Elgg Documentation: Release Master

Elgg Documentation
Release master
Various
January 26, 2017

Contents
1 Getting Started 3
1.1 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Bundled plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5 Developer Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2 Administrator Guides 23
2.1 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 Upgrading Elgg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3 Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.5 Cron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.6 Backup and Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.7 Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.8 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3 Developer Guides 55
3.1 Don’t Modify Core . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2 Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3 Plugin coding guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4 Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5 Ajax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.6 Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.7 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.8 Cron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.9 Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.10 File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.11 Forms + Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.12 Helper functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.13 Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.14 JavaScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
3.15 Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.16 Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3.17 Page handler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.18 Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
3.19 Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
3.20 Page ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
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3.21 Permissions Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.22 Plugin settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3.23 River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
3.24 Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
3.25 Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
3.26 Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
3.27 Walled Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
3.28 Web services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
3.29 Upgrading Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.30 Upgrading plugin data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
3.31 List of events in core . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
3.32 List of plugin hooks in core . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
4 Tutorials 225
4.1 Hello world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
4.2 Customizing the Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
4.3 Building a Blog Plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
4.4 Integrating a Rich Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
4.5 Basic Widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
5 Design Docs 239

5.1 Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
5.2 Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
5.3 Events and Plugin Hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
5.4 Internationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
5.5 AMD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
5.6 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
5.7 Loggable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
6 Contributor Guides 265

6.1 Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
6.2 Reporting Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
6.3 Writing Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
6.4 Adding a Service to Elgg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
6.5 Writing Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
6.6 Internationalizing documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
6.7 Becoming a Financial Supporter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
6.8 Release Process Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
7 Appendix 287
7.1 FAQs and Other Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
7.2 Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
7.3 Release Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
7.4 Support policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
7.5 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
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Elgg Documentation, Release master
Elgg (pronunciation) is a rapid development framework with built-in social features. It is a great fit for building
any app where users log in and share information.
It has been used to build all kinds of social apps:
• open networks (similar to Facebook)
• topical (like the Elgg Community)
• private intranets
• dating
• educational
• company blog
This is the canonical documentation for the Elgg project.
Contents 1
2 Contents
CHAPTER 1
Getting Started
Discover if Elgg is right for your community.
1.1 Features
Showcases: https://elgg.org/showcase
1.1.1 For developers
• Permissive license
• Theme framework
• Internationalization
• Templating engine
• Widgets framework
• Plugin APIs
• Social graph
• Web services API
• jQuery-based JS framework
• Session management
• Custom URL routing
1.1.2 For admins
• User profiles and avatars

• Fine-grained access control lists
• Friends and friends lists (ala G+ circles)
• Responsive, mobile-friendly design
• RSS support
• Activity stream
3
• Plugins for common content types like blogs, bookmarks, files, microblogging, private messages, documents,
message boards, discussion
• User authentication and administration
If you need more functionality than what Elgg offers out-of-the-box there are a couple of options:
• Add more by installing plugins - for example, blogs, forums, social bookmarks
• Develop your own features via plugins
• Hire someone to do the above for you
1.2 Bundled plugins
Elgg comes with a set of plugins. These provide the basic functionality for your social network.
1.2.1 Blog
A weblog, or blog, is arguably one of the fundamental DNA pieces of most types of social networking site. The
simplest form of personal publishing, it allows for text-based notes to be published in reverse-chronological order.
Commenting is also an important part of blogging, turning an individual act of publishing into a conversation.
Elgg’s blog expands this model by providing per-entry access controls and cross-blog tagging. You can control exactly
who can see each individual entry, as well as find other entries that people have written on similar topics. You can also
see entries written by your friends (that you have access to).
See also:
Blogging on Wikipedia
1.2.2 Dashboard
The dashboard is bundled with both the full and core-only Elgg packages. This is a users portal to activity that is
important to them both from within the site and from external sources. Using Elgg’s powerful widget API, it is
possible to build widgets that pull out relevant content from within an Elgg powered site as well as grab information
from third party sources such as Twitter or Flickr (providing those widgets exist). A users dashboard is not the same
as their profile, whereas the profile is for consumption by others, the dashboard is a space for users to use for their own
needs.
1.2.3 Diagnostics
For the technically savvy user, system diagnostics enables you to quickly evaluate the server environment, Elgg code,
and plugins of an Elgg install. Diagnostics is a core system plugin that comes turned on by default with Elgg. To
download the diagnostics file, follow the steps below. The file is a dump of all sorts of useful information.
To use:
• Log in as Administrator
• Go to Administration -> Administer -> Utilities ->System Diagnostics
• Click ‘Download’
System diagnostics dump file contents:
• List of all Elgg files along with a hash for each file
4 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Fig. 1.1: A typical Elgg dashboard
• List of all the plugins

• PHP superglobals
• PHP settings
• Apache settings
• Elgg CONFIG values
– language strings
– site settings
– database settings
– plugin hooks
– actions
– views
– page handlers
– much more
1.2.4 File repository
The file repository allows users to upload any kind of file. As with everything in an Elgg system, you can filter
uploaded files by tag and restrict access so that they’re only visible by the people you want them to be. Each file may
also have comments attached to it.
There are a number of different uses for this functionality
1.2. Bundled plugins 5

Fig. 1.2: A file in an Elgg file repository
Photo gallery
When a user uploads photographs or other pictures, they are automatically collated into an Elgg photo gallery that can
be browsed through. Users can also see pictures that their friends have uploaded, or see pictures attached to a group.
Clicking into an individual file shows a larger version of the photo.
Podcasting
An Elgg file repository RSS feed automatically doubles as an RSS feed, so you can subscribe to new audio content
using programs like iTunes.
Special content
It is possible for other plugins to add to the players available for different content types. It’s possible for a plugin
author to embed a viewer for Word documents, for example.
Note for developers
To add a special content type player, create a plugin with views of the form
file/specialcontent/mime/type. For example, to create a special viewer for Word documents, you would
create a view called file/specialcontent/application/msword, because application/msword is
the MIME-type for Word documents. Within this view, the ElggEntity version of the file will be referenced as
$vars[’entity’]. Therefore, the URL of the downloadable file is:
<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>action/file/download?file_guid=<?php echo $vars['entity']->getGUID(); ?>
Using this, it should be possible to develop most types of embeddable viewers.

1.2.5 Groups
Fig. 1.3: A typical group profile
Once you have found others with similar interests - or perhaps you are part of a research groups or a course/class - you
may want to have a more structured setting to share content and discuss ideas. This is where Elgg’s powerful group
building can be used. You can create and moderate as many groups as you like
• You can keep all group activity private to the group or you can use the ‘make public’ option to disseminate work
to the wider public.
• Each group produces granular RSS feeds, so it is easy to follow group developments
• Each group has its own URL and profile
• Each group comes with a File repository, forum, pages and messageboard

1.2.6 Messageboard
The messageboard - similar to ‘The Wall’ in Facebook or a comment

wall in other networks is a plugin that lets users put a messageboard
widget on their profile. Other users can then post messages that will
appear on the messageboard. You can then reply directly to any mes-
sage and view the history between yourself and the person posting the
message.
1.2.7 Messages
Private messaging can be sent to users by clicking on their avatar or

profile link, providing you have permission. Then, using the built in
WYSIWYG editor, it is possible to format the message. Each user has
their own inbox and sentbox. It is possible to be notified via email of
new messages.
When users first login, they will be notified about any new message by
the messages notification mechanism in their top toolbar.
1.2.8 Pages
Fig. 1.4: A sample messageboard placed on

the profile
Fig. 1.6: An Elgg Page
The pages plugin allows you to save and store hierarchically-organized

pages of text, and restrict both reading and writing privileges to them.
This means that you can collaboratively create a set of documents with
a loose collection of people, participate in a writing process with a
formal group, or simply use the functionality to write a document that
only you can see, and only choose to share it once it’s done. The easy
navigation menu allows you to see the whole document structure from

any page. You can create as many of these structures as you like; each
individual page has its own access controls, so you can reveal portions
of the structure while keeping others hidden. In keeping with all other
elements in Elgg, you can add comments on a page, or search for pages
by tag.
Usage
Pages really come into their own in two areas, firstly as a way for users
to build up things such as a resume, reflective documentation and so
on. The second thing is in the area of collaboration, especially when in the context of groups. With the powerful
access controls on both read and write, this plugin is ideal for collaborative document creation.
Note: Developers should note that there are actually 2 types of pages:
1. Top-level pages (with subtype page_top)
Fig. 1.5: Message notification
2. Normal pages (with subtype page)
1.2.9 Profile
Fig. 1.7: An Elgg profile
The profile plugin is bundled with both the full and core-only Elgg
packages. The intention is that it can be disabled and replaced with another profile plugin if you wish. It provides a
number of pieces of functionality which many consider fundamental to the concept of a social networking site, and is
unique within the plugins because the profile icon it defines is referenced as standard from all over the system.

User details
This provides information about a user, which is configurable from

within the plugin’s start.php file. You can change the available profile fields form the admin panel. Each profile field
has its own access restriction, so users can choose exactly who can see each individual element. Some of the fields
contain tags (for example skills) limiting access to a field will also limit who can find you by that tag.
User avatar
The user avatar represents a user (or a group) throughout the site. By
default, this includes a context-sensitive menu that allows you to perform actions on the user it belongs to wherever
you see their avatar. For example, you can add them as a friend, send an internal message, and more. Each plugin can
add to this context menu, so its full contents will vary depending on the functionality active in the current Elgg site.
Notes for developers
Using a different profile icon To replace the profile icon, or provide more
content, extend the icon/user/default view.
Adding to the context menu The context menu can be expanded by regis-
tering a plugin hook for ‘register’ ‘menu:user_hover’, the following sections have special meaning:
• default for non-active links (eg to read a blog)
• admin for links accessible by administrators only
In each case, the user in question will be passed as
$params[’entity’].
1.2.10 The Wire
Elgg wire plugin “The Wire” is Twitter-style microblogging plugin

that allows users to post notes to the wire.
The following plugins are also bundled with Elgg, but are not (yet)
documented
• activity
• bookmarks
• ckeditor
• custom_index
• developers
• discussions
• embed
• externalpages
• friends
• friends_collections
• garbagecollector
• invitefriends

Fig. 1.8: The Elgg context menu

• legacy_urls
• likes
• logbrowser
• logrotate
• members
• notifications
• reportedcontent
• search
• site_notifications
• tagcloud
• twitter_api
• uservalidationbyemail
• web_services
1.3 License
1.3.1 MIT or GPLv2
A full Elgg package that includes the framework and a core set of
plugins is available under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). We also make the framework
(without the plugins) available under the MIT license.
1.3.2 FAQ
The following answers are provided as a convenience to you; they are

not legal counsel. Consult with a lawyer to be sure about the answers to these questions. The Elgg Foundation cannot
be held responsible for decisions you make based on what you read on this page.
For questions not answered here, please refer to the official FAQ for
the GPLv2.
How much does Elgg cost?
Elgg is free to download, install, and use. If you’d like to donate, we

do appreciate our financial supporters!
Can I remove the Elgg branding/links?
Yes.
Can I modify the source code?
Yes, but in general we recommend you make your modifications as

plugins so that when a new version of Elgg is released, the upgrade process is as painless as possible.

Can I charge my users membership fees?
Yes.
If I modify Elgg, do I have to make the changes available?
No, if you are using Elgg to provide a service, you do not have to
make the source available. If you distribute a modified version of Elgg, then you must include the source code for the
changes.
If I use Elgg to host a network, does The Elgg Foundation

have any rights over my network?
No.
What’s the difference between the MIT and GPL versions?
Plugins are not included with the MIT version.

You can distribute a commercial product based on Elgg using the MIT
version without making your modifications available.
With the GPL licensed version, you have to include make your modi-
fications of the framework public if you redistribute the framework.
Why are plugins missing from the MIT version?
The plugins were developed under the GPL license, so they cannot be
released under an MIT license. Also, some plugins include external dependencies that are not compatible with the
MIT license.
May I distribute a plugin for Elgg under a commercial li-

cense?
We believe you can, since plugins typically depend only the core
framework and the framework is available under the MIT license. That said, we really recommend you consult with a
lawyer on this particular issue to be absolutely sure.
Note that plugins released via the community site repository must be
licensed under a GPLv2-compatible license. They do not necessarily have to be GPLv2, just compatible (like MIT).
Can we build our own tool that uses Elgg and sell that tool
to our clients?
Yes, but then your clients will be free to redistribute that tool under the
terms of the GPLv2.
1.3. License 13
1.4 Installation
Get your own instance of Elgg running in no time.
Contents
• Requirements
• Overview
• Other Configurations
• Troubleshooting
1.4.1 Requirements
• MySQL 5+
• PHP 5.6+ with the following extensions:
– GD (for graphics processing)
– Multibyte String support (for i18n)
– Proper configuration and ability to send email through an MTA
• Web server with support for URL rewriting
Official support is provided for the following configurations:
• Apache server
– Apache with the rewrite module enabled
– PHP running as an Apache module
• Nginx server
– Nginx with PHP-FPM using FastCGI
By “official support”, we mean that:
• Most development and testing is performed with these configurations
• Much of the installation documentation is written assuming Apache or
Nginx is used
• Priority on bug reports is given to Apache and Nginx users if the bug
is web server specific (but those are rare).
Browser support policy
Feature branches support the latest 2 versions of all major browsers as

were available at the time of the first stable release on that branch.
Bugfix release will not alter browser support, even if a new version of
the browser has since been released.
Major browsers here means all of the following, plus their mobile
counterparts:
• Android Browser

• Chrome
• Firefox
• IE
• Safari
“Support” may mean that we take advantage of newer, unimplemented
technologies but provide a JavaScript polyfill for the browsers that need it.
You may find that Elgg happens to work on unsupported browsers, but
compatibility may break at any time, even during a bugfix release.
1.4.2 Overview
Upload Elgg
With Composer (recommended if comfortable with CLI):

cd /path/to/wwwroot/
composer self-update
composer global require "fxp/composer-asset-plugin:~1.1.4"
composer create-project elgg/starter-project:dev-master .
composer install
composer install # 2nd call is currently required
From pre-packaged zip (recommended if not comfortable with CLI):

• Download the latest version of Elgg
• Upload the ZIP file with an FTP client to your server
• Unzip the files in your domain’s document root.
Create a data folder
Elgg needs a special folder to store uploaded files including profile

icons and photos. You will need to create this directory.
Warning: For security reasons, this folder MUST be stored outside of your document root. If you created it under
/www/ or /public_html/, you’re doing it wrong.
Once this folder has been created, you’ll need to make sure the web
server Elgg is running on has permission to write to and create directories in it. This shouldn’t be a problem on
Windows-based servers, but if your server runs Linux, Mac OS X or a UNIX variant, you’ll need to set the permissions
on the directory.
If you are using a graphical FTP client to upload files, you can usually
set permissions by right clicking on the folder and selecting ‘properties’ or ‘Get Info’.
Note: Directories must be executable to be read and written to. The suggested permissions depend upon the exact
server and user configuration. If the data directory is owned by the web server user, the recommended permissions are
770.
Setting your data directory to 777 will work, but it is insecure and is
not recommended. If you are unsure how to correctly set permissions, contact your host for more information.
1.4. Installation 15
Create a MySQL database
Using your database administration tool of choice (if you’re unsure

about this, ask your system administrator), create a new MySQL database for Elgg. You can create a MySQL database
with any of the following tools:
Make sure you add a user to the database with all privileges and record
the database name, username and password. You will need this information when installing Elgg.
Set up Cron
Elgg uses timed requests to your site to perform background tasks like
sending notifications or performing database cleanup jobs. You need to configure the cron to be able to use those kind
of features.
Visit your Elgg site
Once you’ve performed these steps, visit your Elgg site in your web
browser. Elgg will take you through the rest of the installation process from there. The first account that you create at
the end of the installation process will be an administrator account.
A note on settings.php and .htaccess
The Elgg installer will try to create two files for you:
• elgg-config/settings.php, which contains local environ-
ment configuration for your installation
• .htaccess, which allows Elgg to generate dynamic URLs
If these files can’t be automatically generated, for example because
the web server doesn’t have write permissions in the directories, Elgg will tell you how to create them. You could
also temporarily change the permissions on the root directory and the engine directory. Set the permissions on those
two directories so that the web server can write those two files, complete the install process, and them change the
permissions back to their original settings. If, for some reason, this won’t work, you will need to:
• In elgg-config/, copy settings.example.php to
settings.php, open it up in a text editor and fill in your database details
• On Apache server, copy install/config/htaccess.dist to
.htaccess
• On Nginx server copy install/config/nginx.dist to
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled and adjust it’s contents
1.4.3 Other Configurations
• Cloud9
• EasyPHP
• IIS
• MAMP
• MariaDB

• Nginx
• Ubuntu
• Virtual hosts
• XAMPP
1.4.4 Troubleshooting
Help! I’m having trouble installing Elgg
First:
• Recheck that your server meets the technical requirements for Elgg.
• Follow the environment-specific instructions if need be
• Have you verified that mod_rewrite is being loaded?
• Is the mysql apache being loaded?
Keep notes on steps that you take to fix the install. Sometimes chang-
ing some setting or file to try to fix a problem may cause some other problem later on. If you need to start over, just
delete all the files, drop your database, and begin again.
I can’t save my settings on installation (I get a 404 error

when saving settings)
Elgg relies on the mod_rewrite Apache extension in order to sim-

ulate certain URLs. For example, whenever you perform an action in Elgg, or when you visit a user’s profile, the
URL is translated by the server into something Elgg understands internally. This is done using rules defined in an
.htaccess file, which is Apache’s standard way of defining extra configuration for a site.
This error suggests that the mod_rewrite rules aren’t being picked
up correctly. This may be for several reasons. If you’re not comfortable implementing the solutions provided below,
we strongly recommend that you contact your system administrator or technical support and forward this page to them.
The .htaccess, if not generated automatically (that happens when
you have problem with mod_rewrite), you can create it by renaming install/config/htaccess.dist
file you find with elgg package to .htaccess. Also if you find a .htaccess file inside the installa-
tion path, but you are still getting 404 error, make sure the contents of .htaccess are same as that of
install/config/htaccess.dist.
‘‘mod_rewrite‘‘ isn’t installed.
Check your httpd.conf to make sure that this module is being
loaded by Apache. You may have to restart Apache to get it to pick up any changes in configuration. You can
also use PHP info to check to see if the module is being loaded.
The rules in ‘‘.htaccess‘‘ aren’t being obeyed.
In your virtual host configuration settings (which may be contained
within httpd.conf), change the AllowOverride setting so that it reads:
AllowOverride all
This will tell Apache to pick up the mod_rewrite rules from
.htaccess.
Elgg is not installed in the root of your web directory (ex:

http://example.org/elgg/ instead of http://example.org/)
The install script redirects me to “action” when it should be

“actions”
This is a problem with your mod_rewrite setup. DO NOT, RE-

PEAT, DO NOT change any directory names!
I installed in a subdirectory and my install action isn’t work-

ing!
If you installed Elgg so that it is reached with an address like

http://example.org/mysite/ rather than http://example.org/, there is a small chance that the rewrite rules in .htaccess
will not be processed correctly. This is usually due to using an alias with Apache. You may need to give mod_rewrite
a pointer to where your Elgg installation is.
• Open up .htaccess in a text editor
• Where prompted, add a line like RewriteBase
/path/to/your/elgg/installation/ (Don’t forget the trailing slash)
• Save the file and refresh your browser.
Please note that the path you are using is the web path, minus the host.
For example, if you reach your elgg install at http://example.org/elgg/,
you would set the base like this:
RewriteBase /elgg/
Please note that installing in a subdirectory does not require using
RewriteBase. There are only some rare circumstances when it is needed due to the set up of the server.
I did everything! mod_rewrite is working fine, but still the

404 error
Maybe there is a problem with the file .htaccess. Sometimes the elgg
install routine is unable to create one and unable to tell you that. If you are on this point and tried everything that is
written above:
• check if it is really the elgg-created .htaccess (not only a dummy pro-
vided from the server provider)
• if it is not the elgg provided htaccess file, use the htaccess_dist (rename
it to .htaccess)
I get an error message that the rewrite test failed after the
requirements check page
I get the following messages after the requirements check step (step 2)
of the install:
We think your server is running the Apache web server.

The rewrite test failed and the most likely cause is that AllowOverride
is not set to All for Elgg’s directory. This prevents Apache from processing the .htaccess file which contains the rewrite
rules.
A less likely cause is Apache is configured with an alias for your Elgg
directory and you need to set the RewriteBase in your .htaccess. There are further instructions in the .htaccess file in
your Elgg directory.
After this error, everinteraction with the web interface results in a error
500 (Internal Server Error)
This is likely caused by not loading the “filter module by un-
commenting the
#LoadModule filter_module modules/mod_filter.so
line in the “httpd.conf” file.
the Apache “error.log” file will contain an entry similar to:
... .htaccess: Invalid command ‘AddOutputFilterByType’, perhaps
misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
There is a white page after I submit my database settings
Check that the Apache mysql module is installed and is being loaded.
I’m getting a 404 error with a really long url
If you see a 404 error during the install or on the creation of the first
user with a url like: http://example.com/homepages/26/d147515119/htdocs/elgg/action/register
that means your site url is incorrect in your sites_entity table in your database. This was set by you on the second
page of the install. Elgg tries to guess the correct value but has difficulty with shared hosting sites. Use phpMyAdmin
to edit this value to the correct base url.
I am having trouble setting my data path
This is highly server specific so it is difficult to give specific advice. If

you have created a directory for uploading data, make sure your http server can access it. The easiest (but least secure)
way to do this is give it permissions 777. It is better to give the web server ownership of the directory and limit the
permissions.
The top cause of this issue is PHP configured to prevent access to most
directories using open_basedir. You may want to check with your hosting provider on this.
Make sure the path is correct and ends with a /. You can check the
path in your database in the config table.
If you only have ftp access to your server and created a directory but
do not know the path of it, you might be able to figure it out from the www file path set in your config database table.
Asking for help from your hosting help team is recommended at this stage.
I can’t validate my admin account because I don’t have an

email server!
While it’s true that normal accounts (aside from those created from the
admin panel) require their email address to be authenticated before they can log in, the admin account does not.
Once you have registered your first account you will be able to log in
using the credentials you have provided!
I have tried all of these suggestions and I still cannot install

Elgg
It is possible that during the process of debugging your install you

have broken something else. Try doing a clean install:
• drop your elgg database
• delete your data directory
• delete the Elgg source files
• start over
If that fails, seek the help of the Elgg community. Be sure to mention
what version of Elgg you are installing, details of your server platform, and any error messages that you may have
received including ones in the error log of your server.
1.5 Developer Overview
This is a quick developer introduction to Elgg. It covers the basic

approach to working with Elgg as a framework, and mentions some of the terms and technologies used.
See the Developer Guides for tutorials or the Design Docs for in-depth
discussion on design.
1.5.1 Database and Persistence
Elgg uses MySQL 5.5 or higher for data persistence, and maps
database values into Entities (a representation of an atomic unit of information) and Extenders (additional information
and descriptions about Entities). Elgg supports additional information such as relationships between Entities, activity
streams, and various types of settings.
1.5.2 Plugins
Plugins change the behavior or appearance of Elgg by overriding

views, or by handling events and plugin hooks. All changes to an Elgg site should be implemented through plug-
ins to ensure upgrading core is easy.
1.5.3 Actions
Actions are the primary way users interact with an Elgg site. Actions
are registered by plugins.

