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Table of Contents
Content Provider Components
Starting in VuFind 2.3, content-loading capabilities (for retrieving cover images, reviews, etc. from third-party APIs) were significantly refactored to rely on plugins.
Content Loader Plugin Details
Each “family” of content plugins (covers, excerpts, etc.) has its own plugin manager. All of those plugin managers are managed by this top-level plugin manager. In other words, every “plugin” in this family is actually a plugin manager in its own right – generally instances of \VuFind\Content\Loader with different configurations set. It is not usually necessary to add new services here unless you are implementing support for a whole new type of content.
Default Namespace: \VuFind\Content
Base Class: \VuFind\Content\Loader
Service Locator Configuration Section in module.config.php: ['vufind']['plugin_managers']['content']
Service Manager Name for Service Locator: VuFind\ContentPluginManager
See the General Plugin Information page for more details on VuFind plugins.
Cover Plugin Details
Cover drivers are used for retrieving cover image data. They accept an array of ID values and return the URL to an image. Building a new plugin usually consists of setting some flags in the constructor to indicate which types of identifier are supported, then building a method to convert those identifiers into a valid URL.
Default Namespace: \VuFind\Content\Covers
Base Class: \VuFind\Content\AbstractCover
Service Locator Configuration Section in module.config.php: ['vufind']['plugin_managers']['content_covers']
Service Manager Name for Service Locator: VuFind\ContentCoversPluginManager
See the General Plugin Information page for more details on VuFind plugins.