Plugin Service Provider

As mentioned in creating a plugin section, each plugin has one main class which basically serves as a service provider for the plugin. Like any other service provider, it has two default methods that you can use for registering plugin related stuff: register and boot.

Vanguard plugins have one more default method called sidebar, and its purpose is to allow you to easily put the navigation items to Vanguard's sidebar navigation.

The Register Method

As per Laravel docs, within the register method, you should only bind things into the service container. For example, this is a perfect place to bind some concrete repository classes to a specific interface.

The Boot Method

This method is called after all other service providers have been registered, meaning you have access to all other services that have been registered by the framework. Inside this method, you will bind your plugin routes, register views, etc.

The Sidebar Method

If your plugin needs to add an item to the sidebar, this is the method where you will define how this sidebar item will look like and who should be able to see it.

The method returns an instance of the Vanguard\Support\Sidebar\Item class and it's recommended to open the class definition itself and go through all the documented methods to see everything that this class can do. Here is an example on how to define a sidebar item for our "Foo" plugin created above:

public function sidebar()
{
    return Item::create('Foo')
        ->icon('fas fa-bullhorn')
        ->route('foo.index')
        ->permissions('foo.manage')
        ->active('foo*');
}

The create factory method from above accepts a string which is basically the title of the navigation item printed inside the sidebar.

The icon method is actually the FontAwesome icon class that should be used for the item.

The route method is a named route to which this navigation item should point to. If you don't have a named route for this navigation item, or you simply want to point to some external URL, you can use the href method that accepts any string that will be used for a href attribute for a navigation link.

The permissions method is where you define permissions required for viewing the sidebar item. It accepts either single permission as a string, array of permissions or even a callback that you can use if you have some complex authorization logic.

If a callback provided here returns true then currently authenticated user will be able to see the navigation item. Otherwise, it won't be rendered. Here is an example:

Item::create('Foo')
    ->permissions(function ($user) {
        return $user->status === 'Foo';
    })
//...

The active method is where you define when this navigation item should be active according to the current URL path. In our case from above, this item will be active whenever there is an URL that starts with foo.