We’re using MovableType in my organization to provide publishing functionality in addition to other services. I think MT will handle 5% of our site usage, at best.
My task is to integrate MT with our existing codebase - which is a mixture of Perl and Python.
I’ve identified the ‘shortest path’ solution, and am looking for pointers to jump start.
This is our current approach:
1- Create a plugin. 2- The plugin ‘extends’ the CMS interface to have a few special dropdowns that do AJAX with existing systems to extend the entry with ‘bridge’ information. This need not include any data queries itself — we can handle that with JS+DIV or iFrame. 3- The plugin extends templates by calling functions with the post’s id, which executes perl code that prints/returns what we need.
The questions I have are: 1. Are there any hooks for the CMS application’s screen, or do I have to patch templates myself ? 2. Are there any conventions in passing/saving database handles through the template? I’d rather not create a new connection on every load. The MT install is in our stock Postgres system and has read privileges on the application tables.
if anyone can offer pointers, I’d be very happy.
Reported on Movable Type 4.2
Start here: http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/developer/apps/altering-the-user-interface.html
Oh great! thanks!
I'm tryig to use some of these techniques now.
Just a heads up, you're going to have to make sure that you test UI-modifying plugins with each release of Movable Type. They should generally work for any major release, like 4.X, but do remember that they rely on modifying the template source before compilation as it is loaded into memory or modifying the output from the template compiler.