1.5.4 Events and Plugin Hooks
Events and Plugin Hooks are used in Elgg Plugins to interact with the
Elgg engine under certain circumstances. Events and hooks are triggered at strategic times throughout Elgg’s boot and
execution process, and allows plugins to modify or cancel the default behavior.
1.5.5 Views
Views are the primary presentation layer for Elgg. Views can be over-
ridden or extended by Plugins. Views are categories into a Viewtype, which hints at what sort of output should be
expected by the view.
1.5.6 JavaScript
Elgg uses an AMD-compatible JavaScript system provided by re-

quire.js. Bundled with Elgg are jQuery 1.11.0, jQuery UI 1.10.4, jQuery Form v20140304, jQuery jeditable, and
jQuery UI Autocomplete.
Plugins can load their own JS libs.
1.5.7 Internationalization
Elgg’s interface supports multiple languages, and uses Transifex for

translation.
1.5.8 Caching
Elgg uses two caches to improve performance: a system cache and

SimpleCache.
1.5. Developer Overview 21


CHAPTER 2
Administrator Guides
Best practices for effectively managing an Elgg-based site.
2.1 Getting Started
You have installed Elgg and worked through any potential initial issues. What now? Here are some suggestions on
how to to familiarize yourself with Elgg.
2.1.1 Focus first on core functionality
When you’re new to Elgg, it’s best to explore the stock features in core and its bundled plugins before installing any
third party plugins. It’s tempting install every interesting plugin from the community site, but exploring the core
features builds a familiarity with Elgg’s expected behavior, and prevents introducing any confusing bugs from third
party plugin into your new Elgg network.
Elgg installs with a basic set of social network plugins activated: blogs, social bookmarking, files, groups, likes,
message boards, wiki-like pages, user profiles, and microblogging. To change the plugins that are activated, log in as
an admin user, then use the topbar to browse to Administration, then to Plugins on the right sidebar.
Note: The user you create during installation is an admin user.
2.1.2 Create test users
Users can be created two ways in stock Elgg:

1. Complete the signup process using a different email address and username. (Logout first or use a different
browser!)
2. Add a user through the Admin section by browsing to Administration -> Users -> Add New User.
Note: Users that self-register must validate their account through email before they can log in. Users that an admin
creates are already validated.
23
2.1.3 Explore user functionality
Use your test users to create blogs, add widgets to your profile or dashboard, post to the Wire (microblogging), and
create pages (wiki-like page creation). Investigate the Settings on the topbar. This is where a user sets notification
settings and configures tools (which will be blank because none of the default plugins add controls here).
2.1.4 Explore admin functionality
All of the admin controls are found by clicking Administration in the topbar. The has a dashboard with a widget that
explains the various sections. Change options in the Configure menu to change how Elgg looks and acts.
2.1.5 Extending Elgg
After exploring what Elgg can do out of the box, install some themes and plugins. You can find many plugins and
themes at the community site that have been developed by third parties. These plugins do everything from changing
language strings, to adding chat, to completely redesigning Elgg’s interface. Because these plugins are not official, be
certain to check the comments to make sure you only install well-written plugins by high quality developers.
2.2 Upgrading Elgg
Switch a live site to a new version of Elgg.

If you’ve written custom plugins, you should also read the developer guides for information on upgrading plugin code
for the latest version of Elgg.
2.2.1 Advice
• Back up your database and code

• Mind any version-specific comments below
• Upgrade only one minor version at a time (1.6 => 1.7, then 1.7 => 1.8)
• Try out the new version on a test site before doing an upgrade
• Report any problems in plugins to the plugin authors
• If you are a plugin author you can report any backwards-compatibility issues to GitHub
2.2.2 Basic instructions
1. Back up your database, data directory, and code

2. Download the new version of Elgg from http://elgg.org
3. Update the files
• If doing a patch upgrade (1.9.x), overwrite your existing files with the new version of Elgg
• If doing a minor upgrade (1.x), replace the existing core files completely
4. Merge any new changes to the rewrite rules
• For Apache from install/config/htaccess.dist into .htaccess
24 Chapter 2. Administrator Guides

• For Nginx from install/config/nginx.dist into your server configuration (usually inside
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled)
5. Merge any new changes from settings.example.php into settings.php
6. Visit http://your-elgg-site.com/upgrade.php
Note: Any modifications should have been written within plugins, so that they are not lost on overwriting. If this is
not the case, take care to maintain your modifications.
2.2.3 From 2.3 to 3.0
Removed / changed language keys
• The language keys related to comment notifications have changed. Check the
generic_comment:notification:owner: language keys
2.2.4 From 2.2 to 2.3
PHP Version
PHP 5.5 has reached end of life in July 2016. To ensure that Elgg sites are secure, we now require PHP 5.6 for new
installations.
Existing installations can continue using PHP 5.5 until Elgg 3.0.
In order to upgrade Elgg to 2.3 using composer while using PHP 5.5, you may need to use
--ignore-platform-reqs flag.
Tests
• PHPUnit bootstrap is deprecated by composer autoloader: Tests should no longer bootstrap themselves using
/engine/tests/phpunit/bootstrap.php. Instead, tests should extend \Elgg\TestCase.
• Some core files now sniff if PHPUNIT_ELGG_TESTING_APPLICATION constant is set to determine whether
Elgg is being bootstrapped for PHPUnit tests. phpunit.xml configuration needs to updated to include this
constant definition.
• PHPUnit bootstrap no longer sets global $CONFIG. Tests should use _elgg_services()->config in-
stead.
• Core and tests no longer use private global values in $_ELGG->view_path and
$_ELGG->allowed_ajax_views
Schema
• The database GUID columns need to be aligned. In the admin section an upgrade is available to handle this.
Please make sure you have a backup available
2.2. Upgrading Elgg 25

2.2.5 From 2.3 to 3.0
Data removal
Be aware the 3.0 upgrade process will remove any remaining “legacy” password hashes. This will affect users who
have never logged in under an Elgg 1.10 or later system. These users will be politely asked to reset their password.
2.2.6 Deprecations in 2.x
2.2
User avatars are now served via serve-file handler. Plugins should start using elgg_get_inline_url()
and note that:
• /avatar/view page handler and resource view have been deprecated
• /mod/profile/icondirect.php file has been deprecated
• profile_set_icon_url() is no longer registered as a callback for "entity:icon:url","user"
plugin hook
Group avatars are now served via serve-file handler. Plugins should start using elgg_get_inline_url()
and note that:
• groupicon page handler (groups_icon_handler()) has been deprecated
• /mod/groups/icon.php file has been deprecated
File entity thumbs and downloads are now served via serve-file handler. Plugins should start using
elgg_get_inline_url() and elgg_get_download_url() and note that:
• file/download page handler and resource view have been deprecated
• mod/file/thumbnail.php file has been deprecated
• Several views have been updated to use new download URLs, including:
– mod/file/views/default/file/specialcontent/audio/default.php
– mod/file/views/default/file/specialcontent/image/default.php
– mod/file/views/default/resources/file/view.php
– mod/file/views/rss/file/enclosure.php
2.2.7 From 1.x to 2.0
Removed plugins
The following plugins are no longer bundled with Elgg core:

• categories (https://github.com/elgg/categories)
• zaudio (https://github.com/elgg/zaudio)

IE-specific workarounds have been dropped
Several views (css/ie, css/ie7, css/ie8, etc.) as well as conditional comments have been discarded now that
IE10+ browsers are more standards-compliant. If you need browser support farther back than that, you will need to
find or build a plugin that introduces its own compatibility layer or polyfills.
Update your webserver config
URL paths like cache/* and rewrite.php now use the main front controller script. You must remove these
rewrite rules from your webserver config (e.g. .htaccess).
Also remove the rules for paths like export/*; these endpoints have been removed.
Settings location
After upgrading, move your settings.php file from engine/ to elgg-config/.
2.2.8 From 1.10 to 1.11
Breaking changes
In versions 1.9 and 1.10, names and values for metadata and annotations were not correctly trimmed for whitespace.
Elgg 1.11 correctly trims these strings and updates the database to correct existing strings. If your plugin uses metadata
or annotations with leading or trailing whitespace, you will need to update the plugin to trim the names and values.
This is especially important if you are using custom SQL clauses or have hard-coded metastring IDs, since the update
might change metastring IDs.
2.2.9 From 1.8 to 1.9
Elgg 1.9 is a much lighter upgrade than 1.8 was.
Breaking changes
Plugins and themes written for 1.8 are expected to be compatible with 1.9 except as it pertains to comments, discussion
replies, and notifications. Please report any backwards compatibility issues besides those just listed.
Upgrade steps
There are several data migrations involved, so it is especially important that you back up your database and data
directory before performing the upgrade.
Download the new version and copy these files from the existing 1.8 site:
• .htaccess
• engine/settings.php
• any 3rd-party plugin folders in the mod directory
2.2. Upgrading Elgg 27

Then replace the old installation directory with the new one. This way you are guaranteed to get rid of obsolete files
which might cause problems if left behind.
Follow the basic instructions listed above.
After you’ve visited upgrade.php, go to the admin area of your site. You should see a notification that you have
pending upgrades. Click the link in the notification bar to view and run the upgrades.
The new notifications system delivers messages via a minutely cron handler. If you haven’t done so yet, you will need
to install and configure crontab on your server. If cron jobs are already configured, note that the scope of available
cron periods may have changed and you may need to update your current crontab to reflect these changes.
Time commitment
Running all of the listed upgrades took about 1 hour and 15 minutes on the Elgg community site which at the time had
to migrate:
• ~75,000 discussion replies
• ~75,000 comments
• ~75,000 data directories
You should take this only as a ballpark estimate for your own upgrade. How long it takes will depend on how large
your site is and how powerful your servers are.
2.2.10 From 1.7 to 1.8
Elgg 1.8 is the biggest leap forward in the development of Elgg since version 1.0. As such, there is more work to
update core and plugins than with previous upgrades.
Updating core
Delete the following core directories (same level as _graphics and engine):
• _css
• account
• admin
• dashboard
• entities
• friends
• search
• settings
• simplecache
• views
Warning: If you do not delete these directories before an upgrade, you will have problems!

2.3 Plugins
Plugins can modify the behavior of and add new features to Elgg.
Contents
• Where to get plugins
• The Elgg Community
– Finding Plugins
– Evaluating Plugins
• Types of plugins
– Themes
– Language Packs
• Installation
• Plugin order
• Pre-1.8 notes
2.3.1 Where to get plugins
Plugins can be obtained from:

• The Elgg Community
• Github
• Third-party sites (typically for a price)
If no existing plugins meet your needs, you can hire a developer or create your own.
2.3.2 The Elgg Community
Finding Plugins
Sort based on most popular
On the community plugin page, you can sort by date uploaded (Filter: Newest) or number of downloads (Filter: Most
downloads). Sorting by the number of downloads is a good idea if you are new to Elgg and want to see which plugins
are frequently used by other administrators. These will often (but not always) be higher quality plugins that provide
significant capabilities.
Use the plugin tag search
Next to the filtering control on the plugin page is a search box. It enables you to search by tags. Plugins authors choose
the tags.
Look for particular plugin authors
The quality of plugins varies substantially. If you find a plugin that works well on your site, you can check what else
that plugin author has developed by clicking on their name when viewing a plugin.
2.3. Plugins 29
Evaluating Plugins
Look at the comments and ratings
Before downloading and using a plugin, it is always a good idea to read through the comments that others have left.
If you see people complaining that the plugin does not work or makes their site unstable, you probably want to stay
away from that plugin. The caveat to that is that sometimes users ignore installation instructions or incorrectly install
a plugin and then leave negative feedback. Further, some plugin authors have chosen to not allow comments.
Install on a test site
If you are trying out a plugin for the first time, it is a bad idea to install it on your production site. You should maintain
a separate test site for evaluating plugins. It is a good idea to slowly roll out new plugins to your production site even
after they pass your evaluation on your test site. This enables you to isolate problems introduced by a new plugin.
2.3.3 Types of plugins
Themes
Themes are plugins that modify the look-and-feel of your site. They generally include stylesheets, client-side scripts
and views that alter the default presentation and behavior of Elgg.
Language Packs
Language packs are plugins that provide support for other languages.
Language packs can extend and include translations for language strings found in the core, core plugins and/or third-
party plugins.
Some of the language packs are already included in the core, and can be found in languages directory off Elgg’s
root directory. Individual plugins tend to include their translations under the languages directory within the plugin’s
root.
This structure makes it easy to create new language packs that supercede existing language strings or add support for
new languages.
2.3.4 Installation
All plugins reside in the mod directory of your Elgg installation.

To install a new plugin:
• extract (unzip) contents of the plugin distribution package
• copy/FTP the extracted folder into the mod directory of your Elgg installation, making sure
that manifest.xml is directly under the plugin directory (e.g. if you were to in-
stall a plugin called my_elgg_plugin, plugin’s manifest would need to be found at
mod/my_elgg_plugin/manifest.xml)
• activate the plugin from your admin panel
To activate a plugin:
• Log in to your Elgg site with your administrator account

• Go to Administration -> Configure -> Plugins

• Find your plugin in the list of installed plugins and click on the ‘enable’ button.
2.3.5 Plugin order
Plugins are loaded according to the order they are listed on the Plugins page. The initial ordering after an install is
more or less random. As more plugins are added by an administrator, they are placed at the bottom of the list.
Some general rules for ordering plugins:
• A theme plugin should be last or at least near the bottom
• A plugin that modifies the behavior of another plugin should be lower in the plugin list
2.3.6 Pre-1.8 notes
In Elgg 1.7 and below, the interface for managing installed plugins is located at Administration -> Tool Administration.
2.4 Performance
Make your site run as smoothly and responsively as possible.
Contents
• Can Elgg scale to X million users?
• Measure first
• Tune MySQL
• Enable caching
– Simplecache
– System cache
– Boot cache (experimental)
– Database query cache
– Etags and Expires headers
– Memcache
– Squid
– Bytecode caching
– Direct file serving
• Hosting
– Memory, CPU and bandwidth
– Configuration
• Check for poorly-behaved plugins
• Use client-rendered HTML
2.4.1 Can Elgg scale to X million users?
People often ask whether Elgg can scale to large installations.

First, we might stop and ask, “where are you planning to get all those users?” Seriously, though, this is a really
interesting problem. Making Elgg scale is, if anything, an issue of technical engineering. It’s interesting but more
2.4. Performance 31
or less a solved problem. Computer science doesn’t work differently for Elgg than for Google, for example. Getting
millions of users? That’s like the Holy Grail of the entire tech industry.
Second, as with most things in life, the answer is “it depends”:
• How active are your users?
• What hardware is Elgg running on?
• Are your plugins behaving well?
Improving the efficiency of the Elgg engine is an ongoing project, although there are limits to the amount that any
script can do.
If you are serious about scalability you will probably want to look at a number of things yourself.
2.4.2 Measure first
There is no point in throwing resources at a problem if you don’t know:

• what the problem is
• what resources the problem needs
• where those resources are needed
Invest in some kind of profiling to tell you where your bottleneck is, especially if you’re considering throwing signifi-
cant money at a problem.
2.4.3 Tune MySQL
Elgg makes extensive use of the back end database, making many trips on each pageload. This is perfectly normal and
a well configured database server will be able to cope with thousands of requests per second.
Here are some configuration tips that might help:
• Make sure that MySQL is configured to use an appropriate my.cnf for the size of your website.
• Increase the amount of memory available to PHP and MySQL (you will have to increase the amount of memory
available to the php process in any case)
2.4.4 Enable caching
Generally, if a program is slow, that is because it is repeatedly performing an expensive computation or operation.
Caching allows the system to avoid doing that work over and over again by using memory to store the results so that
you can skip all the work on subsequent requests. Below we discuss several generally-available caching solutions
relevant to Elgg.
Simplecache
By default, views are cached in the Elgg data directory for a given period of time. This removes the need for a view to
be regenerated on every page load.
This can be disabled by setting $CONFIG->simplecache_enabled = false; For best performance, make
sure this value is set to true.
This does lead to artifacts during development if you are editing themes in your plugin as the cached version will be
used in preference to the one provided by your plugin.

The simple cache can be disabled via the administration menu. It is recommended that you do this on your development
platform if you are writing Elgg plugins.
This cache is automatically flushed when a plugin is enabled, disabled or reordered, or when upgrade.php is executed.
For best performance, you can also create a symlink from /cache/ in your www root dir to the
/views_simplecache/ directory in the data directory you configured when you installed Elgg:
ln -s /path/to/dataroot/views_simplecache/ cache
If your webserver supports following symlinks, this will serve files straight off disk without booting up PHP each time.
For security reasons, some webservers (e.g. Apache in version 2.4) might follow the symlinks by default only if the
owner of the symlink source and target match. If the cache symlink fails to work on your server, you can change the
owner of the cache symlink itself (and not the /views_simplecache/ directory) with
chown -h wwwrun:www cache
In this example it’s assumed that the /views_simplecache/ directory in the data directory is owned by the
wwwrun account that belongs to the www group. If this is not the case on your server, you have to modify the chown
command accordingly.
System cache
The location of views are cached so that they do not have to be discovered (profiling indicated that page load took a
non-linear amount of time the more plugins were enabled due to view discovery). Elgg also caches information like
the language mapping and class map.
This can be disabled by setting $CONFIG->system_cache_enabled = false; For best performance, make
sure this value is set to true.
This is currently stored in files in your dataroot (although later versions of Elgg may use memcache). As with the
simple cache it is flushed when a plugin is enabled, disabled or reordered, or when upgrade.php is executed.
The system cache can be disabled via the administration menu, and it is recommended that you do this on your
development platform if you are writing Elgg plugins.
Boot cache (experimental)
Elgg has the ability to cache numerous resources created and fetched during the boot process. To enable this cache
you must set a TTL in your settings.php file: $CONFIG->boot_cache_ttl = 10;
A small TTL is recommended because it brings all the benefits of caching under load while reducing the harm if Elgg’s
cache invalidation strategy should miss something.
Database query cache
For the lifetime of a given page’s execution, a cache of all SELECT queries is kept. This means that for a given page
load a given select query will only ever go out to the database once, even if it is executed multiple times. Any write
to the database will flush this cache, so it is advised that on complicated pages you postpone database writes until the
end of the page or use the execute_delayed_* functionality. This cache will be automatically cleared at the end
of a page load.
You may experience memory problems if you use the Elgg framework as a library in a PHP CLI script. This can be
disabled by setting $CONFIG->db_disable_query_cache = true;
2.4. Performance 33
Etags and Expires headers
These technologies tell your users’ browsers to cache static assets (CSS, JS, images) locally. Having these enabled
greatly reduces server load and improves user-perceived performance.
Use the Firefox yslow plugin or Chrome DevTools Audits to confirm which technologies are currently running on
your site.
If the static assets aren’t being cached:
• Verify that you have these extensions installed and enabled on your host
• Update your .htaccess file, if you are upgrading from a previous version of Elgg
• Enable Simplecache, which turns select views into browser-cacheable assets
Memcache
Memcache is a generic caching technology developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal.
Warning: SUPPORT FOR MEMCACHE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND MAY BE CHANGED.
Installation requirements:
• php5-memcache
• memcached
Configuration:
Uncomment and populate the following sections in settings.php
$CONFIG->memcache = true;
$CONFIG->memcache_servers = array (
array('server1', 11211),
array('server2', 11211)
);
Optionaly if you run multiple Elgg installations but use ony one Memcache server, you may want to add a namespace
prefix. In order to do this, uncomment the following line
$CONFIG->memcache_namespace_prefix = '';
Squid
We have had good results by using Squid to cache images for us.
Bytecode caching
There are numerous PHP code caches available on the market. These speed up your site by caching the compiled byte
code from your script meaning that your server doesn’t have to compile the PHP code each time it is executed.

Direct file serving
If your server can be configured to support the X-Sendfile or X-Accel headers, you can configure it to be used
in settings.php. This allows your web server to directly stream files to the client instead of using PHP’s
readfile().
2.4.5 Hosting
Don’t expect to run a site catering for millions of users on a cheap shared host. You will need to have your own host
hardware and access over the configuration, as well as lots of bandwidth and memory available.
Memory, CPU and bandwidth
Due to the nature of caching, all caching solutions will require memory. It is a fairly cheap return to throw memory
and CPU at the problem.
On advanced hardware it is likely that bandwidth is going to be your bottleneck before the server itself. Ensure that
your host can support the load you are suggesting.
Configuration
Lastly, take a look at your configuration as there are a few gotchas that can catch people.
For example, out of the box, Apache can handle quite a high load. However, most distros of Linux come with mysql
configured for small sites. This can result in Apache processes getting stalled waiting to talk to one very overloaded
MySQL process.
2.4.6 Check for poorly-behaved plugins
Plugins can be programmed in a very naive way and this can cause your whole site to feel slow.
Try disabling some plugins to see if that noticeably improves performance. Once you’ve found a likely offender, go to
the original plugin author and report your findings.
2.4.7 Use client-rendered HTML
We’ve found that at a certain point, much of the time spent on the server is simply building the HTML of the page
with Elgg’s views system.
It’s very difficult to cache the output of templates since they can generally take arbitrary inputs. Instead of trying to
cache the HTML output of certain pages or views, the suggestion is to switch to an HTML-based templating system so
that the user’s browser can cache the templates themselves. Then have the user’s computer do the work of generating
the output by applying JSON data to those templates.
This can be very effective, but has the downside of being significant extra development cost. The Elgg team is looking
to integrate this strategy into Elgg directly, since it is so effective especially on pages with repeated or hidden content.
2.4. Performance 35
2.5 Cron
Cron is a program available on Unix-based operating systems that enables users to run commands and scripts at set
intervals or at specific times.
Elgg’s cron handler allows administrators and plugin developers to setup jobs that need to be executed at set intervals.
Most common examples of cron jobs in Elgg include:
• sending out queued notifications
• rotating the system log in the database
• collecting garbage in the database (compacting the database by removing entries that are no longer required)
Currently, Elgg supports the following hooks:
• minute - Run every minute
• fiveminute - Run every 5 minutes
• fifteenmin - Run every 15 minutes
• halfhour - Run every 30 minutes
• hourly - Run every hour
• daily - Run every day
• weekly - Run every week
• monthly - Run every month
• yearly - Run every year
2.5.1 How does it work?
Elgg activates its cron handler when particular cron pages are loaded. As an example, loading
http://example.com/cron/hourly/ in a web browser activates the hourly hook. To automate this, cron jobs are setup
to hit those pages at certain times. This is done by setting up a crontab which is a configuration file that determines
what cron jobs do and at what interval.
2.5.2 Installation
The crontab needs to specify a script or command that will hit the Elgg cron pages. Two commonly available
programs for this are GET and wget. You will need to determine the location of one of these on your server. Your
crontab also needs to specify the location of your website.
# Crontab example.
#
# This file is an example of triggering Elgg cron events. It hits a URL to
# trigger the events. For testing, you can simulate the cronjob by loading the
# URL in a browser.
#
# See http://learn.elgg.org/en/stable/admin/cron.html for more information
#
# Location of your site (don't forget the trailing slash!)

