merlinsilk wrote on Monday, March 07, 2016:
Is there, or has there been any thoughts about, a plugin mechanism in OpenEMR?
One of the bigger obstacles I see for the changes I would like to implenent for my client are the imclusion in the whole system. With some mechanism as the plugins in wordpress all that could be avoided.
Cheers,
Merlin
mindfeeder wrote on Saturday, March 12, 2016:
This is actually a good suggestion and I’ve heard it said before and few touch on it. The whole “Wordpress” plugin / theme infastructure for developers is rather aluring. The issue in my mind though; the codebase is so scattered, it would be a monumental feat. However, the Zend modules are a step in the right direction.
Lay all things aside for a second and think… The developers of the plugins would gladly contribute to a more unified code to impliment this idea; knowing in the end they are creating a new income stream as a “plug-in” developer; not just an installer/partner. I’m assuming this would also open up the platform to a much wider audience.
However, IMHO… It would practically be a rework from the ground up using skeleton pieces of the current platform.
It is an amazing thought… If it doesn’t happen here; someone may do it eventually…
“If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.”
― Tony A. Gaskins Jr.
Cheers for the thought,
-Kyle
mindfeeder wrote on Saturday, March 12, 2016:
The legal issues involved alone though, would probably scare most away…
So much redtape these days…
mdsupport wrote on Saturday, March 12, 2016:
LBFs had plug-ins that we ended up expanding. It checks existence of a plugin code script to add custom functionality such as adding other database fields and participating in a workflow.
Since this project’s code is collection of preferred frameworks of various developers, a common solution will be hard. But globals.php could probably check enhanced registry table, find ‘registered’ plug-ins relevant to that script and generate include_once?
merlinsilk wrote on Sunday, March 13, 2016:
After my first exposure to the code base I have to admit that this would be a monumental task to implement and would probably require pretty much a rewrite. So many individual hand-writings (code styles) from different developers with a wide range of coding experience would probably require the establishment of a guide on what’s where and how to implement functionality.
And I have seen many years ago in a much smaller team (that even was physically co-located) who hard it was to get everybody on the same boat and first check if a function was already there for re-use instead of just writing that (slightly different) function again because it seemed to be the faster way. Only that multitude of very similar functions would make maintenance a nightmare.
Wondering how the wordpress team keeps the code clean - never tried to contribute something there.
Thinking about how a financial incentive could be created that would make such a re-write appealing to somebody or a small team.