Plug-in Runner

The LLBLGen Pro designer offers a plug-in system, which supports the following different kinds of plug-ins: plug-ins which are executed directly (e.g. the Project Inspector plug-in), plug-ins which are bound to designer events (e.g. the singularization / pluralization plug-ins) and plug-ins which are ran on one or more project elements to perform a given task. This last group of plug-ins is ran using the Plug-in Runner. The Plug-in runner is a two-tabbed dialog which is popped up when the plug-in is started.

Starting a plug-in on one or more model elements

To start a plug-in on one more model elements, do one of the following:

• Right-click in Project Explorer the element, a selection of one or more elements of the same type, or the containing node of the element, and select from the context menu Run plug-in and from its context menu the plug-in you want to run. Only plug-ins which target the elements selected are shown. Plug-ins can be ran on: The project (Project node), Entities (Entities node or one or more selected entity nodes), Typed Lists (Typed Lists node or one or more selected Typed List nodes), Typed Views (Typed Views node or one or more selected Typed View nodes), Stored Procedure Calls (Stored Procedure Calls node or one or more selected Stored Procedure Call nodes) or Value Types (Value Types node or one or more selected Value Type nodes).
• Use Element Search to search for one or more entities, typed lists or other elements which can be a target of a plug-in and on the Results tab, select Export Results to Plug-in and make the selection of the plug-in to run.

Plug-in runner tabs

When a plug-in is started on one or more model elements, it opens the Plug-in runner, which has two tabs. The first tab, Target elements, shows the target elements the plug-in will run on. If an element isn't in that list, the plug-in won't run on it. The second tab, Plug-in settings, shows the plug-in specific settings control, which allows you to specify plug-in specific parameters. Not all plug-ins require input, so this tab might be empty.

When the plug-in is ready to run, click the Run! button to run the plug-in. If you've specified in the Designer Preferences that the designer should create a backup before a plug-in is ran, a back up of the project is created in the configured backup folder.