ELGG='http://www.example.com/'

# Location of lwp-request
LWPR='/usr/bin/lwp-request'
# Make GET request and discard content

GET="$LWPR -m GET -d"
# The crontab
# Don't edit below this line unless you know what you are doing
* * * * * $GET ${ELGG}cron/minute/
*/5 * * * * $GET ${ELGG}cron/fiveminute/
15,30,45,59 * * * * $GET ${ELGG}cron/fifteenmin/
30,59 * * * * $GET ${ELGG}cron/halfhour/
@hourly $GET ${ELGG}cron/hourly/
@daily $GET ${ELGG}cron/daily/
@weekly $GET ${ELGG}cron/weekly/
@monthly $GET ${ELGG}cron/monthly/
@yearly $GET ${ELGG}cron/yearly/
In the above example, change the ELGG and GET variables to match you server setup. If you have SSH access to
your Linux servers, type crontab -e and add your crontab configuration. If you already have a crontab configured,
you will have to merge Elgg information into it. If you don’t have SSH access, you will have to use a web-based
configuration tool. This will vary depending on hosting provider.
If you choose the wget utility, you might want to consider these flags:
• --output-document or -O to specify the location of the concatenated output file. For example, under
Debian: /usr/bin/wget --output-document=/dev/null. If you don’t do that, a new file will be
created for each cron page load in the home directory of the cron user.
• --spider to prevent the cron page from being downloaded.
On Windows servers, there is a number of cron emulators available.
For information on setting up cron jobs using cPanel see cPanel Docs.
In the command field, enter the appropriate link of the cron page. For example, for a weekly cron job, enter the
command as http://www.example.com/cron/weekly/.
To see if your cron jobs are running, visit Statistics > Cron in your Elgg admin panel.
2.6 Backup and Restore
2.6. Backup and Restore 37

Contents
• Introduction
– Why
– What
– Assumptions
• Creating a usable backup - automatically
– Customize the backup script
– Configure the backup Cron job
– Configure the cleanup Cron job
• Restoring from backup
– Prepare your backup files
– Restore the files
– Restore the MySQL Database
– Edit the MySQL backup
– Create the new database
– Restore the production database
– Bringing it all together
– Finalizing the new installation
• Congratulations!
• Related
2.6.1 Introduction
Why
Shared hosting providers typically don’t provide an automated way to backup your Elgg installation. This article will
address a method of accomplishing this task.
In IT there are often many ways to accomplish the same thing. Keep that in mind. This article will explain one method
to backup and restore your Elgg installation on a shared hosting provider that uses the CPanel application. However,
the ideas presented here can be tailored to other applications as well. The following are typical situations that might
require a procedure such as this:
• Disaster Recovery
• Moving your Elgg site to a new host
• Duplicating an installation
What
Topics covered:
• Full backups of the Elgg directories and MySQL databases are performed daily (automated)
• The backups are sent to an off-site location via FTP (automated)
• The local backups are deleted after successful transfer to the off-site location (automatic)
• Five days of backups will be maintained (automated)
• Restoration of data to the new host (manual)
This process was composed with assistance from previous articles in the Elgg documentation wiki.

Assumptions
The following assumptions have been made:

• The Elgg program directory is /home/userx/public_html
• The Elgg data directory is /home/userx/elggdata
• You’ve created a local directory for your backups at /home/userx/sitebackups
• You have an off-site FTP server to send the backup files to
• The directory that you will be saving the off-site backups to is /home/usery/sitebackups/
• You will be restoring the site to a second shared hosting provider in the /home/usery/public_html
directory
Important: Be sure to replace userx, usery, http://mynewdomain.com and all passwords with values that
reflect your actual installation!
2.6.2 Creating a usable backup - automatically
Customize the backup script
The script that you will use can be found here .

Just copy the script to a text file and name the file with a .pl extension. You can use any text editor to update the file.
Change the following to reflect your directory structure:
# ENTER THE PATH TO THE DIRECTORY YOU WANT TO BACKUP, NO TRAILING SLASH
$directory_to_backup = '/home/userx/public_html';
$directory_to_backup2 = '/home/userx/elggdata';
# ENTER THE PATH TO THE DIRECTORY YOU WISH TO SAVE THE BACKUP FILE TO, NO TRAILING SLASH
$backup_dest_dir = '/home/userx/sitebackups';
Change the following to reflect your database parameters:

# MYSQL BACKUP PARAMETERS
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'userx_elgg';
$dbpwd = 'dbpassword';
# ENTER DATABASE NAME
$database_names_elgg = 'userx_elgg';
Change the following to reflect your off-site FTP server parameters:

# FTP PARAMETERS
$ftp_host = "FTP HOSTNAME/IP";
$ftp_user = "ftpuser";
$ftp_pwd = "ftppassword";
$ftp_dir = "/";
Save the file with the .pl extension (for the purposes of this article we will name the file:
elgg-ftp-backup-script.pl) and upload it to the following directory /home/userx/sitebackups
Be aware that you can turn off FTP and flip a bit in the script so that it does not delete the local backup file in the event
that you don’t want to use off-site storage for your backups.

Configure the backup Cron job
Login to your CPanel application and click on the “Cron Jobs” link. In the Common Settings
dropdown choose “Once a day” and type the following in the command field /usr/bin/perl
/home/userx/sitebackups/elgg-ftp-backup-script.pl
Click on the “Add New Cron Job” button. Daily full backups are now scheduled and will be transferred off-site.
Configure the cleanup Cron job
If you are sending your backups, via FTP, to another shared hosting provider that uses the CPanel application or you’ve
turned off FTP altogether you can configure your data retention as follows.
Login to your CPanel application for your FTP site, or locally if you’re not using FTP, and click on the “Cron Jobs”
link. In the Common Settings dropdown choose “Once a day” and type the following in the command field find
/home/usery/sitebackups/full_* -mtime +4 -exec rm {} \;
The -mtime X parameter will set the number of days to retain backups. All files older than x number of days will
be deleted. Click on the “Add New Cron Job” button. You have now configured your backup retention time.
2.6.3 Restoring from backup
Prepare your backup files
The assumption is that you’re restoring your site to another shared hosting provider with CPanel.
When the script backed the files up the original directory structure was maintained in the zip file. We need to do a little
cleanup. Perform the following:
• Download the backup file that you wish to restore from
• Extract the contents of the backup file
• Drill down and you will find your site backup and SQL backup. Extract both of these. You will then have:
– a MySQL dump file with a .sql extension

– another directory structure with the contents of:
* /home/userx/public_html
* /home/userx/elggdata
• Repackage the contents of the /home/userx/public_html directory as a zip file so that the files are in the root of the
– The reason for doing this is simple. It’s much more efficient to upload one zip file than it is to ftp the
contents of the /home/userx/public_html directory to your new host.
• Repackage the contents of the /home/userx/elggdata directory as a zip file so that the files are in the root of the
zip file
You should now have the following files:
• the .sql file
• the zip file with the contents of /home/userx/public_html in the root
• the zip file with the contents of /home/userx/elggdata in the root

Restore the files
This is written with the assumption that you’re restoring to a different host but maintaining the original directory
structure. Perform the following:
• Login to the CPanel application on the host that you wish to restore the site to and open the File Manager.
• Navigate to /home/usery/public_html
– Upload the zip file that contains the /home/userx/public_html files
– Extract the zip file You should now see all of the files in /home/usery/public_html
– Delete the zip file
• Navigate to /home/usery/elggdata
– Upload the zip file that contains the /home/userx/elggdata files
– Extract the zip file You should now see all of the files in /home/usery/elggdata
– Delete the zip file
Program and data file restoration is complete
Restore the MySQL Database
Note: Again, the assumption here is that you’re restoring your Elgg installation to a second shared hosting provider.
Each shared hosting provider prepends the account holder’s name to the databases associated with that account. For
example, the username for our primary host is userx so the host will prepend userx_ to give us a database name
of userx_elgg. When we restore to our second shared hosting provider we’re doing so with a username of usery
so our database name will be usery_elgg. The hosting providers don’t allow you to modify this behavior. So the
process here isn’t as simple as just restoring the database from backup to the usery account. However, having said
that, it’s not terribly difficult either.
Edit the MySQL backup
Open the .sql file that you extracted from your backup in your favorite text editor. Comment out the following lines
with a hash mark:
#CREATE DATABASE /*!32312 IF NOT EXISTS*/ ùserx_elgg` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 */;
#USE ùserx_elgg`;
Save the file.
Create the new database
Perform the following:

• Login to the CPanel application on the new host and click on the “MySQL Databases” icon
– Fill in the database name and click the “create” button. For our example we are going to stick with
elgg which will give us a database name of usery_elgg
– You can associate an existing user with the new database, but to create a new user you will need to:

* Go to the “Add New User” section of the “MySQL Databases” page

* Enter the username and password. For our example we’re going to keep it simple and use elgg
once again. This will give us a username of usery_elgg
– Associate the new user with the new database
* Go to the “Add User To Database” section of the “MySQL Databases” page. Add the
usery_elgg user to the usery_elgg database
* Select “All Privileges” and click the “Make Changes” button
Restore the production database
Now it’s time to restore the MySQL backup file by importing it into our new database named “usery_elgg”.
• Login to the CPanel application on the new host and click on the “phpMyAdmin icon
– Choose the usery_elgg database in the left hand column
– Click on the “import” tab at the top of the page
– Browse to the .sql backup on your local computer and select it
– Click the “Go” button on the bottom right side of the page
You should now see a message stating that the operation was successful
Bringing it all together
The restored elgg installation knows nothing about the new database name, database username, directory structure,
etc. That’s what we’re going to address here.
Edit /public_html/elgg-config/settings.php on the new hosting provider to reflect the database infor-
mation for the database that you just created.
// Database username
$CONFIG->dbuser = 'usery_elgg';
// Database password
$CONFIG->dbpass = 'dbpassword';
// Database name
$CONFIG->dbname = 'usery_elgg';
// Database server
// (For most configurations, you can leave this as 'localhost')
$CONFIG->dbhost = 'localhost';
Upload the settings.php file back to the new host - overwriting the existing file.
Open the phpMyAdmin tool on the new host from the CPanel. Select the usery_elgg database on the left and click
the SQL tab on the top of the page. Run the following SQL queries against the usery_elgg database:
Change the installation path
UPDATE èlgg_config` SET `value` = REPLACE(`value`, "/home/userx/public_html/grid/", "/home/usery/pub
Change the data directory

UPDATE èlgg_config` SET `value` = REPLACE(`value`, "/home/userx/elggdata/", "/home/usery/elggdata/")
Change the site URL (if this has changed)

UPDATE èlgg_sites_entity` SET ùrl` = "http://mynewdomain.com";
Change the filestore data directory

UPDATE elgg_metadata set value = '/home/usery/elggdata/' WHERE name = 'filestore::dir_root';
Finalizing the new installation
Run the upgrade script by visiting the following URL: http://mynewdomain.com/upgrade.php . Do this
step twice - back to back.
Update your DNS records so that your host name resolves to the new host’s IP address if this is a permanent move.
2.6.4 Congratulations!
If you followed the steps outlined here you should now have a fully functional copy of your primary Elgg installation.
2.6.5 Related
FTP backup script
Here is an automated script for backing up an Elgg installation.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# FTP Backup
use Net::FTP;
# DELETE BACKUP AFTER FTP UPLOAD (0 = no, 1 = yes)

$delete_backup = 1;
# ENTER THE PATH TO THE DIRECTORY YOU WANT TO BACKUP, NO TRAILING SLASH
$directory_to_backup = '/home/userx/public_html';
$directory_to_backup2 = '/home/userx/elggdata';
# ENTER THE PATH TO THE DIRECTORY YOU WISH TO SAVE THE BACKUP FILE TO, NO TRAILING SLASH
$backup_dest_dir = '/home/userx/sitebackups';
# BACKUP FILE NAME OPTIONS

($a,$d,$d,$day,$month,$yearoffset,$r,$u,$o) = localtime();
$year = 1900 + $yearoffset;
$site_backup_file = "$backup_dest_dir/site_backup-$day-$month-$year.tar.gz";
$full_backup_file = "$backup_dest_dir/full_site_backup-$day-$month-$year.tar.gz";
# MYSQL BACKUP PARAMETERS

$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'userx_elgg';
$dbpwd = 'dbpassword';
$mysql_backup_file_elgg = "$backup_dest_dir/mysql_elgg-$day-$month-$year.sql.gz";

# ENTER DATABASE NAME

$database_names_elgg = 'userx_elgg';
# FTP PARAMETERS
$ftp_backup = 1;
$ftp_host = "FTP HOSTNAME/IP";
$ftp_user = "ftpuser";
$ftp_pwd = "ftppassword";
$ftp_dir = "/";
# SYSTEM COMMANDS
$cmd_mysqldump = '/usr/bin/mysqldump';
$cmd_gzip = '/usr/bin/gzip';
# CURRENT DATE / TIME

($a,$d,$d,$day,$month,$yearoffset,$r,$u,$o) = localtime();
$year = 1900 + $yearoffset;
# BACKUP FILES
$syscmd = "tar --exclude $backup_dest_dir" . "/* -czf $site_backup_file $directory_to_backup $directo
# elgg DATABASE BACKUP

system($syscmd);
$syscmd = "$cmd_mysqldump --host=$dbhost --user=$dbuser --password=$dbpwd --add-drop-table --database
system($syscmd);
# CREATING FULL SITE BACKUP FILE

$syscmd = "tar -czf $full_backup_file $mysql_backup_file_elgg $site_backup_file";
system($syscmd);
# DELETING SITE AND MYSQL BACKUP FILES

unlink($mysql_backup_file_elgg);
unlink($site_backup_file);
# UPLOADING FULL SITE BACKUP TO REMOTE FTP SERVER

if($ftp_backup == 1)
{
my $ftp = Net::FTP->new($ftp_host, Debug => 0)
or die "Cannot connect to server: $@";
$ftp->login($ftp_user, $ftp_pwd)
or die "Cannot login ", $ftp->message;
$ftp->cwd($ftp_dir)
or die "Can't CWD to remote FTP directory ", $ftp->message;
$ftp->binary();
$ftp->put($full_backup_file)
or warn "Upload failed ", $ftp->message;
$ftp->quit();
}
# DELETING FULL SITE BACKUP

if($delete_backup = 1)
{

unlink($full_backup_file);
}
Duplicate Installation
Contents
• Introduction
– Why Duplicate an Elgg Installation?
– What Is Not Covered in This Tutorial
– Before You Start
• Copy Elgg Code to the Test Server
• Copy Data to the Test Server
• Edit settings.php
• Copy Elgg Database
• Database Entries
– Change the installation path
– Change the data directory
– Change the site URL
– Change the filestore data directory
• Check .htaccess
• Update Webserver Config
• Run upgrade.php
• Tips
• Related
Introduction
Why Duplicate an Elgg Installation? There are many reasons you may want to duplicate an Elgg installation:
moving the site to another server, creating a test or development server, and creating functional backups are the most
common. To create a successful duplicate of an Elgg site, 3 things need to be copied:
• Database
• Data from the data directory
• Code
Also at least 5 pieces of information must be changed from the copied installation:
• elgg-config/settings.php file which could also be in the pre 2.0 location engine/settings.php
• .htaccess file (Apache) or Nginx configuration depending on server used
• database entry for your site entity
• database entry for the installation path
• database entry for the data path
What Is Not Covered in This Tutorial This tutorial expects a basic knowledge of Apache, MySQL, and Linux
commands. As such, a few things will not be covered in this tutorial. These include:
• How to backup and restore MySQL databases

• How to configure Apache to work with Elgg

• How to transfer files to and from your production server
Before You Start Before you start, make sure the Elgg installation you want to duplicate is fully functional. You
will also need the following items:
• A backup of the live Elgg database
• A place to copy the live database
• A server suitable for installing duplicate Elgg site (This can be the same server as your production Elgg in-
stallation.)
Backups of the database can be obtained various ways, including phpMyAdmin, the MySQL official GUI, and the
command line. Talk to your host for information on how to backup and restore databases or use Google to find
information on this.
During this tutorial, we will make these assumptions about the production Elgg site:
• The URL is http://www.myelgg.org/
• The installation path is /var/www/elgg/
• The data directory is /var/data/elgg/
• The database host is localhost
• The database name is production_elgg
• The database user is db_user
• The database password is db_password
• The database prefix is elgg
At the end of the tutorial, our test Elgg installation details will be:
• The URL is http://test.myelgg.org/
• The installation path is /var/www/elgg_test/
• The data directory is /var/data/elgg_test/
• The database host is localhost
• The database name is test_elgg
• The database user is db_user
• The database password is db_password
• The database prefix is elgg
Copy Elgg Code to the Test Server
The very first step is to duplicate the production Elgg code. In our example, this is as simple as copying
/var/www/elgg/ to /var/www/elgg_test/.
cp -a /var/www/elgg/ /var/www/elgg_test/

Copy Data to the Test Server
In this example, this is as simple as copying /var/data/elgg/ to /var/data/elgg_test/.

cp -a /var/data/elgg/ /var/data/elgg_test/
If you don’t have shell access to your server and have to ftp the data, you may need to change ownership and permis-
sions on the files.
Note: You also need to delete the views cache on the test server after the copy process. This is a directory called
views_simplecache in your data directory and the directory called system_cache .
Edit settings.php
The elgg-config/settings.php file contains the database configuration details. These

need to be adjusted for your new test Elgg installation. In our example, we’ll look in
/var/www/elgg_test/elgg-config/settings.php and find the lines that look like this:
$CONFIG->dbuser = 'db_user';
$CONFIG->dbpass = 'db_password';
// Database name
$CONFIG->dbname = 'elgg_production';
// Database server
// Database table prefix

// If you're sharing a database with other applications, you will want to use this
// to differentiate Elgg's tables.
$CONFIG->dbprefix = 'elgg';
We need to change these lines to match our new installation:

$CONFIG->dbuser = 'db_user';
$CONFIG->dbpass = 'db_password';
// Database name
$CONFIG->dbname = 'elgg_test';
// Database server
// Database table prefix

// If you're sharing a database with other applications, you will want to use this
// to differentiate Elgg's tables.
$CONFIG->dbprefix = 'elgg';

Note: Notice the $CONFIG->dbname has changed to reflect our new database.
Copy Elgg Database
Now the database must be copied from elgg_production to elgg_test. See your favorite MySQL manager’s
documentation for how to make a duplicate database. You will generally export the current database tables to a file,
create the new database, and then import the tables that you previously exported.
You have two options on updating the values in the database. You could change the values in the export file or you
could import the file and change the values with database queries. One advantage of modifying the dump file is that
you can also change links that people have created to content within your site. For example, if people have bookmarked
pages using the bookmark plugin, the bookmarks will point to the old site unless your update their URLs.
Database Entries
We must now change 4 entries in the database. This is easily accomplished with 4 simple SQL commands:
Change the installation path

UPDATE èlgg_config` SET `value` = REPLACE(`value`, "/var/www/elgg_production/", "/var/www/elgg_test/
Change the data directory

UPDATE èlgg_config` SET `value` = REPLACE(`value`, "/var/data/elgg_production/", "/var/data/elgg_tes
Change the site URL

UPDATE èlgg_sites_entity` SET ùrl` = "http://test.myelgg.org/";
Change the filestore data directory

UPDATE elgg_metadata SET value = '/var/data/elgg_test/'
WHERE name = 'filestore::dir_root';
Warning: Only change the first path above!!
Warning: If you have a plugin that uses custom filestores (contains an ElggFile::setFilestore method
call or sets metadata with names like filestore::*), then query above may not be safe (it overwrites all
filesystem dir_root locations). Please seek guidance via the Elgg community.
Check .htaccess
If you have made changes to .htaccess that modify any paths, make sure you update them in the test installation.

Update Webserver Config
For this example, you must edit the Apache config to enable a subdomain with a document root of
/var/www/elgg_test/. If you plan to install into a subdirectory of your document root, this step is unneces-
sary.
If you’re using Nginx, you need to update server config to match new paths based on
install/config/nginx.dist.
Run upgrade.php
To regenerate cached data, make sure to run http://test.myelgg.org/upgrade.php
Tips
It is a good idea to keep a test server around to experiment with installing new mods and doing development work. If
you automate restorations to the elgg_test database, changing the $CONFIG values and adding the follow lines
to the end of the elgg_test/elgg-config/settings.php file will allow seamless re-writing of the MySQL
database entries.
$con = mysql_connect($CONFIG->dbhost, $CONFIG->dbuser, $CONFIG->dbpass);
mysql_select_db($CONFIG->dbname, $con);
$sql = "UPDATE {$CONFIG->dbprefix}config

SET value = REPLACE(`value`, "/var/www/elgg_production/", "/var/www/elgg_test/")
WHERE name = 'path'";
mysql_query($sql);
print mysql_error();
$sql = "UPDATE {$CONFIG->dbprefix}config

SET value = REPLACE(`value`, "/var/data/elgg_production/", "/var/data/elgg_test/")
WHERE name = 'dataroot'";
mysql_query($sql);
$sql = "UPDATE {$CONFIG->dbprefix}sites_entity

SET url = 'http://test.myelgg.org/'";
mysql_query($sql);
$sql = "UPDATE {$CONFIG->dbprefix}metadata

SET value = '/var/data/elgg_test/'
WHERE name = 'filestore::dir_root';
mysql_query($sql);
Related
See also:
Backup and Restore

2.7 Getting Help
Having a problem with Elgg? The best way to get help is to ask at the Community Site. This site is community
supported by a large group of volunteers. Here are a few tips to help you get the help you need.
Contents
• Getting help
• Guidelines
• Good Ideas
2.7.1 Getting help
Don’t be a Help Vampire
We were all newbies at one time, but we can all learn. Not showing that you are making attempts to learn on your own
or do your own research is off putting for those helping. Also, very generic questions like “How do I build a forum?”
are almost impossible to answer.
Search first
Be sure to search the documentation (this site), the Community Site, and Google before asking a question. New users
to Elgg frequently have the same questions, so please search. People are less inclined to reply to a post that has been
answered many other times or that can be answered easily by Googling.
Ask once
Posting the same questions in multiple places makes it hard to answer you. Ask your question in one place only.
Duplicate questions may be moderated.
Include Elgg Version
Different versions of Elgg have different features (and different bugs). Including the version of Elgg that you are using
will help those helping you.
Have a reasonable profile
Profiles that look like spam or have silly names will often be ignored. Joviality is fine, but people are more likely to
help Michael than 1337elggHax0r.
Post in the appropriate forum
Check to make sure you’re posting in the right forum. If you have a question about creating a plugin, don’t post to the
Elgg Feedback forum. If you need help installing Elgg, post to Technical Support instead of the Theming group.

Use a descriptive topic title
Good topic titles concisely describe your problem or question. Bad topic titles are vague, contain all capital letters,
and excessive punctuation.
Good title: “White screen after upgrading to 1.7.4.”
Bad title: “URGENT!!!!! site broke ;-( losing money help!!!!!!!!!!!”
Be detailed
Include as many details about your problem as possible. If you have a live site, include a link. Be forthcoming if
community members might ask for more information. We can’t help you if you won’t give any details!
Keep it public
This is a public forum for the good of the Elgg project. Keep posts public. There’s no reason for anyone to ask you to
send a private message or email. Likewise, there’s no reason to ask anyone to send a private email to you. Post in the
public.
2.7.2 Guidelines
In addition to the site-wide Terms and Policies, following these guidelines keeps our community site useful and safe
for everyone.
Content
All content must be safe for work: PG in the US and UK. If your Elgg site has adult content and you have been asked
to post a link, please mark it NSFW (Not Safe For Work) so people know.
Excessive swearing in any language will not be tolerated.
Mood
Working with technical problems can be frustrating. Please keep the community site free of frustration. If you’re feel-
ing anxious, take a step away and do something else. Threatening or attacking community members, core developers,
or plugin developers will not help solve your problem and will likely get you banned.
Advertising
Advertising is not allowed. Posts with any sort of advertising will be moderated.
Asking for money / Offering to pay
Don’t ask for money on the community site. Likewise, don’t offer to pay for answers. If you are looking for custom
development, post to the Professional Services group. Posts asking for money or recommending a commercial plugin
may be moderated.
2.7. Getting Help 51

Links
If you’re having a problem with a live site, please provide a link to it.
That said, the community site is not a back linking service or SEO tool. Excessive linking will be moderated and your
account may be banned.
Signatures
There’s a reason Elgg doesn’t have an option for signatures: they cause clutter and distract from the conversation.
Users are discouraged from using signatures on the community site, and signatures with links or advertising will be
removed.
Bumping, +1, me too
Don’t do it. If your question hasn’t been answered, see the top of this document for tips. These types of post add
nothing to the conversation and may be moderated.
Posting Code
Long bits of code are confusing to read through in a forums context. Please use http://elgg.pastebin.com to post long
bits of code and provide the Paste Bin link instead of directly posting the code.
2.7.3 Good Ideas
Not policies, but good ideas.
Say thanks
Did someone help you? Be sure to thank them! The community site is run by volunteers. No one has to help you with
your problem. Be sure to show your appreciation!
Give back
Have a tip for Elgg? See someone with a similar problem you had? You’ve been there and can help them out, so give
them a hand!
2.8 Security
As of Elgg 3.0 several hardening settings have been added to Elgg. You can enable/disable these settings as you like.

