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 …
Some of the reasons why there hasn’t been many updates lately include our cPanel conference, the cPanel/WHM 11.25.0 release, and the release of the XML-API PHP class 1.0. If you are not familiar with the XML-API PHP class, it makes interacting with the XML-API much more simple by implementing functions that allow you to call your remote cPanel server without ever having to touch cURL or simplexml. This works by implementing a function for every …
If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been working on overhauling our development documentation pretty heavily. We have a ton of great ways to integrate with cPanel but until recently, no information on how to use them. Starting this week, every week I will be posting about what new articles we’ve added to this documentation along with why you should know about these features. Past couple of weeks I personally have been trying to focus on how …
One of the most flexible ways of working within cPanel is by creating CGI applications. Of course, this isn’t the most efficient method, however sometimes efficiency isn’t your best bet when you’re in a rush. You can use a standard CGI script within cPanel, you are limited by our APIs, such as what perl version to use. First thing to note, is that these CGI scripts have to be placed in /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/ with normal CGI …
We really have no information available on how to write WHM Plugins. I have had 3 people ask me in the past 48 hours on how to write them, so I thought I might want to consolidate and post this knowledge. A WHM plugin is merely a simple CGI application that has a couple of special comments in it to handle how it is displayed. Any CGI language can be used here, however only perl …
I have been noticing several people challenged with calling cPanel functions via our various ways of hooking into our APIs. Unfortunately, this isn’t as cut and dry as just calling a function within a programming language. Various factors, such as whether the call is being made from within cPanel or from a remote system, affect how this needs to be done. To help you understand this, I will begin covering these topics in a series …
Inside of cPanel 11.25, there are numerous new security features being implemented. These changes can break both cPanel plugins and remote management applications (like billing systems) that integrate with cPanel. Luckily, the changes are all optional; however, I would hate to see addons preventing people from enabling new features — like session tokens, which help prevent XSRF attacks. So, stripped from an email I sent out to third-party developers earlier this week, here are some …
Password traps are probably the type of plugin that generates the most support requests at the moment. When creating a password trap, it is important that you use a Function Hook rather than a Custom Event Handler. The reason for this is that function hooks are executed as root, while custom event handlers are executed as the user. If you are not familiar with function hooks, please read the Documentation. Function hooks reside …
Mostly the XML API is used for account management; however, there are other features in it that simplify system administration. The most obvious of these functions is the loadavg call. Last year, I wrote a class for working with the XML API from PHP. This class returns SimpleXML objects for each XML API call made. This makes development of remote cPanel interactions extremely simple. I’m going to go over how to …