There are several times I've wanted to have one plugin do something (IE project all the files in a directory) from another plugin.  However I don't know of any mechanism to expose either the data or functions from one plugin to another in a non-binding way.

Right now we make it work by doing this in our download plugin:

 PluginInfo pi = getPluginInfo("CAMELOT-.2");
             cdsp= (CAMELOTDotSpatialPlugin)pi.plugin;
            foreach (var VARIABLE in cdsp.ProjList.Keys)
            {
                cmb_projList.Items.Add(VARIABLE);
            }

The problem there is that I have to have a reference to the CAMELOTDotSpatialPlugin in the code for the cast, which means it is a dependency to compile, which is a problem if anybody wants to use the code when CAMELOTDotSpatialPlugin isn't being used.

Do we have a generic way for plugins to communicate with each other via some generic data structure (IE a HashTable)?

Aaron Parks

RTI International

In MapWindow 4 we had a generic message passing system where a plugin could send a message to all other plugins and they could take action on those messages or ignore them. Sounds like you need something similar here. - Dan

I'm thinking something simple, either an interface to implement or even just a function in the IPlugin class.  All I really need a place to put some data (Hashtable or the like) and a way to signal the plugin to do something.  We could take the iTool idea of an execute function that could be over-ridden by the plugin to do the one thing it's good at.

Aaron Parks

RTI International

Has there been any movement on this idea?  We would like to coordinate actions and pass data among a collection of plugins.  Perhaps we could hang an IEventManager off the AppManager with default behavior replicating the MW4 behavior.

Kurt Wolfe

U.S. EPA

We're using MEF, instead.

Using MEF Contracts to Coordinate Communication Between Extensions (Advanced)