Contents
• Upgrade protection
• Cron protection
• Disable password autocomplete
• Email address change requires password
• Notification to site administrators
• Notifications to user
– Site administrator
– (Un)ban
2.8.1 Upgrade protection
The URL of http://your-elgg-site.com/upgrade.php can be protected by a unique token. This will prevent random users
from being able to run this file. The token is not needed for logged in site administrators.
2.8.2 Cron protection
The URLs of the cron can be protected by a unique token. This will prevent random users from being able to run the
cron. The token is not needed when running the cron from the commandline of the server.
2.8.3 Disable password autocomplete
Data entered in these fields will be cached by the browser. An attacker who can access the victim’s browser could
steal this information. This is especially important if the application is commonly used in shared computers such as
cyber cafes or airport terminals. If you disable this, password management tools can no longer autofill these fields.
The support for the autocomplete attribute can be browser specific.
2.8.4 Email address change requires password
When a user wishes to change their email address associated with their account, they need to also supply their current
password.
2.8.5 Notification to site administrators
When a new site administrator is added or when a site administrator is removed all the site administrators get a
notification about this action.
2.8.6 Notifications to user
Site administrator
When the site administrator role is added to or removed from the account, send a notification to the user whos account
this is affecting.
2.8. Security 53
(Un)ban
When the account of a user gets banned or unbanned, let the affected user know about this action.

CHAPTER 3
Developer Guides
Customize Elgg’s behavior with plugins.
3.1 Don’t Modify Core
Warning: In general, you shouldn’t modify non-config files that come with third-party software like Elgg.
The best way to customize the behavior of Elgg is to install Elgg as a composer dependency and use the root directory
to store modifications specific to your application, and alter behavior through the rich Elgg plugin API.
If you’d like to share customizations between sites or even publish your changes as a reusable package for the com-
munity, create a plugin using the same plugin APIs and file structure.
3.1.1 It makes it hard to get help
When you don’t share the same codebase as everyone else, it’s impossible for others to know what is going on in your
system and whether your changes are to blame. This can frustrate those who offer help because it can add considerable
noise to the support process.
3.1.2 It makes upgrading tricky and potentially disastrous
You will certainly want or need to upgrade Elgg to take advantage of

• security patches
• new features
• new plugin APIs
• new stability improvements
• performance improvements
If you’ve modified core files, then you must be very careful when upgrading that your changes are not overwritten
and that they are compatible with the new Elgg code. If your changes are lost or incompatible, then the upgrade may
remove features you’ve added and even completely break your site.
This can also be a slippery slope. Lots of modifications can lead you to an upgrade process so complex that it’s
practically impossible. There are lots of sites stuck running old versions software due to taking this path.
55
3.1.3 It may break plugins
You may not realize until much later that your “quick fix” broke seemingly unrelated functionality that plugins de-
pended on.
3.1.4 Summary
• Resist the temptation Editing existing files is quick and easy, but doing so heavily risks the maintainability,
security, and stability of your site.
• When receiving advice, consider if the person telling you to modify core will be around to rescue you if you run
into trouble later!
• Apply these principle to software in general. If you can avoid it, don’t modify third party plugins either, for
the same reasons: Plugin authors release new versions, too, and you will want those updates.
3.2 Plugins
Plugins must provide a manifest.xml file in the plugin root in order to be recognized by Elgg.
3.2.1 start.php
The start.php file bootstraps plugin by registering event listeners and plugin hooks.
3.2.2 elgg-plugin.php
This optional file is read by Elgg to configure various services, and must return an array if present. It should not be
included by plugins and is not guaranteed to run at any particular time. Besides magic constants like __DIR__, its
return value should not change. The currently supported sections are:
• views
• actions
• settings
• user_settings
• widgets
Syntax
Here’s a trivial example configuring view locations via the views key:
<?php
return [
'views' => [
'default' => [
'file/icon/' => __DIR__ . '/graphics/icons',
],
],
];
56 Chapter 3. Developer Guides

3.2.3 activate.php, deactivate.php
The activate.php and deactivate.php files contain procedural code that will run upon plugin activation and deactivation.
Use these files to perform one-time events such as registering a persistent admin notice, registering subtypes, or
performing garbage collection when deactivated.
3.2.4 manifest.xml
Elgg plugins are required to have a manifest.xml file in the root of a plugin.
The manifest.xml file includes information about the plugin itself, requirements to run the plugin, and optional
information including where to display the plugin in the admin area and what APIs the plugin provides.
Syntax
The manifest file is a standard XML file in UTF-8. Everything is a child of the <plugin_manifest> element.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<plugin_manifest xmlns="http://www.elgg.org/plugin_manifest/1.8">
The manifest syntax is as follows:

<name>value</name>
Many elements can contain children attributes:

<parent_name>
<child_name>value</child_name>
<child_name_2>value_2</child_name_2>
</parent_name>
Required Elements
All plugins are required to define the following elements in their manifest files:
• id - This has the name as the directory that the plugin uses.
• name - The display name of the plugin.
• author - The name of the author who wrote the plugin.
• version - The version of the plugin.
• description - A description of the what the plugin provides, its features, and other relevant information
• requires - Each plugin must specify the release of Elgg it was developed for. See the plugin Dependencies page
for more information.
Available Elements
In addition to the require elements above, the follow elements are available to use:
• blurb - A short description of the plugin.
• category - The category of the plugin. It is recommended to follow the [[Plugin_Guidelines|plugin guidelines]]
and use one of the defined categories. There can be multiple entries.
• conflicts - Specifies that the plugin conflicts with a certain system configuration.
3.2. Plugins 57
• copyright - The plugin’s copyright information.

• license - The plugin’s license information.
• provides - Specifies that this plugin provides the same functionality as another Elgg plugin or a PHP extension.
• screenshot - Screenshots of the plugin. There can be multiple entries. See the advanced example for syntax.
• suggests - Parallels the requires system, but doesn’t affect if the plugin can be enabled. Used to suggest other
plugins that interact or build on the plugin.
• website - A link to the website for the plugin.
See also:
Plugin Dependencies
Simple Example
This manifest file is the bare minimum a plugin must have.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<name>Example Manifest</name>
<author>Elgg</author>
<version>1.0</version>
<description>This is a simple example of a manifest file. In this example, there are not scre
<requires>
<type>elgg_release</type>
</requires>
</plugin_manifest>
Advanced example
This example uses all of the available elements:

<name>Example Manifest</name>
<author>Brett Profitt</author>
<blurb>This is an example manifest file.</blurb>
<description>This is a simple example of a manifest file. In this example, there are many opt
<website>http://www.elgg.org/</website>
<copyright>(C) Brett Profitt 2014</copyright>
<license>GNU Public License version 2</license>
<category>3rd_party_integration</category>
<requires>
<version>1.9.1</version>
</requires>


<screenshot>
<description>Elgg profile.</description>

<path>screenshots/profile.png</path>
</screenshot>
<provides>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>example_plugin</name>
</provides>
<suggests>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>twitter</name>
</suggests>
</plugin_manifest>
3.2.5 Related
Plugin skeleton
The following is the standard for plugin structure in Elgg as of Elgg 2.0.
Example Structure
The following is an example of a plugin with standard structure. For further explanation of this structure, see the
details in the following sections. Your plugin may not need all the files listed
The following files for plugin example would go in /mod/example/
actions/
example/
action.php
other_action.php
classes/
VendorNamespace/
ExampleClass.php
languages/
en.php
vendors/
example_3rd_party_lib/
views/
default/
example/
component.css
component.js
component.png
forms/
example/
action.php
other_action.php
object/
example.php
example/
context1.php
context2.php
3.2. Plugins 59
plugins/
example/
settings.php
usersettings.php
resources/
example/
all.css
all.js
all.php
owner.css
owner.js
owner.php
widgets/
example_widget/
content.php
edit.php
activate.php
deactivate.php
elgg-plugin.php
CHANGES.txt
COPYRIGHT.txt
INSTALL.txt
LICENSE.txt
manifest.xml
README.txt
start.php
Required Files
Plugins must provide a manifest.xml file in the plugin root in order to be recognized by Elgg.
Therefore the following is the minimally compliant structure:
mod/example/
manifest.xml
Actions
Plugins should place scripts for actions an actions/ directory, and furthermore should use the name of the action
to determine the location within that directory.
For example, the action my/example/action would go in my_plugin/actions/my/example/action.php.
This makes it very obvious which script is associated with which action.
Similarly, the body of the form that submits to this action should be located in
forms/my/example/action.php. Not only does this make the connection b/w action handler, form
code, and action name obvious, but it allows you to use the new (as of Elgg 1.8) elgg_view_form() function
easily.
Text Files
Plugins may provide various *.txt as additional documentation for the plugin. These files must be in Markdown syntax
and will generate links on the plugin management sections.
README.txt should provide additional information about the plugin of an unspecified nature

COPYRIGHT.txt If included, must provide an explanation of the plugin’s copyright, besides what is included in
manifest.xml
LICENSE.txt If included, must provide the text of the license that the plugin is released under.
INSTALL.txt If included, must provide additional instructions for installing the plugin if the process is sufficiently
complicated (e.g. if it requires installing third party libraries on the host machine, or requires acquiring an API
key from a third party).
CHANGES.txt If included, must provide a list of changes for their plugin, grouped by version number, with the most
recent version at the top.
Plugins may include additional *.txt files besides these, but no interface is given for reading them.
Pages
To render full pages, plugins should use resource views (which have names beginning with resources/). This
allows other plugins to easily replace functionality via the view system.
Note: The reason we encourage this structure is

• To form a logical relationship between urls and scripts, so that people examining the code can have an idea of
what it does just by examining the structure.
• To clean up the root plugin directory, which historically has quickly gotten cluttered with the page handling
scripts.
Classes
Elgg provides PSR-0 autoloading out of every active plugin’s classes/ directory.
You’re encouraged to follow the PHP-FIG standards when writing your classes.
Note: Files with a ”.class.php” extension will not be recognized by Elgg.
Vendors
Included third-party libraries of any kind should be included in the vendors/ folder in the plugin root. Though this
folder has no special significance to the Elgg engine, this has historically been the location where Elgg core stores its
third-party libraries, so we encourage the same format for the sake of consistency and familiarity.
Views
In order to override core views, a plugin’s views can be placed in views/, or an elgg-plugin.php config file
can be used for more detailed file/path mapping. See Views.
Javascript and CSS will live in the views system. See JavaScript.
3.2. Plugins 61
activate.php and deactivate.php
The activate.php and deactivate.php files contain procedural code that will run respectively upon plugin
activation or deactivation. Use these files to perform one-time events such as registering a persistent admin notice,
registering subtypes, or performing garbage collection when deactivated.
Plugin Dependencies
In Elgg 1.8 a plugin dependencies system was introduced to prevent plugins from being used on incompatible systems.
Contents
• Overview
• Verbs
– Requires
– Mandatory requires: elgg_release
– Suggests
– Conflicts
– Provides
• Types
– elgg_release
– plugin
– priority
– php_extension
– php_ini
– php_version
• Comparison Operators
• Quick Examples
– Requires Elgg 1.8.2 or higher
– Requires the Groups plugin is active
– Requires to be after the Profile plugin if Profile is active
– Conflicts with The Wire plugin
– Requires at least 256 MB memory in PHP
– Requires at least PHP version 5.3
– Suggest the TidyPics plugin is loaded
Overview
The dependencies system is controlled through a plugin’s manifest.xml file. Plugin authors can specify that a
plugin:
• Requires certain Elgg versions, Elgg plugins, PHP extensions, and PHP settings.
• Suggests certain Elgg versions, Elgg plugins, PHP extensions, and PHP settings.
• Conflicts with certain Elgg versions or Elgg plugins.
• Provides the equivalent of another Elgg plugin or PHP extension.
The dependency system uses the four verbs above (requires, suggests, conflicts, and provides) as parent
elements to indicate what type of dependency is described by its children. All dependencies have a similar format with
similar options:

<verb>
<type>type</type>
<noun>value</noun>
<noun2>value2</noun2>
</verb>
Note: type is always required
Verbs
With the exception of provides, all verbs use the same six types with differing effects, and the type options are the
same among the verbs. provides only supports plugin and php_extension.
Requires Using a requires dependency means that the plugin cannot be enabled unless the dependency is exactly
met.
Mandatory requires: elgg_release Every plugin must have at least one requires: the version of Elgg the plugin is
developed for. This is specified by the Elgg API release (1.8). The default comparison >=, but you can specify
your own by passing the <comparison> element.
Using elgg_release:
<requires>
</requires>
Suggests suggests dependencies signify that the plugin author suggests a specific system configuration, but it is
not required to use the plugin. The suggestions can also be another plugin itself which could interact, extend, or be
extended by this plugin, but is not required for it to function.
Suggest another plugin:
<suggests>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>twitter_api</name>
</suggests>
Suggest a certain PHP setting:

<suggests>
<type>php_ini</type>
<name>memory_limit</name>
<value>64M</value>
<comparison>ge</comparison>
</suggests>
Conflicts conflicts dependencies mean the plugin cannot be used under a specific system configuration.
Conflict with any version of the profile plugin:
3.2. Plugins 63
<conflicts>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>profile</name>
</conflicts>
Conflict with a specific release of Elgg:

<conflicts>
<comparison>==</comparison>
</conflicts>
Provides provides dependencies tell Elgg that this plugin is providing the functionality of another plugin or PHP
extension. Unlike the other verbs, it only supports two types: plugin and php_extension.
The purpose of this is to provide interchangeable APIs implemented by different plugins. For example, the twit-
ter_services plugin provides an API for other plugins to Tweet on behalf of the user via curl and Oauth. A plugin
author could write a compatible plugin for servers without curl support that uses sockets streams and specify that it
provides twitter_services. Any plugins that suggest or require twitter_services would then know they can work.
<provides>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>twitter_services</name>
</provides>
Note: All plugins provide themselves as their plugin id (directory name) at the version defined in the their manifest.
Types
Every dependency verb has a mandatory <type> element that must be one of the following six values:
1. elgg_release - The release version of Elgg (1.8)
2. plugin - An Elgg plugin
3. priority - A plugin load priority
4. php_extension - A PHP extension
5. php_ini - A PHP setting
6. php_version - A PHP version
Note: provides only supports plugin and php_extension types.
Every type is defined with a dependency verb as the parent element. Additional option elements are at the same level
as the type element:
<verb>
<type>type</type>
<option_1>value_1</option_1>
<option_2>value_2</option_2>
</verb>

elgg_release These concern the API and release versions of Elgg and requires the following option element:
• version - The API or release version
The following option element is supported, but not required:
• comparison - The comparison operator to use. Defaults to >= if not passed
plugin Specifies an Elgg plugin by its ID (directory name). This requires the following option element:
• name - The ID of the plugin
The following option elements are supported, but not required:
• version - The version of the plugin
priority This requires the plugin to be loaded before or after another plugin, if that plugin exists. requires should
be used to require that a plugin exists. The following option elements are required:
• plugin - The plugin ID to base the load order on
• priority - The load order: ‘before’ or ‘after’
php_extension This checks PHP extensions. The follow option element is required:
• name - The name of the PHP extension
The following option elements are supported, but not required:
• version - The version of the extension
• comparison - The comparison operator to use. Defaults to ==
Note: The format of extension versions varies greatly among PHP extensions and is sometimes not even set. This is
generally worthless to check.
php_ini This checks PHP settings. The following option elements are required:
• name - The name of the setting to check
• value - The value of the setting to compare against
The following options are supported, but not required:
• comparison - The comparison operator to use. Defaults to ==
php_version This checks the PHP version. The following option elements are required:
• version - The PHP version
The following option element is supported, but not required:
3.2. Plugins 65
Comparison Operators
Dependencies that check versions support passing a custom operator via the <comparison> element.
The follow are valid comparison operators:
• < or lt
• <= or le
• =, ==, or eq
• !=, <>, or ne
• > or gt
• >= or ge
If <comparison> is not passed, the follow are used as defaults, depending upon the dependency type:
• requires->elgg_release: >=
• requires->plugin: >=
• requires->php_extension: =
• requires->php_ini: =
• all conflicts: =
Note: You must escape < and > to > and <. For comparisons that use these values, it is recommended you
use the string equivalents instead!
Quick Examples
Requires Elgg 1.8.2 or higher

<requires>
<version>1.8.2</version>
</requires>
Requires the Groups plugin is active

<requires>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>groups</name>
</requires>
Requires to be after the Profile plugin if Profile is active

<requires>
<type>priority</type>
<priority>after</priority>
<plugin>profile</plugin>
</requires>

Conflicts with The Wire plugin

<conflicts>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>thewire</name>
</conflicts>
Requires at least 256 MB memory in PHP

<requires>
<type>php_ini</type>
<name>memory_limit</name>
<value>256M</value>
<comparison>ge</comparison>
</requires>
Requires at least PHP version 5.3

<requires>
<type>php_version</type>
</requires>
Suggest the TidyPics plugin is loaded

<suggests>
<type>plugin</type>
<name>tidypics</name>
</suggests>
3.3 Plugin coding guidelines
In addition to the Elgg Coding Standards, these are guidelines for creating plugins. Core plugins are being updated to
this format and all plugin authors should follow these guidelines in their own plugins.
See also:
Be sure to follow the Plugin skeleton for your plugin’s layout.
Warning: Don’t Modify Core
Contents
• Use standardized routing with page handlers
• Use standardized page handlers and scripts
• The object/<subtype> view
• Actions
• Directly calling a file
• Recommended
3.3. Plugin coding guidelines 67

3.3.1 Use standardized routing with page handlers
• Example: Bookmarks plugin

Purpose URL
All page_handler/all
User page_handler/owner/<username>
User friends’ page_handler/friends/<username>
• Page handlers should accept the following standard URLs:
Single entity page_handler/view/<guid>/<title>
Add page_handler/add/<container_guid>
Edit page_handler/edit/<guid>
Group list page_handler/group/<guid>/owner
• Include page handler scripts from the page handler. Almost every page han-
dler should have a page handler script. (Example: bookmarks/all =>
mod/bookmarks/views/default/resources/bookmarks/all.php)
• Pass arguments like entity guids to the resource view via $vars in elgg_view_resource().
• Call elgg_gatekeeper() and elgg_admin_gatekeeper() in the page handler function if required.
• The group URL should use views like resources/groups/*.php to render pages.
• Page handlers should not contain HTML.
• If upgrading a 1.7 plugin, update the URLs throughout the plugin. (Don’t forget to remove /pg/!)
3.3.2 Use standardized page handlers and scripts

• Store page functionality in mod/<plugin>/views/default/resources/<page_handler>/<page_name>.php
• Use elgg_view_resource(’<page_handler>/<page_name>’) to render that.
• Use the content page layout in page handler scripts: $content = elgg_view_layout(’content’,
$options);
• Page handler scripts should not contain HTML
• Call elgg_push_breadcrumb() in the page handler scripts.
• No need to worry about setting the page owner if the URLs are in the standardized format
• For group content, check the container_guid by using elgg_get_page_owner_entity()
3.3.3 The object/<subtype> view

• Make sure there are views for $vars[’full_view’] == true and $vars[’full_view’] ==
false
• Check for the object in $vars[’entity’] . Use elgg_instance_of() to make sure it’s the type entity
you want. Return true to short circuit the view if the entity is missing or wrong.
• Use the new list body and list metadata views to help format. You should use almost no markup in these views.
• Update action structure - Example: Bookmarks plugin.

• Namespace action files and action names (example: mod/blog/actions/blog/save.php =>

action/blog/save)
Purpose URL
Add action/plugin/save
• Use the following action URLs:
Edit action/plugin/save
Delete action/plugin/delete
• Make the delete action accept action/<handler>/delete?guid=<guid> so the metadata entity menu
has the correct URL by default
• If updating a 1.7 plugin, replace calls to functions deprecated in 1.7 because these will produce visible errors on
every load in 1.8
3.3.4 Actions
Actions are transient states to perform an action such as updating the database or sending a notification to a user. Used
correctly, actions provide a level of access control and prevent against CSRF attacks.
Actions require action (CSRF) tokens to be submitted via GET/POST, but these are added automatically by
elgg_view_form() and by using the is_action argument of the output/url view.
Action best practices
Action files are included within Elgg’s action system; like views, they are not regular scripts executable by users. Do
not boot the Elgg core in your file and direct users to load it directly.
Because actions are time-sensitive they are not suitable for links in emails or other delayed notifications. An example
of this would be invitations to join a group. The clean way to create an invitation link is to create a page handler for
invitations and email that link to the user. It is then the page handler’s responsibility to create the action links for a
user to join or ignore the invitation request.
Consider that actions may be submitted via XHR requests, not just links or form submissions.
3.3.5 Directly calling a file
This is an easy one: Don’t do it. With the exception of 3rd party application integration, there is not a reason to
directly call a file in mods directory.
3.3.6 Recommended
These points are good ideas, but are not yet in the official guidelines. Following these suggestions will help to keep
your plugin consistent with Elgg core.
• Update the widget views (see the blog or file widgets)
• Update the group profile “widget” using blog or file plugins as example
• Update the forms
– Move form bodies to /forms/<handler>/<action> to use Evan’s new elgg_view_form()
– Use input views in form bodies rather than html
– Add a function that prepares the form (see mod/file/lib/file.php for example)
– Integrate sticky forms (see the file plugin’s upload action and form prepare function)
3.3. Plugin coding guidelines 69

• Clean up CSS/HTML
– Should be able to remove almost all CSS (look for patterns that can be moved into core if you need
CSS)
• Use hyphens rather than underscores in classes/ids
• Update the manifest.xml file to the 1.8 format. Use http://el.gg/manifest17to18 to automate this
• Do not use the bundled category with your plugins. That is for plugins distributed with Elgg
• Update functions deprecated in 1.8.
– Many registration functions simply added an elgg_ prefix for consistency
– See /engine/lib/deprecated-1.8.php for the full list. You can also set the debug level to
warning to get visual reminders of deprecated functions
• Don’t use register_shutdown_function as you may not have access to certain Elgg parts anymore (eg
database). Instead use the shutdown system event
3.4 Accessibility
This page aims to list and document accessibility rules and best practices, to help core and plugins developpers to
make Elgg the most accessible social engine framework that everyone dreams of.
Note: This is an ongoing work, please contribute on Github if you have some skills in this field!
3.4.1 Resources + references
• Official WCAG Accessibility Guidelines Overview

• Official WCAG Accessibility Guidelines
• Resources for planning and implementing for accessibility
• Practical tips from the W3C for improving accessibility
• Preliminary review of websites for accessibility
• Tools for checking the accessibility of websites
• List of practical techniques for implementing accessibility (It would be great if someone could go through this
and filter out all the ones that are relevant to Elgg)
3.4.2 Tips for implementing accessibility
• All accessibility-related tickets reported to trac should be tagged with “a11y”, short for “accessibility”
• Use core views such as output/*, and input/* to generate markup, since we can bake a11y concerns into
these views
• All images should have a descriptive alt attribute. Spacer or purely decorative graphics should have blank alt
attributes
• All <a> tags should have text or an accessible image inside. Otherwise screen readers will have to read the
URL, which is a poor experience <a> tags should contain descriptive text, if possible, as opposed to generic
text like “Click here”

• Markup should be valid

• Themes should not reset “outline” to nothing. :focus deserves a special visual treatment so that handicapped
users can know where they are
3.4.3 Tips for testing accessibility
• Use the tools linked to from the resources section. Example report for community.elgg.org on June 16, 2012
• Try different font-size/zoom settings in your browser and make sure the theme remains usable
• Turn off css to make sure the sequential order of the page makes sense
3.4.4 Documentation objectives and principles
• Main accessibility rules

