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The plugin model

The plugin model

A commercial plugin adds whole console areas, pages, dashboard cards, and database tables to Cbox Billing without a single edit to the app. It does this through two mechanisms the base app already wires: Laravel auto-discovery and the console-kit socket.

The console-kit socket

The app integrates with cboxdk/laravel-console-kit in ConsoleServiceProvider:

  • It binds the CurrentContext to the app's auth (ConsoleCurrentContext), so a plugin can resolve the current org/user without depending on the app's OIDC claim shape.
  • It seeds the base navigation IA (ConsoleNav) into the shared nav registry.
  • It registers the base app's own features (e.g. licenses, always-on).

Because the console shell renders from the registry (via NavigationComposer), an installed plugin adds areas/pages/slots/dashboard cards purely by registering them in the same registry at boot. Nothing in the base app changes.

What a plugin registers

On install, a plugin's own service provider (discovered automatically) can:

Registers Through Result
Nav areas & pages The shared NavRegistry New console sections appear.
A console-kit feature The feature registry A hard presence gate for its pages/routes.
Migrations loadMigrationsFrom Its tables are picked up by php artisan migrate.
UI / dashboard slots Console-kit slots Cards and panels render in the shell.
Capability checks The CapabilityGate Its features stay locked until entitled.

Deny-by-default in the socket means a feature a plugin never registers is simply absent — there is no implicit surface.

The nav IA is one source of truth

App\Platform\ConsoleNav holds the base app's areas/pages once, and both seeds the registry and supplies the app-specific render-path enrichment (the URL-is-state params and the active-state key). A plugin page the enrichment map does not know falls back to sensible defaults — so a plugin's pages render correctly without the app knowing about them in advance.

Migrations compose automatically

Because each plugin loads its own migrations, a single php artisan migrate (or composer deploy) applies the app's migrations and every installed plugin's — reseller rollup tables, revrec deferred-revenue schedules, connectors sync ledger, tax-plus prepared filings — alongside the engine's own ledger/event-log tables.

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