Creating an extension

You can use any development environment to create a processing extension; however, your plug-in must support multi-threading, so it is recommended that you use C/C++ to build your DLL or shared library.

When writing the extension, you must include the iplugin.h header file, which can be found on the Crystal Enterprise CD in the following directory: <drive>:\samples\processext.

The contents of this file are described in the Processing Extension API. The header file defines a number of API calls. No matter which language you use to implement the extension, you must call these functions using a standard C-style method of calling.

For an example of how to use the API, see simpleclient.dsw, which is located on the Crystal Enterprise CD: <drive>:\samples\processext\simpleclient.

The sample was developed in Microsoft Visual C++, and has been written in C++. An example Makefile has also been included for UNIX developers.

Note:    On Windows systems, dynamically loaded libraries are referred to as dynamic-link libraries (.dll file extension). On UNIX systems, dynamically loaded libraries are often referred to as shared libraries (.so file extension). You must include the .dll or .so file extension when you name your processing extensions. Also, file names cannot include the \ or / characters.