Plugin system with MVC3, Razor and C#

Question

I'm fairly decent with MVC3 and enjoy creating my sites with it, however, I am yet to think up and implement a decent method of a "plugin" system.

Basically, I aim to have a generic "blog-type" CMS which I can distribute across my sites, but with the option to have certain things as plugins.

For example:

Generic build:

User area
Basic blog/news editing

Plugins: (May be needed for one or two sites, but not all)

Chatroom plugin
Stats
and so on...

Currently I would just make it all and disable things through a config file, however it would be nice if i could just drop a folder into my FTP and have an MVC page which automatically picks it up!

I assume I would have to start with scanning the directory "/plugins" and picking up a "plugin.config" (Or similar) file which would contain the basic details.

But how would I get my main system to pick these things up and actually use them?!

Did you look at this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/340183/plug-in-architecture-for-asp-net-mvc — Wojtek Turowicz, Nov 24 '11 at 10:46
How did this not come up in my original search! Fantastic stuff! — JustAnotherDeveloper, Nov 24 '11 at 10:51
making a plugin architecture has been something I have tried with ASP.NET and latterly with ASP.NET MVC - it is _always_ a PITA - tread carefully and try to sense the PITA before you spend too long on it :) — , Nov 24 '11 at 11:34
Have you conisdered using a CMS that *already* supports plugins? For example, Orchard: http://www.orchardproject.net/ — Chris Pitman, May 18 '12 at 12:56
I did but due to the nature of the system, it would take longer to customize an existing CMS — JustAnotherDeveloper, Jun 11 '12 at 09:19

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 21 '12 at 23:11

2

Try assembly scanning with StructureMap dependency injection.

answered Apr 21 '12 at 23:11

Clive

1,128
2
11
19

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

2

You may be able to do this using MVC Areas, here are some links about them:

edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

Community

1
1

answered Mar 29 '12 at 02:23

Korich

1,264
1
10
14

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 18 '12 at 12:03

1

Read this great tutorial: ASP.NET MVC2 Plugin Architecture Tutorial

It help me create a plugin architecture with MVC3.

answered May 18 '12 at 12:03

artisonus

76
4

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 18 '12 at 12:21

Areas solve the problem for you providing you have everything in the original project/assembly. You could write your plugin system to allow the plugins to register their own areas, or alternatively you could register some new view search paths in a custom Razor view engine.

I chose the latter for a recent OS project I wrote called Spruce, which uses a whole plugin architecture you might find useful as a reference.

You can scan all the assemblies in the bin directory on startup to check for plugins, via reflection. You usually check for types that implement an interface or inherit from a class, and use these along side an IoC container such as TinyIoc, NInject, StructureMap or Unity. I'd recommend TinyIoC which is used by NancyFX.

Plugin system with MVC3, Razor and C#

4 Answers4