Plugin API

This API provides the ability to write a plugin that implements a backend to any database of papers. The hope being that libscipaper with eventually have modules that implement fetching from all major scientific databases. Full documentation can be found here: Module API. For the convenience of module developers, a Jason parsing API is also provided. This API is documented here: Json Parsing API.

A libscipaper module is a C or C++ tanslation unit that contains #define MODULE_NAME "some-name" as well as exporting the symbols sci_module_init of type sci_module_init_fn and sci_module_exit of type sci_module_exit_fn.

modules are expected to use the sci_conf_* family of functions to gain external site specific information sutch as API keys and use sci_module_log for debug as well as error output. Any library such as libcurl may be used to gather information to be returned.

For a module to be usefull it must also define an implementation at least one of the following functions:

• sci_fill_meta
• sci_get_document_text
• sci_get_document_pdf_data

and must register one or more of these functions with libscipaper using sci_plugin_register

thus the basic structure of a libscipaper plugin looks like this:

#include <glib.h>
#include "sci-modules.h"
#include "sci-log.h"
#include "sci-backend.h"
#include "scipaper.h"
 
//Module name every module is required to have this
#define MODULE_NAME             "test"
 
//Module information every module is required to have this
static BackendInfo module_info = {
        //Name of the module
        .name = MODULE_NAME,
        .capabilities = SCI_CAP_FILL | SCI_CAP_GET_TEXT | SCI_CAP_GET_PDF
};
 
struct TestPriv {
        int id;
};
 
static RequestReturn* test_fill_meta(const DocumentMeta* meta, size_t maxCount, size_t page, void* userData)
{
        struct TestPriv* priv = userData;
        //Check out the the contense of meta here and search for the contained fields in your database, return a list DocumentMeta structs that describe the search results
        return request_return_new(1, maxCount);
}
 
static char* test_get_document_text(const DocumentMeta* meta, void* userData)
{
        struct TestPriv* priv = userData;
        //Check out the the contense of meta here and search for the contained fields in your database, return the full text of the first search result.
        return g_strdup("This should be the document text");
}
 
static PdfData* test_get_document_pdf_data(const DocumentMeta* meta, void* userData)
{
        struct TestPriv* priv = userData;
        //Check out the the contense of meta here and search for the contained fields in your database, return raw PDF binary data for the first search result.
        return NULL;
}
 
//function that is called when the module is loaded, every module is required to have this
G_MODULE_EXPORT const gchar *sci_module_init(void** data);
const gchar *sci_module_init(void** data)
{
        //Do whatever is necessarily to initialize your database.
        struct TestPriv* priv = g_malloc0(sizeof(*priv));
         *data = priv;
        priv->id = sci_plugin_register(&module_info, test_fill_meta, test_get_document_text, test_get_document_pdf_data, priv);
}
 
//function that is called when the module is unloaded, every module is required to have this
G_MODULE_EXPORT void sci_module_exit(void* data);
void sci_module_exit(void* data)
{
        struct TestPriv* priv = data;
        //Free any resources you have acquired.
        g_free(priv);
}