WIRIS plugin for generic editor

 

Introduction

 

This document will provide assistance to those developers who want to integrate WIRIS Formula Editor and CAS in their platforms and there is not a specific plugin already available. More precisely this document covers two scenarios:

  • Integrating the WIRIS components into an HTML editor. See a live demo.
  • Integrating the WIRIS components into a simple Textarea. For example into wiki’s, blog’s and other Web applications that uses plain textarea’s to edit rich HTML text. See a live demo.

Before starting any development, please, ensure that there is no plugin already available for your needs. See WIRIS editor and WIRIS cas plugins.
 

DOWNLOAD - HTML editor Plugin                DOWNLOAD - Textarea Plugin


1 Requirements

  • A web server with PHP, ASP.NET, ASP or Java servlets compatibility (or other language, but our internal engine is only distributed in PHP, ASP.NET and as Java servlet).
  • A web server with UTF-8 encoding compatibility.
  • Knowledge about Javascript language.
     
  • A valid license to install the plugin in a production environment; otherwise, you can use the downloaded file just for demo purposes.

2 Starting

2.1 For PHP servers

  1. Copy pluginwiris directory (next to this readme file) in your web system root path. Then, open pluginwiris/configuration.ini and set your own values. This table specifies all possible parameters.
  2. Give execution right to the web server user on the PHP files contained at pluginwiris/integration.

2.2 For ASP.NET servers

Copy pluginwiris directory (next to this readme file) in your web system root path.

Create an application on your IIS through your control panel. The application root directory depends on the WIRIS Plugin package that you have downloaded.

  • For demo package: create an application with root directory on the extracted folder.
  • For integration package: create an application with root directory on ./<plugin directory>/integration/.

Now, open pluginwiris/configuration.ini and set your own values. This table specifies all possible parameters.

2.3 For ASP servers

Copy pluginwiris directory (next to this readme file) in your web system root path. Then, open pluginwiris/configuration.ini and set your own values. This table specifies all possible parameters.

2.4 As Java servlet

  1. Install the pluginwiris_engine.war (next to this readme file) in your Java web applications server (tomcat).
  2. By default, the javascript code loads the pluginwiris_engine from the root of web application server (/pluginwiris_engine/app). However, if you want to store the pluginwiris_engine in another path, you should edit these javascript codes.
    1. Open pluginwiris/integration/integration.js.
    2. Change the variables _wrs_conf_editorPath, _wrs_conf_CASPath, _wrs_conf_createimagePath and _wrs_conf_createcasimagePath with your preferred values.
    3. Save changes.
  3. Copy pluginwiris directory (next to this readme file) in your web system root path. Then, open pluginwiris/configuration.ini and set your own values. This table specifies all possible parameters.

3 Rules

There are some rules for plugin develop:

  • Don’t edit pluginwiris/core files. These files are the plugin kernel. We pledge to upgrade only those files in future versions.
  • Edit your pluginwiris/integration/integration.js file to integrate the plugin. That file contains instructions about how to do it.

Important complementary information

WIRIS Plugin follows this criterion:

  • It uses the pluginwiris/formulas (on Java servlet integration you specify this directory) directory to save the MathML of the formulas (source of the formulas). These files are very important. If you want to migrate your web server, remember copying that directory, or your created formulas (for example, in post forums) will be lost.
  • It uses pluginwiris/cache (on Java servlet integration you specify this directory) directory to save image files. These files aren’t very important. You can delete them whenever you want; they will be created again automatically when browsers will request the images of the formulas.

You can use this example code to load your implementation:

<script type="text/javascript" src="./pluginwiris/core/core.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="./pluginwiris/integration/integration.js"></script>

Then, you can use this example code to start the WIRIS plugin when your editor is loaded:

wrs_int_init(<your wrs_int_params, see integration.js>);

Environment variables

WIRIS Plugin core uses three global variables that you should use/modify:

  • _wrs_currentPath: contains the current URL path (for Safari fixes).
  • _wrs_isNewElement: you must set this Boolean variable when you are opening a new editor window true or false depending if you are creating a new formula or editing it.
  • _wrs_temporalImage: you must set this object variable when you are opening a new editor window. It must contain the image that you are editing. See integration.js for more information.

6 Functions

There are core functions that you can use but not modify. These functions are in pluginwiris/core/core.js .

7 Simple examples

There are simple examples of WIRIS Plugin integrations that you can download. These are our live demos.