A plug-in is a collection of PHP scripts that implements payment operations, configuration and information functions. The pattern of communication is given in the figure below.
All plug-ins are available to Billing via a pre-configured website (Virtual Host) in a special instance of Apache web server (see Deployment section for details). Within this website, a single /index.php file receives HTTPS-requests from Billing and dispatches them to a specific function of a specific plug-in. The plug-in's functions take an array of parameters and return an array with operation result data.
A developer needs to implement methods that communicate with a payment gateway and process responses and callbacks.
- Plug-ins are always passive in their communication with CloudBlue Commerce,
- Plug-ins do not need to store any configuration parameters or transactional data themselves – CloudBlue Commerce provides all necessary means for it,
- Plug-ins do not need to write logs to filesystem directly, CloudBlue Commerce provides special utility functions for this.