How to simplify initialization for your custom plugin

When your are creating a custom plugin you might want to initialize your plugin on startup. You could of course add everything you need in the Optimizely Startup.cs class but is is much nicer to have the user just adding one row of code using an extension method.

Your extension could look something like this:

public static class ServiceCollectionExtensions
{
    public static IServiceCollection AddMyPlugin(this IServiceCollection services, string connectionString)
    { 
        services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>(x => x.UseSqlServer(connectionString))
            .AddScoped<Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.DbContext, MyDbContext>()
            .AddSingleton<IMyService1, MyService>()
            .AddSingleton<IMyService2, MyService2>();      

        return services;
    }
}

And the only thing you need to add in Startup.cs is this:

services.AddMyPlugin(_configuration.GetConnectionString("EpiserverDB"));

I had som static content that generated 404 so I also had to create an extension to handle static content.

public static IApplicationBuilder UseMyPluginStaticContent(this IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
    app.UseStaticFiles(new StaticFileOptions
    {
        FileProvider = new PhysicalFileProvider(
            Path.Combine(env.ContentRootPath, "modules", "MyPlugin", "ClientResources")),
        RequestPath = "/modules/MyPlugin/ClientResources"
    });

    return app;
}

and the add this row in the Startup.cs Configure method:

app.UseMyPluginStaticContent(env);

This is an easy way to create advanced initialization but the user only needs to add two rows of code that clearly points out that they are use by My Plugin.