A plugin 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 plugins are available to Billing through a pre-configured website (Virtual Host) in a special instance of Apache web server. Within this website, a single /index.php file receives HTTPS requests from Billing and dispatches them to a specific function of a specific plugin. The plugin 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.
- Plugins are always passive in their communication with CloudBlue Commerce,
- Plugins do not need to store any configuration parameters or transactional data themselves, CloudBlue Commerce provides all necessary means for it,
- Plugins do not need to write logs to a file system directly; CloudBlue Commerce provides special utility functions for this.