# PluginManagerDecorator

## Role

Provide an easy way to build a chain of decorators extending the functionalities of the default plugin manager, when it comes to activating, deactivating or looking into loaded plugins.

The `PluginManagerDecorator` is the base class to be inherited by each element of the chain of decorator.

Warning

If you want to customise the way the plugins are detected and loaded, you should not try to do it by implementing a new `PluginManagerDecorator`. Instead, you’ll have to reimplement the PluginManager itself. And if you do so by enforcing the `PluginManager` interface, just giving an instance of your new manager class to the `PluginManagerDecorator` should be transparent to the “stantard” decorators.

## API

class yapsy.PluginManagerDecorator.PluginManagerDecorator(decorated_object=None, categories_filter=None, directories_list=None, plugin_info_ext='yapsy-plugin')

  Add several responsibilities to a plugin manager object in a more flexible way than by mere subclassing. This is indeed an implementation of the Decorator Design Patterns.

  There is also an additional mechanism that allows for the automatic creation of the object to be decorated when this object is an instance of PluginManager (and not an instance of its subclasses). This way we can keep the plugin managers creation simple when the user don’t want to mix a lot of ‘enhancements’ on the base class.

  About the __init__:

  Mimics the PluginManager’s __init__ method and wraps an instance of this class into this decorator class.

  > - If the decorated_object is not specified, then we use the PluginManager class to create the ‘base’ manager, and to do so we will use the arguments: `categories_filter`, `directories_list`, and `plugin_info_ext` or their default value if they are not given.

  > - If the decorated object is given, these last arguments are simply ignored !

  All classes (and especially subclasses of this one) that want to be a decorator must accept the decorated manager as an object passed to the init function under the exact keyword `decorated_object`.

  collectPlugins()

    This function will usually be a shortcut to successively call `self.locatePlugins` and then `self.loadPlugins` which are very likely to be redefined in each new decorator.

    So in order for this to keep on being a “shortcut” and not a real pain, I’m redefining it here.