====== Building A Plugin ======

VuFind uses the [[http://smarty.php.net/|Smarty Template Engine]] to control the HTML templates.  Smarty has the ability to create plugins to be intergrated in with the templates.  If you would like to create a Plugin to enhance VuFind - for example a SQL Query to your ILS Database for additional data on the Record View Page or a new query to the Solr data store - you could simply create a PHP file that lives within the /web/interface/plugins directory.  Please follow the [[http://smarty.php.net/manual/en/plugins.php|Smarty Documentation]] on how to create a plugin.

Here is an arbitrary example of a plugin that interacts with the Solr data store:

<code php>
filename: /web/interface/plugins/function.showqauthors.php
<?php
/*
 * Smarty plugin
 * -------------------------------------------------------------
 * File:     function.showqauthors.php
 * Type:     function
 * Name:     Show Q Authors
 * Purpose:  Runs a SOLR query to find all Q authors
 * -------------------------------------------------------------
 */
function smarty_modifier_showqauthors()
{
    global $solr;
    
    $solr->raw = false; // Do not return Raw XML data (use array)

    $result = $solr->query('authorStr:Q*'); // Run Search

    // Create Output
    $html = "<ul>\n";
    foreach ($result['record'] as $record) {
        $html .= '<li>' . $record['author'] . "</li>\n";
    }
    $html .= "</ul>\n";

    // Return Output
    return $html;
}
?>
</code>