As mentioned in A General Overview of Database Mapping , DB Mapping is available with the launch of cPanel 11.25.1. Let’s recap what DB Mapping is and then we can chew on the details: DB Mapping is core code in 11.25.1 DB Mapping exposes DB Prefixing behaviors DB Mapping provides an interface for importing non-cPanel accounts …
As of today, cPanel’s API1 and API2 are fully documented. cPanel’s x3 interface is entirely API-driven, meaning that every action you can perform in the cPanel interface is now documented and can be automated through our XML-API or reimplemented in a unique theme. Accompanying the complete release of our API documentation is a guide called Writing cPanel Plugins. These documents cover all of the steps required to create a cPanel plugin, in …
Inside of 11.25.1 we are introducing a new feature called “database mapping” . Despite the vague name, this feature has huge implications for integrated applications, transfers from non-cPanel servers and custom themes. What this does is remove the restraint of MySQL database and usernames having to be prefixed by the cPanel account’s username. The benefit of the DB Mapping feature is that when transferring accounts from non-cpanel systems, the database name will now be preserved …
In my last post I talked about how to create the CentOS/cPanel installer ISO. This information is good, but what if you want to do something more? What if you wanted to pre-configure cPanel? What if you wanted cPanel to automatically use a certain EasyApache profile? You can easily accomplish this in a way that can be used with any kickstart-based deployment method, not just the ISO image method. Kickstart works by passing a kickstart …
Over the past few weeks I have been working on a custom spin of the CentOS installation image that automatically installs cPanel. This ISO also performs some pre-installation configuration and installs updated packages as well as installing cpanel. I think this information is handy for anyone who wants to create a CentOS installation image, whether for cPanel or for something else. To create the installation image, we will modify the CentOS installation DVD; adding in …
Working on the front lines, I have an opportunity to see how cPanel/WHM customizations are implemented in practice. Often, I encounter novel ways of assembling our hooks and APIs to provide functionality. However, there are times when I wonder if I saw this in the CodeSOD segment on a popular developer website that offers free stickers. You want to automate or customize cPanel, what should you do? Before beginning your project, I recommend that you …
As most of you probably know, we released 11.25 to our RELEASE branch this week. This is a major change to cPanel/WHM which presents some issues with integration. I have been trying to track as many integration support requests as possible so that I can get an idea of what common issues have arisen. Here is a summary of the issues and what we are doing about them. …
At this point, cPanel’s APIs are not 100% documented. We are working on it and hope to have complete API docs up in a few months. I’ve written a CustomEventHandler that will print every API call made into cpanel’s error_log (/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log). Installation To use the API Tracer, you will need to download it, then place the Dumper.pm file at /usr/local/cpanel/perl/Dumper and the CustomEventHandler.pm file at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel. Once this has been put into the proper location, cPanel …
We have had a flurry of integration tickets over the past week, which is awesome to see. Most of these tickets have come down to a couple of basic problems. The first of which is due to some confusion about how to utilize HTTP to call an API function.The second problem appears to stem from a lack of information API troubleshooting tools that come with cPanel/WHM. The first of our common problems stem from some …
This past week we have been working on documenting how to add icons and groups to cPanel without using our plugin generator. Writing DynamicUI files is a direct and flexible approach to adding custom groups, icons and extra logic not available through the plugin generator (boolean ExpVar checks, etc). During the course of documenting this, we realized that we also needed to document the variables available within the cPanel interface. These are referred to …