Providing application resources to a Plugin

FROM : Eric Czarny
DATE : Mon Aug 21 20:59:33 2006

Hello All,

I have just been full of questions lately.

Anyway, my question this time is in regards to developing a plugin
architecture for my application. I would like each plugin to link to a
Plugin.famework that not only provides a protocol for the plugin to conform
to, but an abstract class each plugin must extend. That in itself appears
simple enough; however, things becomes a little more complicated when it
comes to providing resources available within the application to the plugin.

Say, for instance, I have a blogging application that should support
multiple blogging programming intefaces. If I were to implement each
blogging API as a plugin, how could I provide a common resource (such as an
XML-RPC client) without linking them directly to the framework? Meaning, I
would like to have my application link to (and include within its own
bundle) the XML-RPC framework. Could I simply include the XML-RPC headers
within a Plugin.framework, along with the plugin's protocol and abstract
class?

Any information in regards to this topic would be extremely helpful. Thanks!

Cheers,
Eric