• collect and document best practices
• Provide code examples
• Keep the document simple and usable
• Make it usable for both beginner developpers and experts (from most common and easiest changes to elaborate
techniques)
3.5 Ajax
The elgg/Ajax AMD module (introduced in Elgg 2.1) provides a set of methods for communicating with the server
in a concise and uniform way, which allows plugins to collaborate on the request data, the server response, and the
returned client-side data.
Client and server code written for the legacy API should not need modification.
Contents
• Overview
– Performing actions
– Fetching data
– Fetching views
– Fetching forms
– Piggybacking on an Ajax request
– Piggybacking on an Ajax response
– Handling errors
– Requiring AMD modules
• Legacy elgg.ajax APIs
– Legacy elgg.action
– Legacy view fetching
– Legacy form fetching
– Legacy helper functions
3.5. Ajax 71
3.5.1 Overview
All the ajax methods perform the following:

1. Client-side, the data option (if given as an object) is filtered by the hook ajax_request_data.
2. The request is made to the server, either rendering a view or a form, calling an action, or loading a path.
3. The method returns a jqXHR object, which can be used as a Promise.
4. Server-echoed content is turned into a response object (Elgg\Services\AjaxResponse) containing a
string (or a JSON-parsed value).
5. The response object is filtered by the hook ajax_response.
6. The response object is used to create the HTTP response.
7. Client-side, the response data is filtered by the hook ajax_response_data.
8. The jqXHR promise is resolved and any success callbacks are called.
More notes:
• All hooks have a type depending on the method and first argument. See below.
• By default the elgg/spinner module is automatically used during requests.
• User messages generated by system_message() and register_error() are collected and displayed
on the client.
• Elgg gives you a default error handler that shows a generic message if output fails.
• PHP exceptions or denied resource return HTTP error codes, resulting in use of the client-side error handler.
• The default HTTP method is POST for actions, otherwise GET. You can set it via options.method.
• If a non-empty options.data is given, the default method is always POST.
• For client caching, set options.method to "GET" and options.data.elgg_response_ttl to the
max-age you want in seconds.
• To save system messages for the next page load, set options.data.elgg_fetch_messages = 0. You
may want to do this if you intent to redirect the user based on the response.
• To stop client-side API from requiring AMD modules required server-side with elgg_require_js(), set
options.data.elgg_fetch_deps = 0.
• All methods accept a query string in the first argument. This is passed on to the fetch URL, but does not appear
in the hook types.
Performing actions
Consider this action:

// in myplugin/actions/do_math.php
elgg_ajax_gatekeeper();
$arg1 = (int)get_input('arg1');
$arg2 = (int)get_input('arg2');
// will be rendered client-side

system_message('We did it!');

echo json_encode([
'sum' => $arg1 + $arg2,
'product' => $arg1 * $arg2,
]);
To execute it, use ajax.action(’<action_name>’, options):

var Ajax = require('elgg/Ajax');
var ajax = new Ajax();
ajax.action('do_math', {
data: {
arg1: 1,
arg2: 2
},
}).done(function (output, statusText, jqXHR) {
if (jqXHR.AjaxData.status == -1) {
return;
}
alert(output.sum);
alert(output.product);
});
Notes for actions:

• All hooks have type action:<action_name>. So in this case, three hooks will be triggered:
– client-side "ajax_request_data", "action:do_math" to filter the request data (before
it’s sent)
– server-side "ajax_response", "action:do_math" to filter the response (after the action
runs)
– client-side "ajax_response_data", "action:do_math" to filter the response data (before
the calling code receives it)
• CSRF tokens are added to the request data.
• The default method is POST.
• An absolute action URL can be given in place of the action name.
• Using forward() in an action simply sends the response. The URL given in not returned to the client.
Note: When setting data, use ajax.objectify($form) instead of $form.serialize(). Doing so allows
the ajax_request_data plugin hook to fire and other plugins to alter/piggyback on the request.
Fetching data
Consider this PHP script that runs at http://example.org/myplugin_time.

// in myplugin/start.php
elgg_register_page_handler('myplugin_time', 'myplugin_get_time');
function myplugin_get_time() {
elgg_ajax_gatekeeper();
echo json_encode([
3.5. Ajax 73
'rfc2822' => date(DATE_RFC2822),

'day' => date('l'),
]);
return true;
}
To fetch its output, use ajax.path(’<url_path>’, options).

ajax.path('myplugin_time').done(function (output, statusText, jqXHR) {

return;
}
alert(output.rfc2822);
alert(output.day);
});
Notes for paths:

• The 3 hooks (see Actions above) will have type path:<url_path>. In this case, “path:myplugin_time”.
• If the page handler echoes a regular web page, output will be a string containing the HTML.
• An absolute URL can be given in place of the path name.
Fetching views
Consider this view:

// in myplugin/views/default/myplugin/get_link.php
if (empty($vars['entity']) || !$vars['entity'] instanceof ElggObject) {

return;
}
$object = $vars['entity'];
/* @var ElggObject $object */
echo elgg_view('output/url', [
'text' => $object->getDisplayName(),
'href' => $object->getUrl(),
'is_trusted' => true,
]);
Since it’s a PHP file, we must register it for Ajax first:

// in myplugin_init()
elgg_register_ajax_view('myplugin/get_link');
To fetch the view, use ajax.view(’<view_name>’, options):

ajax.view('myplugin/get_link', {
data: {

guid: 123 // querystring

},
}).done(function (output, statusText, jqXHR) {
return;
}
$('.myplugin-link').html(output);
});
Notes for views:

• The 3 hooks (see Actions above) will have type view:<view_name>. In this case, “view:myplugin/get_link”.
• output will be a string with the rendered view.
• The request data are injected into $vars in the view.
• If the request data contains guid, the system sets $vars[’entity’] to the corresponding entity or false
if it can’t be loaded.
Warning: In ajax views and forms, note that $vars can be populated by client input. The data is filtered like
get_input(), but may not be the type you’re expecting or may have unexpected keys.
Fetching forms
Consider we have a form view. We register it for Ajax:

elgg_register_ajax_view('forms/myplugin/add');
To fetch this using ajax.form(’<action_name>’, options).

ajax.form('myplugin/add').done(function (output, statusText, jqXHR) {

return;
}
$('.myplugin-form-container').html(output);
});
Notes for forms:

• The 3 hooks (see Actions above) will have type form:<action_name>. In this case, “form:myplugin/add”.
• output will be a string with the rendered view.
• The request data are injected into $vars in your form view.
• If the request data contains guid, the system sets $vars[’entity’] to the corresponding entity or false
if it can’t be loaded.
Note: Only the request data are passed to the requested form view (i.e. as a third parameter accepted by
elgg_view_form()). If you need to pass attributes or parameters of the form element rendered by the
input/form view (i.e. normally passed as a second parameter to elgg_view_form()), use the server-side
hook view_vars, input/form.
3.5. Ajax 75
Warning: In ajax views and forms, note that $vars can be populated by client input. The data is filtered like
Piggybacking on an Ajax request
The client-side ajax_request_data hook can be used to append or filter data being sent by an elgg/Ajax
request.
Let’s say when the view foo is fetched, we want to also send the server some data:
// in your boot module
var elgg = require('elgg');
elgg.register_hook_handler(Ajax.REQUEST_DATA_HOOK, 'view:foo', function (name, type, params, data) {

// send some data back
data.bar = 1;
return data;
});
This data can be read server-side via get_input(’bar’);.
Note: If data was given as a string (e.g. $form.serialize()), the request hooks are not triggered.
Piggybacking on an Ajax response
The server-side ajax_response hook can be used to append or filter response data (or metadata).
Let’s say when the view foo is fetched, we want to also send the client some additional data:
use Elgg\Services\AjaxResponse;
function myplugin_append_ajax($hook, $type, AjaxResponse $response, $params) {
// alter the value being returned

$response->getData()->value .= " hello";
// send some metadata back. Only client-side "ajax_response" hooks can see this!
$response->getData()->myplugin_alert = 'Listen to me!';
return $response;
}
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler(AjaxResponse::RESPONSE_HOOK, 'view:foo', 'myplugin_append_ajax'
To capture the metadata send back to the client, we use the client-side ajax_response hook:
// in your boot module
elgg.register_hook_handler(Ajax.RESPONSE_DATA_HOOK, 'view:foo', function (name, type, params, data) {

// the return value is data.value
// the rest is metadata
alert(data.myplugin_alert);
return data;
});
Note: Only data.value is returned to the success function or available via the Deferred interface.
Note: Elgg uses these same hooks to deliver system messages over elgg/Ajax responses.
Handling errors
Responses basically fall into three categories:

1. HTTP success (200) with status 0. No register_error() calls were made on the server.
2. HTTP success (200) with status -1. register_error() was called.
3. HTTP error (4xx/5xx). E.g. calling an action with stale tokens, or a server exception. In this case the done and
success callbacks are not called.
You may need only worry about the 2nd case. We can do this by looking at jqXHR.AjaxData.status:
ajax.action('entity/delete?guid=123').done(function (value, statusText, jqXHR) {
// a server error was already displayed
return;
}
// remove element from the page

});
Requiring AMD modules
Each response from an Ajax service will contain a list of AMD modules required server side with elgg_require_js().
When response data is unwrapped, these modules will be loaded asynchronously - plugins should not expect these
modules to be loaded in their $.done() and $.then() handlers and must use require() for any modules they depend on.
Additionally AMD modules should not expect the DOM to have been altered by an Ajax request when they are loaded
- DOM events should be delegated and manipulations on DOM elements should be delayed until all Ajax requests
have been resolved.
3.5.2 Legacy elgg.ajax APIs
Elgg 1.8 introduced elgg.action, elgg.get, elgg.getJSON, and other methods which behave less consis-
tently both client-side and server-side.
3.5. Ajax 77
Legacy elgg.action
Differences:
• you must manually pull the output from the returned wrapper
• the success handler will fire even if the action is prevented
• the success handler will receive a wrapper object. You must look for wrapper.output
• no ajax hooks
elgg.action('do_math', {
data: {
arg1: 1,
arg2: 2
},
success: function (wrapper) {
if (wrapper.output) {
alert(wrapper.output.sum);
alert(wrapper.output.product);
} else {
// the system prevented the action from running, but we really don't
// know why
elgg.ajax.handleAjaxError();
}
}
});
elgg.action notes
• It’s best to echo a non-empty string, as this is easy to validate in the success function. If the action was not
allowed to run for some reason, wrapper.output will be an empty string.
• You may want to use the elgg/spinner module.
• Elgg does not use wrapper.status for anything, but a call to register_error() causes it to be set to
-1.
• If the action echoes a non-JSON string, wrapper.output will contain that string.
• elgg.action is based on jQuery.ajax and returns a jqXHR object (like a Promise), if you should want
to use it.
• After the PHP action completes, other plugins can alter the wrapper via the plugin hook ’output’, ’ajax’,
which filters the wrapper as an array (not a JSON string).
• A forward() call forces the action to be processed and output immediately, with the
wrapper.forward_url value set to the normalized location given.
• To make sure Ajax actions can only be executed via XHR, use elgg_ajax_gatekeeper().
elgg.action JSON response wrapper
{
current_url: {String} "http://example.org/action/example/math", // not very useful
forward_url: {String} "http://example.org/foo", ...if forward('foo') was called
output: {String|Object} from echo in action
status: {Number} 0 = success. -1 = an error was registered.

system_messages: {Object}
}
Warning: It’s probably best to rely only on the output key, and validate it in case the PHP action could not run
for some reason, e.g. the user was logged out or a CSRF attack did not provide tokens.
Warning: If forward() is used in response to a legacy ajax request (e.g. elgg.ajax), Elgg will always
respond with this wrapper, even if not in an action.
Legacy view fetching
A plugin can use a view script to handle XHR GET requests. Here’s a simple example of a view that returns a link to
an object given by its GUID:
elgg_register_ajax_view('myplugin/get_link');
// in myplugin/views/default/myplugin/get_link.php
if (empty($vars['entity']) || !$vars['entity'] instanceof ElggObject) {

return;
}
$object = $vars['entity'];
/* @var ElggObject $object */
'text' => $object->getDisplayName(),
'href' => $object->getUrl(),
'is_trusted' => true,
]);
elgg.get('ajax/view/myplugin/get_link', {
data: {
guid: 123 // querystring
},
success: function (output) {
$('.myplugin-link').html(output);
}
});
The Ajax view system works significantly differently than the action system.
• There are no access controls based on session status.
• Non-XHR requests are automatically rejected.
• GET vars are injected into $vars in the view.
• If the request contains $_GET[’guid’], the system sets $vars[’entity’] to the corresponding entity or
false if it can’t be loaded.
• There’s no “wrapper” object placed around the view output.
• System messages/errors shouldn’t be used, as they don’t display until the user loads another page.
• Depending on the view’s suffix (.js, .html, .css, etc.), a corresponding Content-Type header is added.
3.5. Ajax 79
Warning:
In ajax views and forms, note that $vars can be populated by client input. The data is filtered like
Returning JSON from a view
If the view outputs encoded JSON, you must use elgg.getJSON to fetch it (or use some other method to set jQuery’s
ajax option dataType to json). Your success function will be passed the decoded Object.
Here’s an example of fetching a view that returns a JSON-encoded array of times:
elgg.getJSON('ajax/view/myplugin/get_times', {
success: function (data) {
alert('The time is ' + data.friendly_time);
}
});
Legacy form fetching
If you register a form view (name starting with forms/), you can fetch it pre-rendered with elgg_view_form().
Simply use ajax/form/<action> (instead of ajax/view/<view_name>):
elgg_register_ajax_view('forms/myplugin/add');
elgg.get('ajax/form/myplugin/add', {
success: function (output) {
$('.myplugin-form-container').html(output);
}
});
Only the request data are passed to the requested form view (i.e. as a third parameter accepted by
elgg_view_form()). If you need to pass attributes or parameters of the form element rendered by the
input/form view (i.e. normally passed as a second parameter to elgg_view_form()), use the server-side
hook view_vars, input/form.
Warning:
In ajax views and forms, note that $vars can be populated by client input. The data is filtered like
Legacy helper functions
These functions extend jQuery’s native Ajax features.

elgg.get() is a wrapper for jQuery’s $.ajax(), but forces GET and does URL normalization.
// normalizes the url to the current <site_url>/activity
elgg.get('/activity', {
success: function(resultText, success, xhr) {
console.log(resultText);
}
});
elgg.post() is a wrapper for jQuery’s $.ajax(), but forces POST and does URL normalization.

3.6 Authentication
Elgg provides everything needed to authenticate users via username/email and password out of the box, including:
• remember-me cookies for persistent login
• password reset logic
• secure storage of passwords
• logout
• UIs for accomplishing all of the above
All that’s left for you to do as a developer is to use the built-in authentication functions to secure your pages and
actions.
3.6.1 Working with the logged in user
Check whether the current user is logged in with elgg_is_logged_in():

if (elgg_is_logged_in()) {
// do something just for logged-in users
}
Check if the current user is an admin with elgg_is_admin_logged_in():

if (elgg_is_admin_logged_in()) {
// do something just for admins
}
Get the currently logged in user with elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity():

$user = elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity();
The returned object is an ElggUser so you can use all the methods and properties of that class to access information
about the user. If the user is not logged in, this will return null, so be sure to check for that first.
3.6.2 Gatekeepers
Gatekeeper functions allow you to manage how code gets executed by applying access control rules.
Forward a user to the front page if they are not logged in with elgg_gatekeeper():
elgg_gatekeeper();
echo "Information for logged-in users only";
Note: In Elgg 1.8 and below this function was called gatekeeper()
Forward a user to the front page unless they are an admin with elgg_admin_gatekeeper():
elgg_admin_gatekeeper();
echo "Information for admins only";
3.6. Authentication 81
Note: In Elgg 1.8 and below this function was called admin_gatekeeper()
Prevent CSRF attacks with action_gatekeeper().

action_gatekeeper();
// Mutate some state in the database on behalf of the logged in user...
This function should be used in Forms + Actions prior to Elgg 1.8.
Note: As of Elgg version 1.8 this function is called for all registered actions. There is no longer a need to call this
function in your own actions. If you wish to protect other pages with action tokens then you can call this function.
3.6.3 Pluggable Authentication Modules
Elgg has support for pluggable authentication modules (PAM), which enables you to write your own authentication
handlers. Whenever a request needs to get authenticated the system will call elgg_authenticate() which probes
the registered PAM handlers until one returns success.
The preferred approach is to create a separate Elgg plugin which will have one simple task: to process an authentication
request. This involves setting up an authentication handler in the plugin’s start.php file, and to register it with the PAM
module so it will get processed whenever the system needs to authenticate a request.
The authentication handler is a function and takes a single parameter. Registering the handler is being done by
register_pam_handler() which takes the name of the authentication handler, the importance and the policy as
parameters. It is advised to register the handler in the plugin’s init function, for example:
function your_plugin_init() {
// Register the authentication handler
register_pam_handler('your_plugin_auth_handler');
}
function your_plugin_auth_handler($credentials) {
// do things ...
}
// Add the plugin's init function to the system's init event

elgg_register_elgg_event_handler('init', 'system', 'your_plugin_init');
3.6.4 Importance
By default an authentication module is registered with an importance of sufficient.

In a list of authentication modules; if any one marked sufficient returns true, pam_authenticate() will also
return true. The exception to this is when an authentication module is registered with an importance of required. All
required modules must return true for pam_authenticate() to return true, regardless of whether all sufficient
modules return true.
3.6.5 Passed credentials
The format of the credentials passed to the handler can vary, depending on the originating request. For example, a
regular login via the login form will create a named array, with the keys username and password. If a request was

made for example via XML-RPC then the credentials will be set in the HTTP header, so in this case nothing will get
passed to the authentication handler and the handler will need to perform steps on its own to authenticate the request.
3.6.6 Return value
The authentication handle should return a boolean, indicating if the request could be authenticated or not. One
caveat is that in case of a regular user login where credentials are available as username and password the user will get
logged in. In case of the XML-RPC example the authentication handler will need to perform this step itself since the
rest of the system will not have any idea of either possible formats of credentials passed nor its contents. Logging in a
user is quite simple and is being done by login(), which expects an ElggUser object.
3.7 Context
Within the Elgg framework, context can be used to by your plugin’s functions to determine if they should run or not.
You will be registering callbacks to be executed when particular events are triggered. Sometimes the events are generic
and you only want to run your callback when your plugin caused the event to be triggered. In that case, you can use
the page’s context.
You can explicitly set the context with set_context(). The context is a string and typically you set it to the
name of your plugin. You can retrieve the context with the function get_context(). It’s however better to use
elgg_push_context($string) to add a context to the stack. You can check if the context you want in in the
current stack by calling elgg_in_context($context). Don’t forget to pop (with elgg_pop_context())
the context after you push one and don’t need it anymore.
If you don’t set it, Elgg tries to guess the context. If the page was called through the page handler, the context is set to
the name of the handler which was set in elgg_register_page_handler(). If the page wasn’t called through
the page handler, it uses the name of your plugin directory. If it cannot determine that, it returns main as the default
context.
Sometimes a view will return different HTML depending on the context. A plugin can take advantage of that by setting
the context before calling elgg_view() on the view and then setting the context back. This is frequently done with
the search context.
3.8 Cron
If you setup cron correctly as described in Cron special hooks will be triggered so you can register for these hooks
from your own code.
The example below registers a function for the daily cron.
function my_plugin_init() {
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('cron', 'daily', 'my_plugin_cron_handler');
}
If timing is important in your cron hook be advised that the functions are executed in order of registration. This could
mean that your function may start (a lot) later then you may have expected. However the parameters provided in the
hook contain the original starting time of the cron, so you can always use that information.
function my_plugin_cron_handler($hook, $period, $return, $params) {
$start_time = elgg_extract('time', $params);
}
3.7. Context 83
See also:
Events and Plugin Hooks has more information about hooks
3.9 Database
Persist user-generated content and settings with Elgg’s generic storage API.
Contents
• Entities
– Creating an object
– Loading an object
– Displaying entities
– Adding, reading and deleting annotations
– Extending ElggEntity
– Advanced features
– Pre-1.8 Notes
• Custom database functionality
– Example: Run SQL script on plugin activation
• Systemlog
– System log storage
– Creating your own system log
3.9.1 Entities
Creating an object
To create an object in your code, you need to instantiate an ElggObject. Setting data is simply a matter of adding
instance variables or properties. The built-in properties are:
• ‘‘guid‘‘ The entity’s GUID; set automatically
• ‘‘owner_guid‘‘ The owning user’s GUID
• ‘‘subtype‘‘ A single-word arbitrary string that defines what kind of object it is, for example blog
• ‘‘access_id‘‘ An integer representing the access level of the object
• ‘‘title‘‘ The title of the object
• ‘‘description‘‘ The description of the object
The object subtype is a special property. This is an arbitrary string that describes what the object is. For example,
if you were writing a blog plugin, your subtype string might be blog. It’s a good idea to make this unique, so that
other plugins don’t accidentally try and use the same subtype. For the purposes of this document, let’s assume we’re
building a simple forum. Therefore, the subtype will be forum:
$object = new ElggObject();
$object->subtype = "forum";
$object->access_id = 2;
$object->save();
access_id is another important property. If you don’t set this, your object will be private, and only the creator user
will be able to see it. Elgg defines constants for the special values of access_id:

• ACCESS_PRIVATE Only the owner can see it

• ACCESS_FRIENDS Only the owner and his/her friends can see it
• ACCESS_LOGGED_IN Any logged in user can see it
• ACCESS_PUBLIC Even visitors not logged in can see it
Saving the object will automatically populate the $object->guid property if successful. If you change any more
base properties, you can call $object->save() again, and it will update the database for you.
You can set metadata on an object just like a standard property. Let’s say we want to set the SKU of a product:
$object->SKU = 62784;
If you assign an array, all the values will be set for that metadata. This is how, for example, you set tags.
Metadata cannot be persisted to the database until the entity has been saved, but for convenience, ElggEntity can cache
it internally and save it when saving the entity.
Loading an object
By GUID
$entity = get_entity($guid);
if (!$entity) {
// The entity does not exist or you're not allowed to access it.
}
But what if you don’t know the GUID? There are several options.
By user, subtype or site
If you know the user ID you want to get objects for, or the subtype, or the site, you have several options. The easiest
is probably to call the procedural function elgg_get_entities:
$entities = elgg_get_entities(array(
'type' => $entity_type,
'subtype' => $subtype,
'owner_guid' => $owner_guid,
));
This will return an array of ElggEntity objects that you can iterate through. elgg_get_entities paginates
by default, with a limit of 10; and offset 0.
You can leave out owner_guid to get all objects and leave out subtype or type to get objects of all types/subtypes.
If you already have an ElggUser – e.g. elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity, which always has the current
user’s object when you’re logged in – you can simply use:
$objects = $user->getObjects($subtype, $limit, $offset)
But what about getting objects with a particular piece of metadata?
By metadata
The function elgg_get_entities_from_metadata allows fetching entities with metadata in a variety of

ways.
3.9. Database 85
By annotation
The function elgg_get_entities_from_annotations allows fetching entities with metadata in a variety of

ways.
Note: As of Elgg 1.10 the default behaviour of elgg_get_entities_from_annotations was brought inline with the rest
of the elgg_get_entities* functions.
Pre Elgg 1.10 the sorting of the entities was based on the latest addition of an annotation (in $options your could add
$options[’order_by’] = ‘maxtime ASC’ or $options[’order_by’] = ‘maxtime DESC’. As of Elgg 1.10 this was changed
to the creation time of the entity, just like the rest of the elgg_get_entities* functions. To get the old behaviour back
add the following to your $options:
$options['selects'] = array('MAX(n_table.time_created) AS maxtime');
$options['group_by'] = 'n_table.entity_guid';
$options['order_by'] = 'maxtime ASC'
or
$options['order_by'] = 'maxtime DESC'
Displaying entities
In order for entities to be displayed in listing functions you need to provide a view for the entity in the views system.
To display an entity, create a view EntityType/subtype where EntityType is one of the following:
object: for entities derived from ElggObject user: for entities derived from ElggUser site: for entities derived from
ElggSite group: for entities derived from ElggGroup
A default view for all entities has already been created, this is called EntityType/default.
Entity Icons
Entity icons can be saved from uploaded files, existing local files, or existing ElggFile objects. These methods save all
sizes of icons defined in the system.
$object = new ElggObject();
$object->title = 'Example entity';
$object->description = 'An example object with an icon.';
// from an uploaded file

