Item12392: Add a "preload" plugin handler to the Foswiki plugin API.

Sometimes a decision can be made very early whether to allow a request to proceed or not; for example, on the basis of server resources, or information from the request. At the moment the earliest a decision can be made by a plugin is in the earlyInitHandler, which isn't early at al. By the time is is called the Store, the Prefs and the logged-in user are all set up - pointless, if a simple check is going to reject or shortcut the request in some way.

By splitting up some code in the Plugins.pm I was able to divide the plugin initialisation process so that plugins can be initiated very very early. This allows the addition of a new handler - I called it preload - that can perform this sort of check.

All other functionality is identical, and code performance is not impacted measurably.

I propose to check this in for 1.2.0

See Development.AddEarlyPluginHandler for feature proposal.

If you want to try it, there's an implementation in the patch file attached.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 13 Feb 2013

Some fixing in Item12440.

-- MichaelDaum - 18 Mar 2013

Correction to cure test failures

-- CrawfordCurrie - 23 Mar 2013

Commenting is disabled while not logged in