare itself and its associated meta data within the application. It will consist of only a single file.

1. Create a folder called “TestPlugin” within the Movable Type plugins directory.
2. Within the “TestPlugin” directory you just created, create a file called TestPlugin.pl with the following contents:

package MT::Plugin::TestPlugin;

use strict;
use base qw( MT::Plugin );
our $VERSION = '1.0'; 
my $plugin = MT::Plugin::TestPlugin->new({
   id          => 'TestPlugin',
   key         => 'test-plugin',
   name        => 'Test Plugin',
   description => "My first plugin",
   version     => $VERSION,
   author_name => "[your name]",
   author_link => "[URL to your homepage]",
   plugin_link => "[link to plugin's homepage]",
});
MT->add_plugin($plugin);
sub init_registry {
    my $plugin = shift;
    $plugin->registry({
    });
}

With that little bit of code you have successfully created your first plugin. Granted it doesn’t do anything, but in time we will evolve it to do much, much more.

The last 5 lines of the plugin you just created defines the components of the plugin that need to merged with Movable Type’s global registry. Through the course of the rest of this document and guide you will see many permutations of this subroutine. These code samples can easily be mixed, combined, re-combined and modified to progressively add more and more features to your plugin.

To see your plugin, login to Movable Type and from the System Overview pull down menu select “Plugins”. You should see your plugin listed there. If Movable Type was unable to load or process your plugin, then the plugin will automatically be disabled and MT will display the error message it received when trying to load the plugin below the plugins name on the plugin listing screen.