Redmine Plugin Extension and Development

Build stunning extensions quickly and efficiently by leveraging Redmine’s plugin facilities

Overview

• Gain access to powerful and useful features by hooking into Redmine’s underlying infrastructure
• Real-world examples that will help you in building cross-platform applications using Redmine
• Full of illustrations, tips, and tricks to facilitate the development of plugins and extensions

In Detail

Redmine is a flexible project management web application that is cross-platform and cross-database. Redmine handles multiple projects and provides integrated project management features, issue tracking, and support for various version control systems.

This book provides an overview of the tools available to potential plugin authors who want to extend and enhance a product to work their way. It is meant to teach developers who have existing Ruby on Rails experience on how they can properly extend Redmine through custom plugins.

In this book, existing models, views, and controllers will be extended through the use of hooks. You will learn how custom updates can be tied into project and system activity streams.

Plugin models will be made searchable and custom permissions and security will be discussed. This book will also teach you how to create a sustainable plugin for an established product and maintain an ongoing relationship with the Redmine community as it relates to a new plugin.

Reading this book will provide you with the necessary skills to quickly and efficiently extend products through plugins.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand the basic plugin setup from scratch
• Exercise core Redmine enhancement through the use of model/view/controller/helper hooks
• Apply and control the ability to attach files to custom models
• Discover how to lock down content area access by leveraging the existing security infrastructure
• Learn how to make model fields searchable within Redmine’s existing search subsystem
• Enable custom updates to be mixed into Redmine’s project and system activity streams

Approach

This book provides a thorough look at the tools available within Redmine to facilitate the development of plugins and extensions. Full of tips and tricks, a recurring case study is also used to help guide you through the various content area extensions and plugin helpers and to provide context and real-world examples of the concepts being covered.

Who this book is written for

This book is intended for those who want to build custom functionality into the Redmine project management platform. If you’re already comfortable with Ruby, Rails, and Redmine, but you aren’t quite sure what to do next, this book will walk you through the basics of getting a plugin written and integrated into various key areas of Redmine.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Redmine Plugins
Chapter 2: Extending Redmine Using Hooks
Chapter 3: Permissions and Security
Chapter 4: Attaching Files to Models
Chapter 5: Making Models Searchable
Chapter 6: Interacting with the Activity Stream
Chapter 7: Managing Plugin Settings
Chapter 8: Testing Your Plugin
Appendix: Releasing Your Plugin