Writing a module for a website that has additional inputs and switches

DEVONagent
1

When writing plugins, how would you deal with websites that have important additional inputs and switches besides their URL-communicated full text search?

An example would be the German government’s DIP system for accessing plenary records. The search mask offers search inputs for a protocol number, name of speaker or a classic full text search that can be accessed using DA’s _agentQuery_ .

From a usability perspective, I think it would be great to define special keywords for the search input field in those cases, so that you could write a query such as

Bundesfinanzausgleich DIP_SPEAKER:Mustermann

but I don’t think that would be feasible.

So, what would you do? Just write the plugin so that it returns the maximum number of results without bothering with those extra filters at all?

2

This isn’t possible currently, a future release might support additional conditions in some way but will most likely still require customized plug-ins in such cases.

3

Could a plugin’s configuration be changed programmatically while DEVONagent is running, e.g. with the result of a choose from list? Or are they cached?

4

No, plug-ins don’t support any user interaction.

5

If we can customize a plugin manually why isn’t it possible (didn’t test …) to do the same customization via script? Are plugins cached? Don’t understand the difference.

6

They are only loaded on startup (or after installing one via the support assistant).

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