use-an-extension.rst

How to use a Webinizer Extension

Enabling and disabling extensions

There is a status field of webinizerExtMeta property in package.json which indicates if the extension is enabled or disabled. If extension is disabled, the components of the extension will not be loaded by Webinizer. Modify the status field of webinizerExtMeta property of package.json to enable or disable the extension. After modifying the status field, Webinizer should be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Please note that it is not encouraged to modify the status from package.json directly. It is highly recommended that update the status of an extension from Settings page in the Webinizer Web UI.

Advisor Pipeline

If a Webinizer extension contains advisors, besides loading the advisor factories, it also needs to add the advisor to advisor_pipelines.json under the root directory of Webinizer. Otherwise, the advisor will be never used.

Below is an example of adding TestAdvisor to advisor_pipelines.json.

{
    "__type__": "AdvisorPipelineConfig",
    "pipelines": [
        {
            "tag": "default",
            "advisors": [{ "__type__": "ErrorsNotHandledAdvisor" }]
        },
        {
            "tag": "demo",
            "advisors": [{ "__type__": "DemoAdvisor" }]
        },

        {
            "tag": "pipeline1",
            "advisors": [{ "__type__": "advisor1" }, { "__type__": "advisor2" }, { "__type__": "advisor3" }]
        }
    ]
}

Things to note:

• Each advisor pipeline has a tag.
• You can add an advisor to multiple tags/pipelines. In the example above, DemoAdvisor is added to pipeline demo.
• In each pipeline's advisor list, the order of the advisors is very important. When a request is sent to a pipeline, the request will be passed to each advisor in this order. In the example above, if a request is sent to pipeline1, advisor1 will be the first advisor that try to handle this request, then advisor2, advisor3 until the request is handled, or the advisor list reaches its end.