$object->setIconFromUploadedFile('file_upload_input');
// from a local file

$object->setIconFromLocalFile('/var/data/generic_icon.png');
// from a saved ElggFile object

$file = get_entity(123);
if ($file instanceof ElggFile) {
$object->setIconFromElggFile($file);
}
$object->save();

The following sizes exist by default:

• master - 550px at longer edge (not upscaled)
• large - 200px at longer edge (not upscaled)
• medium - 100px square
• small - 40px square
• tiny - 25px square
• topbar - 16px square
Use elgg_get_icon_sizes() to get all possible icon sizes for a specific entity type and subtype. The function
triggers the entity:icon:sizes hook.
To check if an icon is set, use $object->hasIcon($size).
You can retrieve the URL of the generated icon with‘‘ElggEntity::getIconURL($params)‘‘ method. This method
accepts a $params argument as an array that specifies the size, type, and provide additional context for the hook to
determine the icon to serve. The method triggers the entity:icon:url hook.
Use elgg_view_entity_icon($entity, $size, $vars) to render an icon. This will scan the following
locations for a view and include the first match to .
1. views/$viewtype/icon/$type/$subtype.php
2. views/$viewtype/icon/$type/default.php
3. views/$viewtype/icon/default.php
Where
$viewtype Type of view, e.g. ’default’ or ’json’.
$type Type of entity, e.g. ’group’ or ’user’.
$subtype Entity subtype, e.g. ’blog’ or ’page’.
You do not have to return a fallback icon from the hook handler. If no uploaded icon is found, the view system will
scan the views (in this specific order):
1. views/$viewtype/$icon_type/$entity_type/$entity_subtype.svg
2. views/$viewtype/$icon_type/$entity_type/$entity_subtype/$size.gif
3. views/$viewtype/$icon_type/$entity_type/$entity_subtype/$size.png
4. views/$viewtype/$icon_type/$entity_type/$entity_subtype/$size.jpg
Where
$viewtype Type of view, e.g. ’default’ or ’json’.
$icon_type Icon type, e.g. ’icon’ or ’cover_image’.
$entity_type Type of entity, e.g. ’group’ or ’user’.
$entity_subtype Entity subtype, e.g. ’blog’ or ’page’ (or ’default’ if entity has not subtype).
$size Icon size (note that we do not use the size with svg icons)
Icon methods support passing an icon type if an entity has more than one icon. For example, a user might have an
avatar and a cover photo icon. You would pass ’cover_photo’ as the icon type:
3.9. Database 87
$object->setIconFromUploadedFile('uploaded_photo', 'cover_photo');
$object->getIconUrl([
'size' => 'medium',
'type' => 'cover_photo'
]);
Note that custom icon types (e.g. cover photos) do not have preset sizes and coordinates. Use
entity:<icon_type>:url hook to configure them.
By default icons will be stored in /icons/<icon_type>/<size>.jpg relative to entity’s directory on filestore.
To provide an alternative location, use the entity:<icon_type>:file hook.
Adding, reading and deleting annotations
Annotations could be used, for example, to track ratings. To annotate an entity you can use the object’s annotate()
method. For example, to give a blog post a rating of 5, you could use:
$blog_post->annotate('rating', 5);
To retrieve the ratings on the blog post, use $blogpost->getAnnotations(’rating’) and if you want to
delete an annotation, you can operate on the ElggAnnotation class, eg $annotation->delete().
Retrieving a single annotation can be done with get_annotation() if you have the annotation’s ID. If you delete
an ElggEntity of any kind, all its metadata, annotations, and relationships will be automatically deleted as well.
Extending ElggEntity
If you derive from one of the Elgg core classes, you’ll need to tell Elgg how to properly instantiate the new type of
object so that get_entity() et al. will return the appropriate PHP class. For example, if I customize ElggGroup in a
class called “Committee”, I need to make Elgg aware of the new mapping. Following is an example class extension:
// Class source
class Committee extends ElggGroup {
protected function initializeAttributes() {

parent::initializeAttributes();
$this->attributes['subtype'] = 'committee';
}
// more customizations here

}
In your plugins elgg-plugin.php file add the entities section.

<?php // mod/example/elgg-plugin.php
return [
// entities registration
'entities' => [
[
'type' => 'group',
'subtype' => 'committee',
'class' => 'Committee',
'searchable' => true,
],
],
];

The entities will be registered upon activation of the plugin.

Now if you invoke get_entity() with the GUID of a committee object, you’ll get back an object of type Com-
mittee.
Note: If you ever change the name of the class, use update_subtype() to change it as part of an upgrade
Advanced features
Entity URLs
Entity urls are provided by the getURL() interface and provide the Elgg framework with a common way of directing
users to the appropriate display handler for any given object.
For example, a profile page in the case of users.
The url is set using the elgg\_register\_entity\_url\_handler() function. The function you register
must return the appropriate url for the given type - this itself can be an address set up by a page handler.
The default handler is to use the default export interface.
Entity loading performance
elgg_get_entities has a couple options that can sometimes be useful to improve performance.
• preload_owners: If the entities fetched will be displayed in a list with the owner information, you can set this
option to true to efficiently load the owner users of the fetched entities.
• preload_containers: If the entities fetched will be displayed in a list using info from their containers, you can
set this option to true to efficiently load them.
• distinct: When Elgg fetches entities using an SQL query, Elgg must be sure that each entity row appears only
once in the result set. By default it includes a DISTINCT modifier on the GUID column to enforce this, but
some queries naturally return unique entities. Setting the distinct option to false will remove this modifier,
and rely on the query to enforce its own uniqueness.
The internals of Elgg entity queries is a complex subject and it’s recommended to seek help on the Elgg Community
site before using the distinct option.
Pre-1.8 Notes
update_subtype(): This function is new in 1.8. In prior versions, you would need to edit the database by hand if you
updated the class name associated with a given subtype.
elgg_register_entity_url_handler(): This function is new in 1.8. It deprecates register_entity_url_handler(), which you
should use if developing for a pre-1.8 version of Elgg.
elgg_get_entities_from_metadata(): This function is new in 1.8. It deprecates get_entities_from_metadata(), which
you should use if developing for a pre-1.8 version of Elgg.
3.9.2 Custom database functionality
It is strongly recommended to use entities wherever possible. However, Elgg supports custom SQL queries using the
database API.
3.9. Database 89
Example: Run SQL script on plugin activation
This example shows how you can populate your database on plugin activation.
my_plugin/activate.php:
if (!elgg_get_plugin_setting('database_version', 'my_plugin') {
run_sql_script(__DIR__ . '/sql/activate.sql');
elgg_set_plugin_setting('database_version', 1, 'my_plugin');
}
my_plugin/sql/activate.sql:
-- Create some table
CREATE TABLE prefix_custom_table(
id INTEGER AUTO_INCREMENT,
name VARCHAR(32),
description VARCHAR(32),
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
-- Insert initial values for table

INSERT INTO prefix_custom_table (name, description)
VALUES ('Peter', 'Some guy'), ('Lisa', 'Some girl');
Note that Elgg execute statements through PHPs built-in functions and have limited support for comments. I.e. only
single line comments are supported and must be prefixed by “– ” or “# ”. A comment must start at the very beginning
of a line.
3.9.3 Systemlog
Note: This section need some attention and will contain outdated information
The default Elgg system log is a simple way of recording what happens within an Elgg system. It’s viewable and
searchable directly from the administration panel.
System log storage
A system log row is stored whenever an event concerning an object whose class implements the Loggable interface
is triggered. ElggEntity and ElggExtender implement Loggable, so a system log row is created whenever an
event is performed on all objects, users, groups, sites, metadata and annotations.
Common events include:
• create
• update
• delete
• login

Creating your own system log
There are some reasons why you might want to create your own system log. For example, you might need to store
a full copy of entities when they are updated or deleted, for auditing purposes. You might also need to notify an
administrator when certain types of events occur.
To do this, you can create a function that listens to all events for all types of object:
register_elgg_event_handler('all','all','your_function_name');
Your function can then be defined as:

function your_function_name($object, $event) {
if ($object instanceof Loggable) {
...
}
}
You can then use the extra methods defined by Loggable to extract the information you need.
3.10 File System
3.10.1 Filestore
Location
Elgg’s filestore is located in the site’s dataroot that is configured during installation, and can be modified via site
settings in Admin interface.
Directory Structure
The structure of the filestore is tied to file ownership by Elgg entities. Whenever the first file owned by an entity is
written to the filestore, a directory corresponding to the entity GUID will be created within a parent bucket directory
(buckets are bound to 5000 guids). E.g. files owned by user with guid 7777 will be located in 5000/7777/.
When files are created, filenames can contain subdirectory names (often referred to as $prefix throughout the code).
For instance, avatars of the above user, can be found under 5000/7777/profile/.
3.10.2 File Objects
Writing Files
To write a file to the filestore, you would use an instance of ElggFile. Even though ElggFile extends ElggObject
and can be stored as an actual Elgg entity, that is not always necessary (e.g. when writing thumbs of an image).
$file = new ElggFile();
$file->owner_guid = 7777;
$file->setFilename('portfolio/files/sample.txt');
$file->open('write');
$file->write('Contents of the file');
$file->close();
// to uprade this file to an entity
3.10. File System 91

$file->subtype = 'file';
$file->save();
Reading Files
You can read file contents using instanceof of ElggFile.

// from an Elgg entity
$file = get_entity($file_guid);
readfile($file->getFilenameOnFilestore());
// arbitrary file on the filestore

$file->owner_guid = 7777;
$file->setFilename('portfolio/files/sample.txt');
// option 1
$file->open('read');
$contents = $file->grabFile();
$file->close();
// option 2
$contents = file_get_contents($file->getFilenameOnFilestore());
Serving Files
You can serve files from filestore using elgg_get_inline_url() and elgg_get_download_url(). Both
functions accept 3 arguments:
• ‘‘file‘‘ An instance of ElggFile to be served
• ‘‘use_cookie‘‘ If set to true, validity of the URL will be limited to current session
• ‘‘expires‘‘ Expiration time of the URL
You can use use_cookie and expires arguments as means of access control. For example, users avatars in most
cases have a long expiration time and do not need to be restricted by current session - this will allows browsers to
cache the images and file service will send appropriate Not Modified headers on consecutive requests.
For entities that are under Elgg’s access control, you may want to use cookies to ensure that access settings are
respected and users do not share download URLs with somebody else.
You can also invalidated all previously generated URLs by updating file’s modified time, e.g. by using touch().
Embedding Files
Please note that due to their nature inline and download URLs are not suitable for embedding. Embed URLs must be
permanent, whereas inline and download URLs are volatile (bound to user session and file modification time).
To embed an entity icon, use elgg_get_embed_url().
Handling File Uploads
In order to implement an action that saves a single file uploaded by a user, you can use the following approach:

// in your form
echo elgg_view('input/file', [
'name' => 'upload',
'label' => 'Select an image to upload',
'help' => 'Only jpeg, gif and png images are supported',
]);
// in your action
$uploaded_files = elgg_get_uploaded_files('upload');
if (!$uploaded_files) {
register_error("No file was uploaded");
forward(REFERER);
}
$uploaded_file = array_shift($uploaded_files);
if (!$uploaded_file->isValid()) {
$error = elgg_get_friendly_upload_error($uploaded_file->getError());
register_error($error);
forward(REFERER);
}
$supported_mimes = [
'image/jpeg',
'image/png',
'image/gif',
];
$mime_type = ElggFile::detectMimeType($uploaded_file->getPathname(), $uploaded_file->getClientMimeTyp

if (!in_array($mime_type, $supported_mimes)) {
register_error("$mime_type is not supported");
forward(REFERER);
}

$file->owner_guid = elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid();
if ($file->acceptUploadedFile($uploaded_file)) {
$file->save();
}
If your file input supports multiple files, you can iterate through them in your action:
// in your form
echo elgg_view('input/file', [
'name' => 'upload[]',
'multiple' => true,
'label' => 'Select images to upload',
]);
// in your action
foreach (elgg_get_uploaded_files('upload') as $upload) {
$file->owner_guid = elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid();
if ($file->acceptUploadedFile($upload)) {
$file->save();
}
}
3.10. File System 93

3.11 Forms + Actions
Create, update, or delete content.

Elgg forms submit to actions. Actions define the behavior for form submission.
This guide assumes basic familiarity with:
• Plugins
• Views
• Internationalization
Contents
• Registering actions
– Registering actions using plugin config file
– Permissions
– Writing action files
– Customizing actions
• Actions available in core
– entity/delete
• Forms
– Inputs
– Input types
• Files and images
• Sticky forms
– Helper functions
– Overview
– Example: User registration
– Example: Bookmarks
• Ajax
• Security
• Security Tokens
• Signed URLs
3.11.1 Registering actions
Actions must be registered before use. Use elgg_register_action for this:

elgg_register_action("example", __DIR__ . "/actions/example.php");
The mod/example/actions/example.php script will now be run whenever a form is submitted to

http://localhost/elgg/action/example.
Warning: A stumbling point for many new developers is the URL for actions. The URL always uses /action/
(singular) and never /actions/ (plural). However, action script files are usually saved under the directory
/actions/ (plural) and always have an extension.

Registering actions using plugin config file
You can also register actions via the elgg-plugin config file. To do this you need to provide an action section in the
config file. The location of the action files are assumed to be in the plugin folder /actions.
<?php
return [
'actions' => [
'blog/save' => [], // all defaults
'blog/delete' => [ // all custom
'access' => 'admin',
'filename' => __DIR__ . 'actions/blog/remove.php',
],
],
];
Permissions
By default, actions are only available to logged in users.

To make an action available to logged out users, pass "public" as the third parameter:
elgg_register_action("example", $filepath, "public");
To restrict an action to only administrators, pass "admin" for the last parameter:
elgg_register_action("example", $filepath, "admin");
Writing action files
Use the get_input function to get access to request parameters:

$field = get_input('input_field_name', 'default_value');
You can then use the Database api to load entities and perform actions on them accordingly.
To indicate a successful action, use elgg_ok_response(). This function accepts data that you want to make
available to the client for XHR calls (this data will be ignored for non-XHR calls)
$user = get_entity($guid);
// do something
$action_data = [
'entity' => $user,
'stats' => [
'friends' => $user->getFriends(['count' => true]);
],
];
return elgg_ok_response($action_data, 'Action was successful', 'url/to/forward/to');
To indicate an error, use elgg_error_response()

if (!$user) {
// show an error and forward the user to the referring page
// send 404 error code on AJAX calls
3.11. Forms + Actions 95

return elgg_error_response('User not found', REFERRER, ELGG_HTTP_NOT_FOUND);

}
if (!$user->canEdit()) {
// show an error and forward to user's profile
// send 403 error code on AJAX calls
return elgg_error_response('You are not allowed to perform this action', $user->getURL(), ELGG_HTT
}
Customizing actions
Before executing any action, Elgg triggers a hook:

$result = elgg_trigger_plugin_hook('action', $action, null, true);
Where $action is the action being called. If the hook returns false then the action will not be executed.
Example: Captcha
The captcha module uses this to intercept the register and user/requestnewpassword actions and redirect
them to a function which checks the captcha code. This check returns true if valid or false if not (which prevents
the associated action from executing).
This is done as follows:
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler("action", "register", "captcha_verify_action_hook");
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler("action", "user/requestnewpassword", "captcha_verify_action_hook");
...
function captcha_verify_action_hook($hook, $entity_type, $returnvalue, $params) {

$token = get_input('captcha_token');
$input = get_input('captcha_input');
if (($token) && (captcha_verify_captcha($input, $token))) {

return true;
}
register_error(elgg_echo('captcha:captchafail'));
return false;
}
This lets a plugin extend an existing action without the need to replace the whole action. In the case of the captcha
plugin it allows the plugin to provide captcha support in a very loosely coupled way.
3.11.2 Actions available in core
entity/delete
If your plugin does not implement any custom logic when deleting an entity, you can use bundled delete action
$guid = 123;
// You can provide optional forward path as a URL query parameter
$forward_url = 'path/to/forward/to';

echo elgg_view('output/url', array(

'text' => elgg_echo('delete'),
'href' => "action/entity/delete?guid=$guid&forward_url=$forward_url",
'confirm' => true,
));
You can customize the success message keys for your entity type and subtype, using
"entity:delete:$type:$subtype:success" and "entity:delete:$type:success" keys.
// to add a custom message when a blog post or file is deleted
// add the translations keys in your language files
return array(
'entity:delete:object:blog:success' => 'Blog post has been deleted,
'entity:delete:object:file:success' => 'File titled %s has been deleted',
);
3.11.3 Forms
To output a form, use the elgg_view_form function like so:

echo elgg_view_form('example');
Doing this generates something like the following markup:

<form action="http://localhost/elgg/action/example">
<fieldset>
<input type="hidden" name="__elgg_ts" value="1234567890" />
<input type="hidden" name="__elgg_token" value="3874acfc283d90e34" />
</fieldset>
</form>
Elgg does some things automatically for you when you generate forms this way:
1. It sets the action to the appropriate URL based on the name of the action you pass to it
2. It adds some anti-csrf tokens (__elgg_ts and __elgg_token) to help keep your actions secure
3. It automatically looks for the body of the form in the forms/example view.
Put the content of your form in your plugin’s forms/example view:
// /mod/example/views/default/forms/example.php
echo elgg_view('input/text', array('name' => 'example'));
// defer form footer rendering

// this will allow other plugins to extend forms/example view
elgg_set_form_footer(elgg_view('input/submit'));
Now when you call elgg_view_form(’example’), Elgg will produce:

<form action="http://localhost/elgg/action/example">
<fieldset>
<input type="hidden" name="__elgg_ts" value="...">
<input type="hidden" name="__elgg_token" value="...">
<input type="text" class="elgg-input-text" name="example">

<div class="elgg-foot elgg-form-footer">
<input type="submit" class="elgg-button elgg-button-submit" value="Submit">
</div>

</fieldset>
</form>
Inputs
To render a form input, use one of the bundled input views, which cover all standard HTML input elements. See
individual view files for a list of accepted parameters.
echo elgg_view('input/select', array(
'required' => true,
'name' => 'status',
'options_values' => array(
'draft' => elgg_echo('status:draft'),
'published' => elgg_echo('status:published'),
),
// most input views will render additional parameters passed to the view
// as tag attributes
'data-rel' => 'blog',
));
The above example will render a dropdown select input:

<select required="required" name="status" data-rel="blog" class="elgg-input-dropdown">
<option value="draft">Draft</option>
<option value="published">Published</option>
</select>
To ensure consistency in field markup, use elgg_view_field(), which accepts all the parameters of the input
being rendered, as well as #label and #help parameters (both of which are optional and accept HTML or text).
echo elgg_view_field(array(
'#type' => 'select',
'#label' => elgg_echo('blog:status:label'),
'#help' => elgg_view_icon('help') . elgg_echo('blog:status:help'),
'required' => true,
'name' => 'status',
'options_values' => array(
'draft' => elgg_echo('status:draft'),
'published' => elgg_echo('status:published'),
),
'data-rel' => 'blog',
));
The above will generate the following markup:

<div class="elgg-field elgg-field-required">
<label for="elgg-field-1" class="elgg-field-label">Blog status<span title="Required" class="elgg-r
<div class="elgg-field-input">
<select required="required" name="status" data-rel="blog" id="elgg-field-1" class="elgg-input-d
<option value="draft">Draft</option>
<option value="published">Published</option>
</select>
</div>
<div class="elgg-field-help elgg-text-help">
<span class="elgg-icon-help elgg-icon"></span>This indicates whether or not the blog is visible
</div>
</div>

Input types
A list of bundled input types/views:

• input/text - renders a text input <input type="text">
• input/plaintext - renders a textarea <textarea></textarea>
• input/longtext - renders a WYSIWYG text input
• input/url - renders a url input <input type="url">
• input/email - renders an email input <input type="email">
• input/checkbox - renders a single checkbox <input type="checkbox">
• input/checkboxes - renders a set of checkboxes with the same name
• input/radio - renders one or more radio buttons <input type="radio">
• input/submit - renders a submit button <input type="submit">
• input/button - renders a button <button></button>
• input/file - renders a file input <input type="file">
• input/select - renders a select input <select></select>
• input/hidden - renders a hidden input <input type="hidden">
• input/password - renders a password input <input type="password">
• input/number - renders a number input <input type="number">
• input/date - renders a jQuery datepicker
• input/access - renders an Elgg access level select
• input/tags - renders an Elgg tags input
• input/autocomplete - renders an Elgg entity autocomplete
• input/captcha - placeholder view for plugins to extend
• input/friendspicker - renders an Elgg friend autocomplete
• input/userpicker - renders an Elgg user autocomplete
• input/location renders an Elgg location input
3.11.4 Files and images
Use the input/file view in your form’s content view.

