Форумы / Cotonti / Development / Опрос: modules and plugs

No. The difference is clear enough:

Modules provide stand-alone and usually quite comprehensive systems that serve a very specific purpose, which often has little to do with core functionality. They normally fill the entire page. Modules would mostly be used by application developers that use Cotonti only as a framework. Hooks should be provided inside the module in order to allow plugins to extend the module. Modules are less likely to use hooks (other than standalone), since they provide new functionality rather than extending existing functionality. They should not depend on other modules or plugins.

Plugins provide enhancements and additional functionality for existing features, either in core or in another plugin or module. They usually do not fill an entire page (if visible at all). Plugins would mostly be used by website owners to customize the website's behavior. They should not use the 'standalone' hook.

Technically the difference between the two is limited to the fact that a module has its own .php file in the root of the site, so it's not called through plug.php like plugins. This allows for more flexibility in the naming of variables and url parameters (some are already in use by plug.php so can't be used by plugins). In the future I would like to see Modules get more technical capabilities in terms of development, in order to make the difference between the two also of technical nature. I'm thinking of object-oriented programming and a Model-View-Controller architecture (for which Trustmaster has developed quite a powerful framework, but it's still experimental).

In the downloads section on the new site, modules and plugins are combined under the name 'extensions' and they reside in the same folders (extension categories), but you can filter by type if you want. When adding an extension, you have to indicate whether its a module or plugin.