Tips for Plugin Development

I'm building a plugin and I just wanted to share some of my pain points, please share any others...

*  Make sure your views are Embedded Resources

*  Restart dev server / clean project / recompile project after changing a view

Thanks - that's great advice.  I just wasted most of the afternoon trying to figure out why the changes I made to a plugin view were not working - nothing changed.  I restarted the dev. server and it all makes sense again.

Yeah, the Views get compiled into the DLL so they have to be rebuilt in order to show up in the browser.

Also see How to write a nopCommerce plugin article.

Is there any way to force the reload of a plugin without restarting the server? This is not practical for updating a plugin on a live instance. I can't seem to find any way to get Nop to use the new version of a DLL - even if I click the restart application button. Are the plugins cached somewhere, or compiled into another DLL?

don't restart the server, either recylce you application pool or restart IIS

Well neither of those methods is really practical :(   Is there really no way to clear the plugin cache?

Sounds like a good idea for a new feature.  Have a button on the Plugins list that runs the same routine from start up to refresh the plugin cache.

AndyMcKenna wrote:

I agree with Andy. Having a restart plugin or restart all plugins button would be useful. Ideally though, shouldn't this be integrated into the build process somehow? So a rebuild of the plugin causes an automatic reload?  Seems odd to have to do this manually.

Hi,

Not sure, but may be you can help me with building a Plugin without embedding its views.

Pls review the post I made here:

https://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/t/20987/load-view-from-plugin-without-embedding-it-as-resources.aspx

I'll love to see your comments there.