
More about Plugins
A plugin is a small "subprogram" designed to work within the context of a larger program. Pandora supports two types of plugins that provide for its amazing capabilities: Web Spiders and Search Agents. Pandora currently ships with two of each: the "Basic Spider" and "Consecutively Numbered Files" web spiders, and the "Google Image Search" and "Flickr Search" search agents. As mentioned before, web spiders take URLs as input, while search agents take keywords.
Plugins provide the following features for Pandora:
- Custom logic to work with and take advantage of the specific design of a website.
- Support for authentication at a site (see the Flickr plugin for an example)
- Custom user interface to configure options specific to different sites.
Since there are a lot of websites out there, there are a lot of possible plugins that could be written for Pandora. I've elected to ship with plugins that provide great functionality, but it is just the tip of the iceberg of what's possible.
You can request the development of a plugin by selecting the "Request a Plugin..." option from the "Pandora" menu. Over time, an online store of available plugins (free and purchase) will evolve. By way of thanks, the first individual requesting a given plugin will always get the requested plugin for free. Plugins are fairly easy to develop; I wrote the most complex one (Flickr) in less than a day. If you request a plugin for a site with authentication, you may need to provide temporary credentials so that development can take place. As always, please email with any questions you may have: pandora@positivespinmedia.com