REDCap Plugin Framework

INTRODUCTION

This is a lightweight, loose coupled, REDCap specific, MVC framework was developed to aid in the development of REDCap plugins which extend REDCap's functionality.

FRAMEWORK STRUCTURE

To seperate business, data, and display logic a simplified Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern was used to managed the complexity of creating REDCap plugins. This framework consists of:

• index.php.example: An example index.php file which contains the "glue" that connects the rest of a plugin's code with REDCap code.

• PluginConfig.php: Contains the class definition of PluginConfig, which provides an immutable configuration object built from a provided ini file.

• PluginController.php: Contains the PluginController class definition, which provides a controler object to handle plugin specific HTTP requests.

• ProjectModel.php: Contain the ProjectModel class definition, which provides an abstracted interface to REDCap project record data.

• routes.php.example: An example routes.php file to which routes incoming HTTP requests the appropriate controllers to handle the request.

• lib/: Holds 3rd party packages used by the framework. Currently holds a version of the Twig rendering engine (http://twig.sensiolabs.org).

• README.md: This file.

• RestCallRequest.php: A file provided by REDCap to facilitate PHP based REDCap API calls.

REQUIREMENTS

This plugin framework requires the following to work correctly:

• The redcap_connect.php file from the REDCap base install is required and needs to be present in the root redcap directory (included in as a part of the full REDCap install as of version 5.5.0). Can also be found at: https://iwg.devguard.com/trac/redcap/browser/misc/redcap_connect.zip?format=rawthe

• Twig [developed using version 1.18.2]: A PHP template engine which uses the same popular templating syntax as Jinja2 and Django. More information can be found at http://twig.sensiolabs.org.

INSTALLATION

Installation of this plugin framework consists of the following steps:

1. Make sure that the redcap_connect.php file described above is present in the local REDCap installation's root directory.

2. Clone the KUMC redcap-plugin-framework into the <redcap-root>/plugins directory. Create the plugins directory if necessary.

3. Unpack the Twig-<version>.tar.gz file into <framework-root>/lib/twig/<version>/.

CONFIGURATION

No configuration is required.

MAINTAINERS

Current maintainers:

• Michael Prittie [email protected]