Programmatically enable plugins

jrmitchell · August 11, 2022, 7:59pm

Describe the issue or problem
I would like to programmatically enable plugins via a CLI tool. Is there a tool that has already been developed that currently does this?

What application are you using?
For example, OJS 3.3.0-11

rcgillis · August 12, 2022, 7:01pm

Hi @jrmitchell,

I’ve inquired with some of our team members, and, so far as we know, such a utility does not exist. However, we’d be curious about your use case on this and what you would wish to achieve with such a tool?

-Roger
PKP Team

jrmitchell · August 12, 2022, 9:11pm

Hi Roger,

I administer several OJS installs (approximately ten production installs) for my academic library, and I pretty much have the deployment process automated for updating and installing plugins. However, I’ve noticed that the installed plugins I manage via automation aren’t enabled in the new OJS version, but they appear to have been enabled in the prior version.

Perhaps, I’m going about the upgrade process the wrong way, but I was hoping to enable the plugin from the command line since that would allow me to manage the upgrade process from beginning to end without needing to log into the web interface.

Does that make sense? If not, let me know, and I can take another whack at explaining how I’d use such a tool.

Thanks,
James

rcgillis · August 13, 2022, 3:38pm

Hi @jrmitchell,

Thanks very much for your explanation. That’s very interesting and I could see how that would be quite useful in that context.

I would suspect that developing such a utility might involve developing something like a script to make changes to the DB that would then update the installation status of the plugin in the DB. Granted, that’s an oversimplification on my part, and it would likely be more involved, as well as have potential pitfalls. @jnugent - curious if you have any thoughts on this?

-Roger
PKP Team

jnugent · August 14, 2022, 11:58am

Hi everyone,

There already is a way to install a plugin via the command line, with the installPluginVersion.php CLI tool that comes with OJS. It can be used like:

php lib/pkp/tools/installPluginVersion.php path/to/plugin/version.xml

To actually continue with enabling the plugin, you’d need to set the enabled plugin setting in the plugin_settings table to 1 for the journal_id in question. Some plugin categories have a setEnabled method that you can use for this, but most notably the Generic plugin does not. You may need to wrap the plugin installer with a bit of code that fetches your journal ids in the installation and then updates this value. You could probably do this with a series of MySQL REPLACE statements, which would create the record if it did not already exist or update it if it did.

Best
Jason

jrmitchell · August 15, 2022, 2:21pm

Hi Jason,

Thanks you for your response.

I have thankfully been able to use the CLI tool installPluginVersion.php for installing plugins programmatically and have found it very helpful. So, thanks to all the developers who did work on this tool.

As for the second part of your response, that makes perfect sense. I assumed there was a value stored in the DB that told OJS whether the plugin was enabled or not, but wasn’t sure.

I will explore my options for enabling plugins via the CLI.

Thanks,
James

marc · September 4, 2022, 1:59pm

If I recall well, some time ago @ctgraham made a script that was able to enable plugins… but I don’t remember where it was published (gist maybe?).

A cli-tool for OJS is a common petition in forum and gitHub.

If the installPluginVersion plugin is not enough, feel free to create a new “Feature Request” in the FR forum.

dagosalas · September 4, 2022, 4:45pm

Hi @jnugent ,
Does this command works for plugin update? I have about 32 OJS installations and the biggest problem I have had is updating plugins.

jnugent · September 4, 2022, 5:33pm

Hi @dagosalas

No, it won’t update a plugin. It just installs into the database what is currently there, so you’d still need to download it another way.

Best
Jason

ctgraham · September 9, 2022, 8:23pm

I’ve updated the gist here:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/ctgraham/d21f4153dd95928c740b533a70b3ad94

pkp-plugin-cli.md

# PKP plugin CLI usage

## Background
Problem: how do we interact with the [PKP Plugin Gallery](https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/learning-ojs/en/settings-website#plugin-gallery) outside of the UI?  The correct way to approach this is to abstract the [plugin gallery operations](https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/9f48cbe60d4471a23ffd8a1a46eb1a7e0986c027/controllers/grid/plugins/PluginGalleryGridHandler.inc.php#L271-L341) into a service class which would be reusable across the UI and the CLI, but we're not there yet.  Instead, let's cheat.

