WHMCS Addon Module Development Using Smarty

WHMCS Addon Module Development Using Smarty

Main aim of this post is not to discuss all steps of WHMCS addon module development. We are discussing two points that are not well explained in many blogs.

1)How to create and delete tables using new WHMCS database component. As full_query is deprecated, we have to use Illuminate Database. This post explains how to do table creation and deletion using WHMCS Illuminate Database.

2)When creating WHMCS addon without using Smarty, We are making html code complicated with mix of single and double quotes. So in this post we are discussing how to write HTML content using Smarty.

Assume that we have to develop an addon with name ‘example’. Steps to create the addon module is explained below.

1)create a folder named `example`.
In the folder create two files.

a)example.php
b)hooks.php
Also create folders named `lang` and `templates`

2)Now let’s open the file example.php and add the below code.

  <?php

if (!defined("WHMCS"))
    die("This file cannot be accessed directly");

use Illuminate\Database\Capsule\Manager as Capsule;

   function example_config() {
    $configarray = array(
        "name" => "Sample Addon",
        "description" => "Sample Addon is just an addon to explain you",
        "version" => "1.0",
        "author" => "WHMCSTools",
        "language" => "english",
    );

    return $configarray;
}


//Table is creating here
function example_activate() {
   if (!Capsule::schema()->hasTable('sample_table')) {
        Capsule::schema()->create('sample_table', function($table) {
            $table->increments('table_id');
            $table->integer('age');
            $table->string('name', 100);
            $table->date('created_at');
            $table->float('amount', 8, 2);
            $table->text('description');
        });
    }

    return array('status' => 'success', 'description' => 'Module activated');
}
function example_deactivate() {

    Capsule::schema()->dropIfExists('sample_table');
    return array('status' => 'success', 'description' => 'Module deactivated');

}

function example_output($vars) {
}

function example_clientarea($vars) {
}

3)Now we can write what we have to display in admin side of the module
in the function example_output() {.

For example we can define the function as

function example_output($vars) {
   echo '<p>The date & time are currently ' . date("Y-m-d H:i:s") . '</p>';
}

But if we have much more HTML content to display, we have to create a big string and then echo it. Better way to display the HTML content is using a Smarty file.

For that let’s create a file named time.tpl in the folder templates.
Let’s discuss the template usage with the same simple content. But we can extend that for complex contents too.

Content of the tpl file is

 <p>The date & time are currently {$date}</p>

Now let’s discuss how to use the tpl from the example_output function.

 function example_output($vars) {
   $smarty = new Smarty();
   $smarty->assign('date', date("Y-m-d H:i:s") );
   $smarty->caching = false;
   $smarty->compile_dir = $GLOBALS['templates_compiledir'];
   $smarty->display(dirname(__FILE__) . '/templates/time.tpl');
 }