How to Deploy Plugins to VP Products

Open API is an extension mechanism provided by Visual Paradigm for extending the functionalities of the client software. The Open API is in Java based, which allows you to have full access to the model data in your project file. By using Open API, you can create your own plugin to implement some customized features.

 

Once you finished the development of your plugin, you have to deploy it the client application in order to try it out, or put it into production environment. The deployment of the plugin is very simple and can be done in few clicks:

1. Go to Help > Install Plugin.
   

   Select Install Plugin from application toolbar

2. In the Install Plugin dialog, specify the source of your plugin. i.e.
   • Select Install from a zip of plugin if your plugin already packaged in a zip file,
   • or select Install from a folder of plugin if your plugin is packaged in a folder,
   

   Specify the source of the plugin

3. Press Next to proceed to bring up the file chooser and specify the zipped plugin/plugin folder.
   

   Select the plugin with file chooser

4. Press OK to close the confirmation dialog after specify the plugin zip/folder, and restart your VP Application.
   

   Restart VP application

5. The plugin will be deployed to VP after restart of application.

Alternatively you can also manually copy the plugin to plugin deployment folder (the 3rd option in the Install Plugin dialog).

For 13.1 or older version

For version 13.0 or older release you can deploy the plugin by copy it to a specific folder of the VP client application. Please note that if you are running IDE Integration you will need to copy the plugin to different folders other than VP installation directory. The table below shows you the location for deploying your plugin on different VP application.

Product	Location
Visual Paradigm	%product_installation_folder%/Application/plugins
Eclipse integration	%eclipse_installation_folder%/sde/plugins
NetBeans integration	%netbeans_installation_folder%/bin/sde/plugins
IntelliJ IDEA integration	%IntelliJ_installation_folder%/bin/sde/plugins
Visual Studio integration	VS2010: %vp_installation_folder%/visualstudio_2010/sde/plugins VS2008: %vp_installation_folder%/visualstudio_2008/sde/plugins VS2005: %vp_installation_folder%/visualstudio_2005/sde/plugins VS2003: %vp_installation_folder%/visualstudio/sde/plugins

** Note that you need to manually create the “plugins” folder

Related Know-how

How to retrieve relationships from models using Open API How to add stereotypes from reference project to model element using Open API How to insert model reference to documentation using Open API

Related Link

Open API in Visual Paradigm Plugin User’s Guide Plugin API