## CLI tool
https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/stable-3_3_0/tools/plugins.php

This provides a new utility with minimal options:
```

This file has been truncated. show original

marc · September 10, 2022, 10:06am

Thanks Clinton (for the update and the script)!

Didn’t remember it was included in core:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/ctgraham/d21f4153dd95928c740b533a70b3ad94?permalink_comment_id=3949545#gistcomment-3949545

pkp-plugin-cli.md

# PKP plugin CLI usage

## Background
Problem: how do we interact with the [PKP Plugin Gallery](https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/learning-ojs/en/settings-website#plugin-gallery) outside of the UI?  The correct way to approach this is to abstract the [plugin gallery operations](https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/9f48cbe60d4471a23ffd8a1a46eb1a7e0986c027/controllers/grid/plugins/PluginGalleryGridHandler.inc.php#L271-L341) into a service class which would be reusable across the UI and the CLI, but we're not there yet.  Instead, let's cheat.

## CLI tool
https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/stable-3_3_0/tools/plugins.php

This provides a new utility with minimal options:
```

This file has been truncated. show original

More information here:

github.com/pkp/pkp-lib

Enable access to the Plugin Gallery via CLI

opened 07:20PM - 26 Jul 21 UTC

closed 08:23AM - 28 Sep 21 UTC

ctgraham

Enhancement:3:Major

**Describe the problem you would like to solve** Administrators need to be able… to interact with the Plugin Gallery via CLI. **Describe the solution you'd like** Extract the Plugin Gallery functions into Services/API architecture, independent from the handlers, and expose Services/API to the CLI. (long term) Mirror some functionality via dedicated script (short term). **Who is asking for this feature?** Administrators who are managing multiple instances of OJS/OMP/OPS and seeking to automate plugin installations/upgrades. **Additional information** From Slack: Clinton Graham May 13th at 11:16 AM > Andrew Gearhart, did you investigate this further? It looks entirely [enmeshed with the display logic to me](https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/blob/9f48cbe60d4471a23ffd8a1a46eb1a7e0986c027/controllers/grid/plugins/PluginGalleryGridHandler.inc.php#L271-L341), but it probably wouldn't take too much effort to create a CLI tool script which uses the [PluginGalleryDAO](https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/classes/plugins/PluginGalleryDAO.inc.php:31-58) to list, search, and install the latest version of a plugin. Nate Wright 2 months ago > Yeah, so our long-running goal with the Services/API architecture is to separate functionality from the handlers (eg - the plugin grid), so that actions like adding/editing objects or installing/enabling/disabling a plugin can be performed outside of their handlers. > For the moment, we have tended to do this refactoring alongside UI/feature improvements. But we'd be very receptive to community contributions for this kind of refactoring in areas we haven't been able to prioritize. > There's a ton of potential to be realised here where actions overlap with admin functions: plugin install, activation, deactivation; user creation. password reset, disabling; journal creation; etc. > If anyone wants to explore some code refactoring for a particular use case, I'd be happy to help facilitate. This mostly involves moving code out of a grid handler and into a service class, but can sometimes get a bit tricky. Clinton Graham 2 months ago > I know this doesn't address the actual desired work of abstracting this to the Services/API architecture, but trying to relieve a local pain-point led me to write a quick CLI tool stub: https://github.com/pkp/pkp-lib/compare/stable-3_1_2...ulsdevteam:pluginGalleryCLI?expand=1 > https://gist.github.com/ctgraham/d21f4153dd95928c740b533a70b3ad94 Marc Bria 2 months ago > BTW... I'm sorry to ask but, is there any chance to extend the script to enable/disable the plugins? (edited) Clinton Graham 2 months ago > So, actually, plugins can't be enabled properly via the CLI because `LazyLoadPlugin::setEnabled()` doesn't take a context id, and instead depends on the current request via `LazyLoadPlugin::getCurrentContextId()`. So, we'd have to mock a request to make this work. We did this in Barcelona for our CLI API testing (hoorah!), but fixing this or working around this is more than I'm willing to take on for this little tool (boo.). I think the correct step here is to build out a Service which allows for interaction with the plugin settings more generally, including enabling/disabling. Nate Wright 2 months ago > I think the correct step here is to build out a Service which allows for interaction with the plugin settings more generally, including enabling/disabling. > I'm happy to help guide anyone who wants to work on this! A lot of it is just pulling code out of one place and putting it into another. But the deep integration with the Request object is one of the main problems that we're trying to avoid.

marc · September 10, 2022, 10:16am

Sorry to left a little from the focus of the initial post but I think it could be useful for others:

I have 50 installations so my tip for this is create a single folder with the plugins in read-only and symlink them from all my installations. To upgade you have two choices… temporary change from read-only to full access, then upgade and rollback the permissions or (as far as I have a docker based installation with volumes) I set one (restricted) installation with full access rights to manage all the plugins installation and upgrade from a single place.

Said that, Clinton’s script is great and opens the door to automatize repetitive admin tasks. The only missing piece is how to enable the plugins, that till the “enable” feature is implemented (the coding skills are much over my pay grade) I’m planing to go directly to the DB and enable them from there.