// /mod/example/views/default/forms/example.php
echo elgg_view(‘input/file’, array(‘name’ => ‘icon’));
Set the enctype of the form to multipart/form-data:

echo elgg_view_form(‘example’, array(
‘enctype’ => ‘multipart/form-data’
));
In your action file, use the $_FILES global to access the uploaded file:

$icon = $_FILES[‘icon’]
3.11.5 Sticky forms
Sticky forms are forms that retain user input if saving fails. They are “sticky” because the user’s data “sticks” in
the form after submitting, though it was never saved to the database. This greatly improves the user experience by
minimizing data loss. Elgg 1.8 includes helper functions so you can make any form sticky.
Helper functions
Sticky forms are implemented in Elgg 1.8 by the following functions:

elgg_make_sticky_form($name) Tells the engine to make all input on a form sticky.
elgg_clear_sticky_form($name) Tells the engine to discard all sticky input on a form.
elgg_is_sticky_form($name) Checks if $name is a valid sticky form.
elgg_get_sticky_values($name) Returns all sticky values saved for $name by elgg_make_sticky_form().
Overview
The basic flow of using sticky forms is: Call elgg_make_sticky_form($name) at the top of actions for forms
you want to be sticky. Use elgg_is_sticky_form($name) and elgg_get_sticky_values($name) to
get sticky values when rendering a form view. Call elgg_clear_sticky_form($name) after the action has
completed successfully or after data has been loaded by elgg_get_sticky_values($name).
Example: User registration
Simple sticky forms require little logic to determine the input values for the form. This logic is placed at the top of the
form body view itself.
The registration form view first sets default values for inputs, then checks if there are sticky values. If so, it loads the
sticky values before clearing the sticky form:
// views/default/forms/register.php
$password = $password2 = '';
$username = get_input('u');
$email = get_input('e');
$name = get_input('n');
if (elgg_is_sticky_form('register')) {
extract(elgg_get_sticky_values('register'));
elgg_clear_sticky_form('register');
}
The registration action sets creates the sticky form and clears it once the action is completed:
// actions/register.php
elgg_make_sticky_form('register');
...
$guid = register_user($username, $password, $name, $email, false, $friend_guid, $invitecode);

if ($guid) {
elgg_clear_sticky_form('register');
....
}
Example: Bookmarks
The bundled plugin Bookmarks’ save form and action is an example of a complex sticky form.
The form view for the save bookmark action uses elgg_extract() to pull values from the $vars array:
// mod/bookmarks/views/default/forms/bookmarks/save.php
$title = elgg_extract('title', $vars, '');
$desc = elgg_extract('description', $vars, '');
$address = elgg_extract('address', $vars, '');
$tags = elgg_extract('tags', $vars, '');
$access_id = elgg_extract('access_id', $vars, ACCESS_DEFAULT);
$container_guid = elgg_extract('container_guid', $vars);
$guid = elgg_extract('guid', $vars, null);
$shares = elgg_extract('shares', $vars, array());
The page handler scripts prepares the form variables and calls elgg_view_form() passing the correct values:
// mod/bookmarks/pages/add.php
$vars = bookmarks_prepare_form_vars();
$content = elgg_view_form('bookmarks/save', array(), $vars);
Similarly, mod/bookmarks/pages/edit.php uses the same function, but passes the entity that is being edited
as an argument:
$bookmark_guid = get_input('guid');
$bookmark = get_entity($bookmark_guid);
...
$vars = bookmarks_prepare_form_vars($bookmark);
$content = elgg_view_form('bookmarks/save', array(), $vars);
The library file defines bookmarks_prepare_form_vars(). This function accepts an ElggEntity as an

argument and does 3 things:
1. Defines the input names and default values for form inputs.
2. Extracts the values from a bookmark object if it’s passed.
3. Extracts the values from a sticky form if it exists.
TODO: Include directly from lib/bookmarks.php
// mod/bookmarks/lib/bookmarks.php
function bookmarks_prepare_form_vars($bookmark = null) {
// input names => defaults
$values = array(
'title' => get_input('title', ''), // bookmarklet support
'address' => get_input('address', ''),
'description' => '',
'access_id' => ACCESS_DEFAULT,
'tags' => '',
'shares' => array(),

'container_guid' => elgg_get_page_owner_guid(),

'guid' => null,
'entity' => $bookmark,
);
if ($bookmark) {
foreach (array_keys($values) as $field) {
if (isset($bookmark->$field)) {
$values[$field] = $bookmark->$field;
}
}
}
if (elgg_is_sticky_form('bookmarks')) {
$sticky_values = elgg_get_sticky_values('bookmarks');
foreach ($sticky_values as $key => $value) {
$values[$key] = $value;
}
}
elgg_clear_sticky_form('bookmarks');
return $values;
}
The save action checks the input, then clears the sticky form upon success:
// mod/bookmarks/actions/bookmarks/save.php
elgg_make_sticky_form('bookmarks');
...
if ($bookmark->save()) {
elgg_clear_sticky_form('bookmarks');
}
3.11.6 Ajax
See the Ajax guide for instructions on calling actions from JavaScript.
3.11.7 Security
For enhanced security, all actions require an CSRF token. Calls to action URLs that do not include security tokens
will be ignored and a warning will be generated.
A few views and functions automatically generate security tokens:
elgg_view('output/url', array('is_action' => TRUE));
elgg_view('input/securitytoken');
$url = elgg_add_action_tokens_to_url("http://localhost/elgg/action/example");
In rare cases, you may need to generate tokens manually:

$__elgg_ts = time();
$__elgg_token = generate_action_token($__elgg_ts);
You can also access the tokens from javascript:

elgg.security.token.__elgg_ts;
elgg.security.token.__elgg_token;
These are refreshed periodically so should always be up-to-date.
3.11.8 Security Tokens
On occasion we need to pass data through an untrusted party or generate an “unguessable token” based on some
data. The industry-standard HMAC algorithm is the right tool for this. It allows us to verify that received data were
generated by our site, and were not tampered with. Note that even strong hash functions like SHA-2 should not be
used without HMAC for these tasks.
Elgg provides elgg_build_hmac() to generate and validate HMAC message authentication codes that are
unguessable without the site’s private key.
// generate a querystring such that $a and $b can't be altered
$a = 1234;
$b = "hello";
$query = http_build_query([
'a' => $a,
'b' => $b,
'mac' => elgg_build_hmac([$a, $b])->getToken(),
]);
$url = "action/foo?$query";
// validate the querystring

$a = (int) get_input('a', '', false);
$b = (string) get_input('b', '', false);
$mac = get_input('mac', '', false);
if (elgg_build_hmac([$a, $b])->matchesToken($mac)) {
// $a and $b have not been altered
}
Note: If you use a non-string as HMAC data, you must use types consistently. Consider the following:
$mac = elgg_build_hmac([123, 456])->getToken();
// type of first array element differs

elgg_build_hmac(["123", 456])->matchesToken($mac); // false
// types identical to original

elgg_build_hmac([123, 456])->matchesToken($mac); // true
3.11.9 Signed URLs
Signed URLs offer a limited level of security for situations where action tokens are not suitable, for example when
sending a confirmation link via email. URL signatures verify that the URL has been generated by your Elgg installation
(using site secret) and that the URL query elements were not tampered with.
URLs a signed with an unguessable SHA-256 HMAC key. See Security Tokens for more details.
$url = elgg_http_add_url_query_element(elgg_normalize_url('confirm'), [
'user_guid' => $user_guid,
]);

$url = elgg_http_get_signed_url($url);
notify_user($user_guid, $site->guid, 'Confirm', "Please confirm by clicking this link: $url");
Warning: Signed URLs do not offer CSRF protection and should not be used instead of action tokens.
3.12 Helper functions
3.12.1 Input and output
• get_input($name) Grabs information from a form field (or any variable passed using GET or POST). Also
sanitises input, stripping Javascript etc.
• set_input($name, $value) Forces a value to a particular variable for subsequent retrieval by
get_input()
3.12.2 Entity methods
• $entity->getURL() Returns the URL of any entity in the system

• $entity->getGUID() Returns the GUID of any entity in the system
• $entity->canEdit() Returns whether or not the current user can edit the entity
• $entity->getOwnerEntity() Returns the ElggUser owner of a particular entity
3.12.3 Entity and context retrieval
• elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity() Returns the ElggUser for the current user

• elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid() Returns the GUID of the current user
• elgg_is_logged_in() Is the viewer logged in
• elgg_is_admin_logged_in() Is the view an admin and logged in
• elgg_gatekeeper() Shorthand for checking if a user is logged in. Forwards user to front page if not
• elgg_admin_gatekeeper() Shorthand for checking the user is logged in and is an admin. Forwards user
to front page if not
• get_user($user_guid) Given a GUID, returns a full ElggUser entity
• elgg_get_page_owner_guid() Returns the GUID of the current page owner, if there is one
• elgg_get_page_owner_entity() Like elgg_get_page_owner_guid() but returns the full entity
• get_context() Returns the current page’s context - eg “blog” for the blog plugin, “thewire” for the wire,
etc. Returns “main” as default
• set_context($context) Forces the context to be a particular value
• elgg_push_context($context) Adds a context to the stack
• elgg_pop_context() Removes the top context from the stack

• elgg_in_context($context) Checks if you’re in a context (this checks the complete stack, eg. ‘widget’
in ‘groups’)
3.12.4 Plugins
• elgg_is_active_plugin($plugin_id) Check if a plugin is installed and enabled
3.12.5 Interface and annotations
• elgg_view_image_block($icon, $info) Return the result in a formatted list

• elgg_view_comments($entity) Returns any comments associated with the given entity
• elgg_get_friendly_time($unix_timestamp) Returns a date formatted in a friendlier way - “18
minutes ago”, “2 days ago”, etc.
• You can pass ’use_hover’ => false to the user icon view if you don’t want the avatar drop down menu
to appear e.g.
elgg_view_entity_icon($user, 'small', array('use_hover' => false));
3.13 Internationalization
Make your UI translatable into many different languages.

If you’d like to contribute translations to Elgg, see the contributors’ guide.
The default language is en for English. Currently Elgg will always fall back to an English translation, even if the site’s
language is not English; this is a known bug.
3.13.1 Overview
Translations are stored in PHP files in the /languages directory of your plugin. Each file corresponds to a language.
The format is /languages/{language-code}.php where {language-code} is the ISO 639-1 short code
for the language. For example:
<?php // mod/example/languages/en.php
return [
'example:text' => 'Some example text',
];
To override an existing translation, include it in your plugin’s language file, and make sure your plugin is ordered later
on the Admin > Plugins page:
<?php // mod/better_example/languages/en.php
return [
'example:text' => 'Some better text!',
];
3.13. Internationalization 105

Note: Unless you are overriding core’s or another plugin’s language strings, it is good practice for the language keys
to start with your plugin name. For example: yourplugin:success, yourplugin:title, etc. This helps
avoid conflicts with other language keys.
3.13.2 Server-side API
elgg_echo($key, $args, $language)

Output the translation of the key in the current language.
Example:
echo elgg_echo('example:text');
It also supports variable replacement using sprintf syntax:

// 'welcome' => 'Welcome to %s, %s!'
echo elgg_echo('welcome', [
elgg_get_config('sitename'),
elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity()->name,
]);
To force which language should be used for translation, set the third parameter:
echo elgg_echo('welcome', [], $user->language);
To first test whether elgg_echo() can find a translation:

$key = 'key:that:might:not:exist';
if (!elgg_language_key_exists($key)) {
$key = 'fallback:key';
}
echo elgg_echo($key);
Note: Some APIs allow creating translations for new keys. Translators should always include an English trans-
lation as a fallback. This makes elgg_language_key_exists($key) a reliable way to predict whether
elgg_echo($key) will succeed.
3.13.3 Javascript API
elgg.echo(key, args)
This function is like elgg_echo in PHP.
Client-side translations are loaded asynchronously. Ensure translations are available by requiring the “elgg” AMD
module:
define(function(require) {
var elgg = require("elgg");
alert(elgg.echo('my_key'));
});
Translations are also available after the init, system JavaScript event.

3.14 JavaScript
Contents
• AMD
– Executing a module in the current page
– Defining the Module
– Making modules dependent on other modules
– Passing settings to modules
– Setting the URL of a module
– Using traditional JS libraries as modules
• Booting your plugin
• Modules provided with Elgg
– Modules jquery and jquery-ui
– Module elgg
– Module elgg/Ajax
– Module elgg/init
– Module elgg/Plugin
– Module elgg/ready
– Module elgg/spinner
– Module elgg/popup
– Module elgg/widgets
– Module elgg/lightbox
– Module elgg/ckeditor
– Inline tabs component
• Traditional scripts
• Hooks
– Registering hook handlers
– The handler function
– Triggering custom hooks
– Available hooks
• Third-party assets
3.14.1 AMD
Developers should use the AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) standard for writing JavaScript code in Elgg.
Here we’ll describe making and executing AMD modules. The RequireJS documentation for defining modules may
also be of use.
Executing a module in the current page
Telling Elgg to load an existing module in the current page is easy:

<?php
elgg_require_js("myplugin/say_hello");
On the client-side, this will asynchronously load the module, load any dependencies, and execute the module’s defini-
tion function, if it has one.
3.14. JavaScript 107

Defining the Module
Here we define a basic module that alters the page, by passing a “definition function” to define():
// in views/default/myplugin/say_hello.js
var $ = require("jquery");
$('body').append(elgg.echo('hello_world'));
});
The module’s name is determined by the view name, which here is myplugin/say_hello.js. We strip the .js
extension, leaving myplugin/say_hello.
Warning: The definition function must have one argument named require.
Making modules dependent on other modules
Below we refactor a bit so that the module depends on a new myplugin/hello module to provide the greeting:
// in views/default/myplugin/hello.js
return elgg.echo('hello_world');
});
// in views/default/myplugin/say_hello.js
var $ = require("jquery");
var hello = require("myplugin/hello");
$('body').append(hello);
});
Passing settings to modules
The elgg.data plugin hooks
The elgg module provides an object elgg.data which is populated from two server side hooks:
• elgg.data, site: This filters an associative array of site-specific data passed to the client and cached.
• elgg.data, page: This filters an associative array of uncached, page-specific data passed to the client.
Let’s pass some data to a module:
<?php
function myplugin_config_site($hook, $type, $value, $params) {

// this will be cached client-side
$value['myplugin']['api'] = elgg_get_site_url() . 'myplugin-api';

$value['myplugin']['key'] = 'none';
return $value;
}
function myplugin_config_page($hook, $type, $value, $params) {

if ($user) {
$value['myplugin']['key'] = $user->myplugin_api_key;
return $value;
}
}
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('elgg.data', 'site', 'myplugin_config_site');

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('elgg.data', 'page', 'myplugin_config_page');
var api = elgg.data.myplugin.api;

var key = elgg.data.myplugin.key; // "none" or a user's key
// ...
});
Note: In elgg.data, page data overrides site data. Also note json_encode() is used to copy data client-side,
so the data must be JSON-encodable.
Making a config module
You can use a PHP-based module to pass values from the server. To make the module myplugin/settings, create
the view file views/default/myplugin/settings.js.php (note the double extension .js.php).
<?php
// this will be cached client-side

$settings = [
'api' => elgg_get_site_url() . 'myplugin-api',
'key' => null,
];
?>
define(<?php echo json_encode($settings); ?>);
You must also manually register the view as an external resource:

<?php
// note the view name does not include ".php"
elgg_register_simplecache_view('myplugin/settings.js');
Note: The PHP view is cached, so you should treat the output as static (the same for all users) and avoid session-
specific logic.

Setting the URL of a module
You may have an AMD script outside your views you wish to make available as a module.
The best way to accomplish this is by configuring the path to the file using the views.php file in the root of your
plugin:
<?php // views.php
return [
'default' => [
'underscore.js' => 'vendor/bower-asset/underscore/underscore.min.js',
],
];
If you’ve copied the script directly into your plugin instead of managing it with Composer, you can use something like
this instead:
<?php // views.php
return [
'default' => [
'underscore.js' => __DIR__ . '/bower_components/underscore/underscore.min.js',
],
];
That’s it! Elgg will now load this file whenever the “underscore” module is requested.
Using traditional JS libraries as modules
It’s possible to support JavaScript libraries that do not declare themselves as AMD modules (i.e. they declare global
variables instead) if you shim them by setting exports and deps in elgg_define_js:
// set the path, define its dependencies, and what value it returns
elgg_define_js('jquery.form', [
'deps' => ['jquery'],
'exports' => 'jQuery.fn.ajaxForm',
]);
When this is requested client-side:

1. The jQuery module is loaded, as it’s marked as a dependency.
2. https://elgg.example.org/cache/125235034/views/default/jquery.form.js is
loaded and executed.
3. The value of window.jQuery.fn.ajaxForm is returned by the module.
Warning: Calls to elgg_define_js() must be in an init, system event handler.
Some things to note
1. Do not use elgg.provide() anymore nor other means to attach code to elgg or other global objects. Use
modules.
2. Return the value of the module instead of adding to a global variable.
3. Static (.js,.css,etc.) files are automatically minified and cached by Elgg’s simplecache system.

4. The configuration is also cached in simplecache, and should not rely on user-specific values like
get_language().
3.14.2 Booting your plugin
To add functionality to each page, or make sure your hook handlers are registered early enough, you may create a boot
module for your plugin, with the name boot/<plugin_id>.
// in views/default/boot/example.js
var Plugin = require("elgg/Plugin");
// plugin logic
function my_init() { ... }
return new Plugin({

// executed in order of plugin priority
init: function () {
elgg.register_hook_handler("init", "system", my_init, 400);
}
});
});
When your plugin is active, this module will automatically be loaded on each page. Other modules can depend on
elgg/init to make sure all boot modules are loaded.
Each boot module must return an instance of elgg/Plugin. The constructor must receive an object with a function
in the init key. The init function will be called in the order of the plugin in Elgg’s admin area.
Note: Though not strictly necessary, you may want to use the init, system event to control when your initial-
ization code runs with respect to other modules.
Warning: A boot module cannot depend on the modules elgg/init or elgg/ready.
3.14.3 Modules provided with Elgg
Modules jquery and jquery-ui
You must depend on these modules to use $ or $.ui methods. In the future Elgg may stop loading these by default.
Module elgg
elgg.echo()
Translate interface text
elgg.echo('example:text', ['arg1']);
elgg.system_message()
Display a status message to the user.

elgg.system_message(elgg.echo('success'));
elgg.register_error()
Display an error message to the user.
elgg.register_error(elgg.echo('error'));
elgg.normalize_url()
Normalize a URL relative to the elgg root:
// "http://localhost/elgg/blog"
elgg.normalize_url('/blog');
elgg.forward()
Redirect to a new page.
elgg.forward('/blog');
This function automatically normalizes the URL.

elgg.parse_url()
Parse a URL into its component parts:
// returns {
// fragment: "fragment",
// host: "community.elgg.org",
// path: "/file.php",
// query: "arg=val"
// }
elgg.parse_url('http://community.elgg.org/file.php?arg=val#fragment');
elgg.get_page_owner_guid()
Get the GUID of the current page’s owner.
elgg.register_hook_handler()
Register a hook handler with the event system. For best results, do this in a plugin boot module.
// boot module: /views/default/boot/example.js
define(function (require) {
var Plugin = require('elgg/Plugin');
elgg.register_hook_handler('foo', 'bar', function () { ... });
return new Plugin();

});
elgg.trigger_hook()
Emit a hook event in the event system. For best results depend on the elgg/init module.
// old
value = elgg.trigger_hook('my_plugin:filter', 'value', {}, value);
require('elgg/init');

value = elgg.trigger_hook('my_plugin:filter', 'value', {}, value);

});
elgg.security.refreshToken()
Force a refresh of all XSRF tokens on the page.
This is automatically called every 5 minutes by default.
This requires a valid security token in 1.8, but not in 1.9.
The user will be warned if their session has expired.
elgg.security.addToken()
Add a security token to an object, URL, or query string:
// returns {
// __elgg_token: "1468dc44c5b437f34423e2d55acfdd87",
// __elgg_ts: 1328143779,
// other: "data"
// }
elgg.security.addToken({'other': 'data'});
// returns: "action/add?__elgg_ts=1328144079&__elgg_token=55fd9c2d7f5075d11e722358afd5fde2"
elgg.security.addToken("action/add");
// returns "?arg=val&__elgg_ts=1328144079&__elgg_token=55fd9c2d7f5075d11e722358afd5fde2"
elgg.security.addToken("?arg=val");
elgg.get_logged_in_user_entity()
Returns the logged in user as an JS ElggUser object.
elgg.get_logged_in_user_guid()
Returns the logged in user’s guid.
elgg.is_logged_in()
True if the user is logged in.
elgg.is_admin_logged_in()
True if the user is logged in and is an admin.
elgg.config.get_language()
Get the current page’s language.
There are a number of configuration values set in the elgg object:
// The root of the website.
elgg.config.wwwroot;
// The default site language.
elgg.config.language;
// The current page's viewtype
elgg.config.viewtype;
// The Elgg version (YYYYMMDDXX).
elgg.config.version;
// The Elgg release (X.Y.Z).
elgg.config.release;

Module elgg/Ajax
See the Ajax page for details.
Module elgg/init
elgg/init loads and initializes all boot modules in priority order and triggers the [init, system] hook.
Require this module to make sure all plugins are ready.
Module elgg/Plugin
Used to create a boot module.
Module elgg/ready
elgg/ready loads and initializes all plugin boot modules in priority order.
Require this module to make sure all plugins are ready.
Module elgg/spinner
The elgg/spinner module can be used to create an Ajax loading indicator fixed to the top of the window.
var spinner = require('elgg/spinner');
elgg.action('friend/add', {
beforeSend: spinner.start,
complete: spinner.stop,
success: function (json) {
// ...
}
});
});
Note: The elgg/Ajax module uses the spinner by default.
Module elgg/popup
The elgg/popup module can be used to display an overlay positioned relatively to its anchor (trigger).
The elgg/popup module is loaded by default, and binding a popup module to an anchor is as simple as adding
rel="popup" attribute and defining target module with a href (or data-href) attribute. Popup module posi-
tioning can be defined with data-position attribute of the trigger element.
echo elgg_format_element('div', [
'class' => 'elgg-module-popup hidden',
'id' => 'popup-module',
], 'Popup module content');
// Simple anchor

'href' => '#popup-module',
'text' => 'Show popup',
'rel' => 'popup',
]);
// Button with custom positioning of the popup

echo elgg_format_element('button', [
'rel' => 'popup',
'class' => 'elgg-button elgg-button-submit',
'text' => 'Show popup',
'data-href' => '#popup-module',
'data-position' => json_encode([
'my' => 'center bottom',
'at' => 'center top',
]),
]);
The elgg/popup module allows you to build out more complex UI/UX elements. You can open and close popup
modules programmatically:
var $ = require('jquery');
$(document).on('click', '.elgg-button-popup', function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var $trigger = $(this);

var $target = $('#my-target');
var $close = $target.find('.close');
require(['elgg/popup'], function(popup) {
popup.open($trigger, $target, {
'collision': 'fit none'
});
$close.on('click', popup.close);
});
});
});
You can use getOptions, ui.popup plugin hook to manipulate the position of the popup before it has been
opened. You can use jQuery open and close events to manipulate popup module after it has been opened or closed.

$('#my-target').on('open', function() {
var $module = $(this);
var $trigger = $module.data('trigger');
elgg.ajax('ajax/view/my_module', {
beforeSend: function() {
$trigger.hide();
$module.html('').addClass('elgg-ajax-loader');
},
success: function(output) {

$module.removeClass('elgg-ajax-loader').html(output);
}
});
}).on('close', function() {
var $trigger = $(this).data('trigger');
$trigger.show();
});
});
Open popup modules will always contain the following data that can be accessed via $.data():
• trigger - jQuery element used to trigger the popup module to open
• position - An object defining popup module position that was passed to $.position()
By default, target element will be appended to $(’body’) thus altering DOM hierarchy. If you need to preserve
the DOM position of the popup module, you can add .elgg-popup-inline class to your trigger.
Module elgg/widgets
Plugins that load a widget layout via Ajax should initialize via this module:
require(['elgg/widgets'], function (widgets) {
widgets.init();
});
Module elgg/lightbox
Elgg is distributed with the Colorbox jQuery library. Please go to http://www.jacklmoore.com/colorbox for more
information on the options of this lightbox.
Use the following classes to bind your anchor elements to a lightbox:
• elgg-lightbox - loads an HTML resource
• elgg-lightbox-photo - loads an image resource (should be used to avoid displaying raw image bytes
instead of an img tag)
• elgg-lightbox-inline - displays an inline HTML element in a lightbox
• elgg-lightbox-iframe - loads a resource in an iframe
You may apply colorbox options to an individual elgg-lightbox element by setting the attribute
data-colorbox-opts to a JSON settings object.
'text' => 'Open lightbox',
'href' => 'ajax/view/my_view',
'class' => 'elgg-lightbox',
'data-colorbox-opts' => json_encode([
'width' => '300px',
])
]);
Use "getOptions", "ui.lightbox" plugin hook to filter options passed to $.colorbox() whenever a
lightbox is opened. Note that the hook handler should depend on elgg/init AMD module.
elgg/lightbox AMD module should be used to open and close the lightbox programmatically:

var lightbox = require('elgg/lightbox');
var spinner = require('elgg/spinner');
lightbox.open({
html: '<p>Hello world!</p>',
onClosed: function() {
lightbox.open({
onLoad: spinner.start,
onComplete: spinner.stop,
photo: true,
href: 'https://elgg.org/cache/1457904417/default/community_theme/graphics/logo.png',
});
}
});
});
To support gallery sets (via rel attribute), you need to bind colorbox directly to a specific selector (note that this will
ignore data-colorbox-opts on all elements in a set):
require(['elgg/lightbox'], function(lightbox) {
var options = {
photo: true,
width: 500
};
lightbox.bind('a[rel="my-gallery"]', options, false); // 3rd attribute ensures binding is done wit
});
You can also resize the lightbox programmatically if needed:

var lightbox = require('elgg/lightbox');
lightbox.resize({
width: '300px'
});
});
Module elgg/ckeditor
This module can be used to add WYSIWYG editor to a textarea (requires ckeditor plugin to be enabled). Note that
WYSIWYG will be automatically attached to all instances of .elgg-input-longtext.
require(['elgg/ckeditor'], function (elggCKEditor) {
elggCKEditor.bind('#my-text-area');
// Toggle CKEditor
elggCKEditor.toggle('#my-text-area');
// Focus on CKEditor input

elggCKEditor.focus('#my-text-area');
// or
$('#my-text-area').trigger('focus');
// Reset CKEditor input

elggCKEditor.reset('#my-text-area');
// or
$('#my-text-area').trigger('reset');

});
Inline tabs component
Inline tabs component fires an open event whenever a tabs is open and, in case of ajax tabs, finished loading:
// Add custom animation to tab content
require(['jquery', 'elgg/ready'], function($) {
$(document).on('open', '.theme-sandbox-tab-callback', function() {
$(this).find('a').text('Clicked!');
$(this).data('target').hide().show('slide', {
duration: 2000,
direction: 'right',
complete: function() {
alert('Thank you for clicking. We hope you enjoyed the show!');
$(this).css('display', ''); // .show() adds display property
}
});
});
});
3.14.4 Traditional scripts
Although we highly recommend using AMD modules, you can register scripts with elgg_register_js:
elgg_register_js('jquery', $cdnjs_url);
This will override any URLs previously registered under this name.
Load a library on the current page with elgg_load_js:
elgg_load_js('jquery');
This will load the library in the page footer. You must use the require() function to depend on modules like elgg
and jquery.
Warning:
Using inline scripts is NOT SUPPORTED because:
• They are not testable (maintainability)
• They are not cacheable (performance)
• They prevent use of Content-Security-Policy (security)
• They prevent scripts from being loaded with defer or async (performance)
Inline scripts in core or bundled plugins are considered legacy bugs.
3.14.5 Hooks
The JS engine has a hooks system similar to the PHP engine’s plugin hooks: hooks are triggered and plugins can
register functions to react or alter information. There is no concept of Elgg events in the JS engine; everything in the
JS engine is implemented as a hook.

