Chapter 9. Virtual drive plug-in

Chapter 9. Virtual drive plug-in
	Part IV. Plug-ins

What is a virtual drive plug-in?

A virtual drive plug-in is used by XXE to map an URL scheme (e.g. "ftp") to a virtual drive. A virtual drive lets the user edit documents stored in places other than the local file system. This is done by emulating a hierarchical file system.

Some virtual drives have been implemented to access documents stored on an FTP server, WebDAV server, third-party content management systems, etc.

Where to declare a virtual drive plug-in?

Like all plug-ins, a virtual drive plug-in is not declared anywhere. It is dynamically discovered and loaded during the startup of XXE (more info in Section 1, “Dynamic discovery of add-ons” in XMLmind XML Editor - Configuration and Deployment) provided that it complies with the following conventions:

The code of the virtual drive plug-in must be contained in a JAR file having a name ending with "_vdrive.jar".
This JAR file must contain a META-INF/services/com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.vdrive.DriveFactory file containing the name of the class implementing interface com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.vdrive.DriveFactory.
For example, ftp_vdrive.jar contains META-INF/services/com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.vdrive.DriveFactory which contains com.xmlmind.xmleditext.ftp_vdrive.FTPDriveFactory.

How to implement a virtual drive plug-in?

Implement com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.vdrive.DriveFactory, a factory which creates com.xmlmind.xmleditapp.vdrive.Drive instances.

If you plan to implement a virtual drive plug-in and need an example showing how this can be done, please send an email to <xmleditor-info@xmlmind.com> and we'll provide you with the full source code of the "FTP virtual drive plug-in".