Registering hook handlers
Handler functions are registered using elgg.register_hook_handler(). Multiple handlers can be registered
for the same hook.
The following example registers the handleFoo function for the foo, bar hook.
var Plugin = require('elgg/Plugin');
function handleFoo(hook, type, params, value) {

// do something
}
elgg.register_hook_handler('foo', 'bar', handleFoo);
return new Plugin();

});
The handler function
The handler will receive 4 arguments:

• hook - The hook name
• type - The hook type
• params - An object or set of parameters specific to the hook
• value - The current value
The value will be passed through each hook. Depending on the hook, callbacks can simply react or alter data.
Triggering custom hooks
Plugins can trigger their own hooks:

require('elgg/init');
elgg.trigger_hook('name', 'type', {params}, "value");

});
Note: Be aware of timing. If you don’t depend on elgg/init, other plugins may not have had a chance to register their
handlers.
Available hooks
init, system Plugins should register their init functions for this hook. It is fired after Elgg’s JS is loaded and all plugin
boot modules have been initialized. Depend on the elgg/init module to be sure this has completed.
ready, system This hook is fired when the system has fully booted (after init). Depend on the elgg/ready module
to be sure this has completed.

getOptions, ui.popup This hook is fired for pop up displays ("rel"="popup") and allows for customized place-
ment options.
getOptions, ui.lightbox This hook can be used to filter options passed to $.colorbox()
config, ckeditor This filters the CKEditor config object. Register for this hook in a plugin boot module. The defaults
can be seen in the module elgg/ckeditor/config.
prepare, ckeditor This hook can be used to decorate CKEDITOR global. You can use this hook to register new
CKEditor plugins and add event bindings.
ajax_request_data, * This filters request data sent by the elgg/Ajax module. See Ajax for details.
ajax_response_data, * This filters the response data returned to users of the elgg/Ajax module. See Ajax for
details.
insert, editor This hook is triggered by the embed plugin and can be used to filter content before it is inserted into the
textarea. This hook can also be used by WYSIWYG editors to insert content using their own API (in this case
the handler should return false). See ckeditor plugin for an example.
3.14.6 Third-party assets
We recommend managing third-party scripts and styles with Composer. Elgg core uses
fxp/composer-asset-plugin for this purpose. This plugin allows you to pull dependencies from the
Bower or NPM package repositories, but using the Composer command-line tool.
For example, to include jQuery, you could run the following Composer commands:
composer global require fxp/composer-asset-plugin:~1.1.4
composer require bower-asset/jquery:~2.0
Note: fxp/composer-asset-plugin must be installed globally! See

https://github.com/francoispluchino/composer-asset-plugin for more info.
3.15 Menus
Elgg contains helper code to build menus throughout the site.

Every single menu requires a name, as does every single menu item. These are required in order to allow easy
overriding and manipulation, as well as to provide hooks for theming.
Contents
• Basic usage
• Advanced usage
• Creating a new menu
• Theming
• JavaScript
3.15.1 Basic usage
Basic functionalities can be achieved through these two functions:

• elgg_register_menu_item() to add an item to a menu

• elgg_unregister_menu_item() to remove an item from a menu
You normally want to call them from your plugin’s init function.
Examples
// Add a new menu item to the site main menu

elgg_register_menu_item('site', array(
'name' => 'itemname',
'text' => 'This is text of the item',
'href' => '/item/url',
));
// Remove the "Elgg" logo from the topbar menu

elgg_unregister_menu_item('topbar', 'elgg_logo');
3.15.2 Advanced usage
You can get more control over menus by using plugin hooks and the public methods provided by the ElggMenuItem
class.
There are two hooks that can be used to modify a menu:
• ’register’, ’menu:<menu name>’ to add or modify items (especially in dynamic menus)
• ’prepare’, ’menu:<menu name>’ to modify the structure of the menu before it is displayed
When you register a plugin hook handler, replace the <menu name> part with the internal name of the menu.
The third parameter passed into a menu handler contains all the menu items that have been registered so far by Elgg
core and other enabled plugins. In the handler we can loop through the menu items and use the class methods to
interact with the properties of the menu item.
Examples
Example 1: Change the URL for menu item called “albums” in the owner_block menu:
/**
* Initialize the plugin
*/
// Register a plugin hook handler for the owner_block menu
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('register', 'menu:owner_block', 'my_owner_block_menu_handle
}
/**
* Change the URL of the "Albums" menu item in the owner_block menu
*/
function my_owner_block_menu_handler($hook, $type, $items, $params) {
$owner = $params['entity'];
// Owner can be either user or a group, so we

// need to take both URLs into consideration:
switch ($owner->getType()) {
case 'user':
3.15. Menus 121

$url = "album/owner/{$owner->guid}";
break;
case 'group':
$url = "album/group/{$owner->guid}";
break;
}
foreach ($items as $key => $item) {

if ($item->getName() == 'albums') {
// Set the new URL
$item->setURL($url);
break;
}
}
return $items;
}
Example 2: Modify the entity menu for the ElggBlog objects

• Remove the thumb icon
• Change the “Edit” text into a custom icon
/**
*/
// Register a plugin hook handler for the entity menu
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('register', 'menu:entity', 'my_entity_menu_handler');
}
/**
* Customize the entity menu for ElggBlog objects
*/
function my_entity_menu_handler($hook, $type, $items, $params) {
// The entity can be found from the $params parameter
$entity = $params['entity'];
// We want to modify only the ElggBlog objects, so we

// return immediately if the entity is something else
if (!$entity instanceof ElggBlog) {
return $menu;
}
foreach ($items as $key => $item) {

switch ($item->getName()) {
case 'likes':
// Remove the "likes" menu item
unset($items[$key]);
break;
case 'edit':
// Change the "Edit" text into a custom icon
$item->setText(elgg_view_icon('pencil'));
break;
}
}
return $items;

3.15.3 Creating a new menu
Elgg provides multiple different menus by default. Sometimes you may however need some menu items that don’t
fit in any of the existing menus. If this is the case, you can create your very own menu with the elgg_view_menu()
function. You must call the function from the view, where you want to menu to be displayed.
Example: Display a menu called “my_menu” that displays it’s menu items in alphapetical order:
// in a resource view
echo elgg_view_menu('my_menu', array('sort_by' => 'title'));
You can now add new items to the menu like this:
// in plugin init
elgg_register_menu_item('my_menu', array(
'name' => 'my_page',
'href' => 'path/to/my_page',
'text' => elgg_echo('my_plugin:my_page'),
));
Furthermore it is now possible to modify the menu using the hooks ’register’, ’menu:my_menu’ and
’prepare’, ’menu:my_menu’.
3.15.4 Theming
The menu name, section names, and item names are all embedded into the HTML as CSS classes (normalized to
contain only hyphens, rather that underscores or colons). This increases the size of the markup slightly but provides
themers with a high degree of control and flexibility when styling the site.
Example: The following would be the output of the foo menu with sections alt and default containing items
baz and bar respectively.
<ul class="elgg-menu elgg-menu-foo elgg-menu-foo-alt">
<li class="elgg-menu-item elgg-menu-item-baz"></li>
</ul>
<ul class="elgg-menu elgg-menu-foo elgg-menu-foo-default">
<li class="elgg-menu-item elgg-menu-item-bar"></li>
</ul>
3.15.5 JavaScript
It is common that menu items rely on JavaScript. You can bind client-side events to menu items by placing your
JavaScript into AMD module and defining the requirement during the registration.
elgg_register_menu_item('my_menu', array(
'name' => 'hide_on_click',
'href' => '#',
'text' => elgg_echo('hide:on:click'),
'item_class' => '.hide-on-click',
'deps' => ['navigation/menu/item/hide_on_click'],
));
3.15. Menus 123

// in navigation/menu/item/hide_on_click.js
$(document).on('click', '.hide-on-click', function(e) {

e.preventDefault();
$(this).hide();
});
});
3.16 Notifications
There are two ways to send notifications in Elgg:

• Instant notifications
• Event-based notifications send using a notifications queue
Contents
• Instant notifications
• Enqueued notifications
• Registering a new notification method
• Sending the notifications using your own method
• Subscriptions
3.16.1 Instant notifications
The generic method to send a notification to a user is via the function notify_user(). It is normally used when we want
to notify only a single user. Notification like this might for example inform that someone has liked or commented the
user’s post.
The function usually gets called in an action file.
Example:
In this example a user ($user) is triggering an action to rate a post created by another user ($owner). After saving
the rating (ElggAnnotation $rating) to database, we could use the following code to send a notification about
the new rating to the owner.
// Subject of the notification
$subject = elgg_echo('ratings:notification:subject', array(), $owner->language);
// Summary of the notification

$summary = elgg_echo('ratings:notification:summary', array($user->name), $owner->language);
// Body of the notification message

$body = elgg_echo('ratings:notification:body', array(
$user->name,
$owner->name,
$rating->getValue() // A value between 1-5
), $owner->language);

$params = array(
'object' => $rating,
'action' => 'create',
'summary' => $summary
);
// Send the notification

notify_user($owner->guid, $user->guid, $subject, $body, $params);
Note: The language used by the recipient isn’t necessarily the same as the language of the person who triggers
the notification. Therefore you must always remember to pass the recipient’s language as the third parameter to
elgg_echo().
Note: The ’summary’ parameter is meant for notification plugins that only want to display a short message instead
of both the subject and the body. Therefore the summary should be terse but still contain all necessary information.
3.16.2 Enqueued notifications
On large sites there may be many users who have subscribed to receive notifications about a particular event. Sending
notifications immediately when a user triggers such an event might remarkably slow down page loading speed. This
is why sending of such notifications shoud be left for Elgg’s notification queue.
New notification events can be registered with the elgg_register_notification_event() function. Notifications about
registered events will be sent automatically to all subscribed users.
This is the workflow of the notifications system:
1. Someone does an action that triggers an event within Elgg
• The action can be create, update or delete
• The target of the action can be any instance of the ElggEntity class (e.g. a Blog post)
2. The notifications system saves this event into a notifications queue in the database
3. When the pluging hook handler for the one-minute interval gets triggered, the event is taken from the queue and
it gets processed
4. Subscriptions are fetched for the user who triggered the event
• By default this includes all the users who have enabled any notification method for the user at
www.site.com/notifications/personal/<username>
5. Plugins are allowed to alter the subscriptions using the [get, subscriptions] hook
6. Plugins are allowed to terminate notifications queue processing with the [send:before,
notifications] hook
7. Plugins are allowed to alter the notification parameters with the [prepare, notification] hook
8. Plugins are allowed to alter the notification subject/message/summary with the [prepare,
notification:<action>:<type>:<subtype>] hook
9. Plugins are allowed to format notification subject/message/summary for individual delivery methods with
[format, notification:<method>] hook
10. Notifications are sent to each subscriber using the methods they have chosen
3.16. Notifications 125

• Plugins can take over or prevent sending of each individual notification with the [send,
notification:<method>] hook
11. The [send:after, notifications] hook is triggered for the event after all notifications have been sent
Example
Tell Elgg to send notifications when a new object of subtype “photo” is created:
/**
* Initialize the photos plugin
*/
function photos_init() {
elgg_register_notification_event('object', 'photo', array('create'));
}
Note: In order to send the event-based notifications you must have the one-minute CRON interval configured.
Contents of the notification message can be defined with the ’prepare’,

’notification:[action]:[type]:[subtype]’ hook.
Example
Tell Elgg to use the function photos_prepare_notification() to format the contents of the notification
when a new objects of subtype ‘photo’ is created:
/**
* Initialize the photos plugin
*/
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('prepare', 'notification:create:object:photo', 'photos_prepare_
}
/**
* Prepare a notification message about a new photo
*
* @param string $hook Hook name
* @param string $type Hook type
* @param Elgg_Notifications_Notification $notification The notification to prepare
* @param array $params Hook parameters
* @return Elgg_Notifications_Notification
*/
function photos_prepare_notification($hook, $type, $notification, $params) {
$entity = $params['event']->getObject();
$owner = $params['event']->getActor();
$recipient = $params['recipient'];
$language = $params['language'];
$method = $params['method'];
// Title for the notification

$notification->subject = elgg_echo('photos:notify:subject', array($entity->title), $language);
// Message body for the notification

$notification->body = elgg_echo('photos:notify:body', array(

$owner->name,
$entity->title,
$entity->getExcerpt(),
$entity->getURL()
), $language);
// Short summary about the notification

$notification->summary = elgg_echo('photos:notify:summary', array($entity->title), $language);
return $notification;
}
Note: Make sure the notification will be in the correct language by passing the reciepient’s language into the
elgg_echo() function.
3.16.3 Registering a new notification method
By default Elgg has two notification methods: email and the bundled site_notifications plugin. You can register a new
notification method with the elgg_register_notification_method() function.
Example:
Register a handler that will send the notifications via SMS.

/**
*/
function sms_notifications_init () {
elgg_register_notification_method('sms');
}
After registering the new method, it will appear to the notification settings page at
www.example.com/notifications/personal/[username].
3.16.4 Sending the notifications using your own method
Besides registering the notification method, you also need to register a handler that takes care of actually sending the
SMS notifications. This happens with the ’send’, ’notification:[method]’ hook.
Example:
/**
*/
function sms_notifications_init () {
elgg_register_notification_method('sms');
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('send', 'notification:sms', 'sms_notifications_send');
}
/**
* Send an SMS notification
3.16. Notifications 127

*
* @param bool $result Has anyone sent a message yet?
* @return bool
* @access private
*/
function sms_notifications_send($hook, $type, $result, $params) {
/* @var Elgg_Notifications_Notification $message */
$message = $params['notification'];
$recipient = $message->getRecipient();
if (!$recipient || !$recipient->mobile) {
return false;
}
// (A pseudo SMS API class)

$sms = new SmsApi();
return $sms->send($recipient->mobile, $message->body);

}
3.16.5 Subscriptions
In most cases Elgg core takes care of handling the subscriptions, so notification plugins don’t usually have to alter
them.
Subscriptions can however be:
• Added using the elgg_add_subscription() function
• Removed using the elgg_remove_subscription() function
It’s possible to modify the recipients of a notification dynamically with the ’get’, ’subscriptions’ hook.
Example:
/**
*/
function discussion_init() {
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('get', 'subscriptions', 'discussion_get_subscriptions');
}
/**
* Get subscriptions for group notifications
*
* @param string $hook 'get'
* @param string $type 'subscriptions'
* @param array $subscriptions Array containing subscriptions in the form
* <user guid> => array('email', 'site', etc.)
* @return array
*/
function discussion_get_subscriptions($hook, $type, $subscriptions, $params) {

$reply = $params['event']->getObject();
if (!elgg_instanceof($reply, 'object', 'discussion_reply')) {

return $subscriptions;
}
$group_guid = $reply->getContainerEntity()->container_guid;
$group_subscribers = elgg_get_subscriptions_for_container($group_guid);
return ($subscriptions + $group_subscribers);

}
3.17 Page handler
Elgg offers a facility to manage your plugin pages via a page handler, enabling custom urls like
http://yoursite/your_plugin/section. To add a page handler to a plugin, a handler function needs
to be registered in the plugin’s start.php file with elgg_register_page_handler():
elgg_register_page_handler('your_plugin', 'your_plugin_page_handler');
The plugin’s page handler is passed two parameters:

• an array containing the sections of the URL exploded by ‘/’. With this information the handler will be able to
apply any logic necessary, for example loading the appropriate view and returning its contents.
• the handler, this is the handler that is currently used (in our example your_plugin). If you don’t register
multiple page handlers to the same function you’ll never need this.
3.17.1 Code flow
Pages in plugins should be rendered via page handlers (not by using Elgg\Application). Generally the rendering
is done by views with names starting with resources/. The program flow is something like this:
1. A user requests /plugin_name/section/entity
2. Elgg checks if plugin_name is registered to a page handler and calls that function, passing
array(’section’, ’entity’) as the first argument
3. The page handler function determines which resource view will display the page.
4. The handler uses elgg_view_resource() to render the page, also passing in any relevant info to the view
via the $vars argument.
5. The resource view combines many separate views, calls formatting functions like elgg_view_layout()
and elgg_view_page(), and then echos the final output
6. The user sees a fully rendered page
There is no syntax enforced on the URLs, but Elgg’s coding standards suggests a certain format.
3.18 Routing
Elgg has two mechanisms to respond to HTTP requests that don’t already go through the Actions and Simplecache
systems.
3.17. Page handler 129

3.18.1 URL Identifier and Segments
After removing the site URL, Elgg splits the URL path by / into an array. The first element, the identi-
fier, is shifted off, and the remaining elements are called the segments. For example, if the site URL is
http://example.com/elgg/, the URL http://example.com/elgg/blog/owner/jane?foo=123
produces:
Identifier: ’blog’. Segments: [’owner’, ’jane’]. (the query string parameters are available via
get_input())
The site URL (home page) is a special case that produces an empty string identifier and an empty segments array.
Warning: URL identifier/segments should be considered potentially dangerous user input. Elgg uses
htmlspecialchars to escapes HTML entities in them.
3.18.2 Page Handler
To handle all URLs that begin with a particular identifier, you can register a function to act as a Page handler. When
the handler is called, the segments array is passed in as the first argument.
The following code registers a page handler for “blog” URLs and shows how one might route the request to a resource
view.
elgg_register_page_handler('blog', 'blog_page_handler');
function blog_page_handler(array $segments) {

// if the URL is http://example.com/elgg/blog/view/123/my-blog-post
// $segments contains: ['view', '123', 'my-blog-post']
$subpage = elgg_extract(0, $segments);

if ($subpage === 'view') {
// use a view for the page logic to allow other plugins to easily change it
$resource = elgg_view_resource('blog/view', [
'guid' => (int)elgg_extract(1, $segments);
]);
return elgg_ok_response($resource);
}
// redirect to a different location

if ($subpage === '') {
return elgg_redirect_response('blog/all');
}
// send an error page

if ($subpage === 'owner' && !elgg_entity_exists($segments[1])) {
return elgg_error_response('User not found', 'blog/all', ELGG_HTTP_NOT_FOUND);
}
// ... handle other subpages

}

3.18.3 The route Plugin Hook
The route plugin hook is triggered before page handlers are called. The URL identifier is given as the type of the
hook. This hook can be used to add some logic before the request is handled elsewhere, or take over page rendering
completely.
Generally devs should instead use a page handler unless they need to affect a single page or a wider variety of URLs.
The following code results in /blog/all requests being completely handled by the plugin hook handler. For these
requests the blog page handler is never called.
function myplugin_blog_all_handler($hook, $type, $returnvalue, $params) {
$segments = elgg_extract('segments', $returnvalue, array());
if (isset($segments[0]) && $segments[0] === 'all') {

$title = "We're taking over!";
$content = elgg_view_layout('one_column', array(
'title' => $title,
'content' => "We can take over page rendering completely"
));
echo elgg_view_page($title, $content);
// in the route hook, return false says, "stop rendering, we've handled this request"
return false;
}
}
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('route', 'blog', 'myplugin_blog_all_handler');
Note: As of 2.1, route modification should be done in the route:rewrite hook.
3.18.4 The route:rewrite Plugin Hook
For URL rewriting, the route:rewrite hook (with similar arguments as route) is triggered very early, and allows
modifying the request URL path (relative to the Elgg site).
Here we rewrite requests for news/* to blog/*:
function myplugin_rewrite_handler($hook, $type, $value, $params) {
$value['identifier'] = 'blog';
return $value;
}
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('route:rewrite', 'news', 'myplugin_rewrite_handler');
Warning: The hook must be registered directly in your plugin start.php (the [init, system] event is
too late).
3.18.5 Routing overview
For regular pages, Elgg’s program flow is something like this:

1. A user requests http://example.com/news/owner/jane.
2. Plugins are initialized.
3.18. Routing 131

3. Elgg parses the URL to identifier news and segments [’owner’, ’jane’].
4. Elgg triggers the plugin hook route:rewrite, news (see above).
5. Elgg triggers the plugin hook route, blog (was rewritten in the rewrite hook).
6. Elgg finds a registered page handler (see above) for blog, and calls the function, passing in the segments.
7. The page handler function determines it needs to render a single user’s blog. It calls
elgg_view_resource(’blog/owner’, $vars) where $vars contains the username.
8. The resources/blog/owner view gets the username via $vars[’username’], and uses many other
views and formatting functions like elgg_view_layout() and elgg_view_page() to create the entire
HTML page.
9. The page handler echos the view HTML and returns true to indicate it handled the request.
10. PHP invokes Elgg’s shutdown sequence.
11. The user receives a fully rendered page.
Elgg’s coding standards suggest a particular URL layout, but there is no syntax enforced.
3.19 Services
Elgg uses the Elgg\Application class to load and bootstrap Elgg. In future releases this class will offer a set of
service objects for plugins to use.
Note: If you have a useful idea, you can add a new service!
3.19.1 Menus
elgg()->menus provides low-level methods for constructing menus. In general, menus should be passed to
elgg_view_menu for rendering instead of manual rendering.
3.20 Page ownership
One recurring task of any plugin will be to determine the page ownership in order to decide which actions are
allowed or not. Elgg has a number of functions related to page ownership and also offers plugin developers
flexibility by letting the plugin handle page ownership requests as well. Determining the owner of a page can
be determined with elgg_get_page_owner_guid(), which will return the GUID of the owner. Alterna-
tively, elgg_get_page_owner_entity() will retrieve the whole page owner entity. If the page already
knows who the page owner is, but the system doesn’t, the page can set the page owner by passing the GUID to
elgg_set_page_owner_guid($guid).
Note: The page owner entity can be any ElggEntity. If you wish to only apply some setting in case of a user or a
group make sure you check that you have the correct entity.

3.20.1 Custom page owner handlers
Plugin developers can create page owner handlers, which could be necessary in certain cases, for
example when integrating third party functionality. The handler will be a function which will
need to get registered with elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler(’page_owner’, ’system’,
’your_page_owner_function_name’); . The handler will only need to return a value (an integer GUID)
when it knows for certain who the page owner is.
By default, the system uses default_page_owner_handler() to determine the page_owner from the following
elements:
• The username URL parameter
• The owner_guid URL parameter
• The URL path
It then passes off to any page owner handlers defined using the plugin hook. If no page owner can be determined, the
page owner is set to 0, which is the same as the logged out user.
3.21 Permissions Check
Warning: As stated in the page, this method works only for granting write access to entities. You cannot use
this method to retrieve or view entities for which the user does not have read access.
Elgg provides a mechanism of overriding write permissions check through the permissions_check plugin hook . This
is useful for allowing plugin write to all accessible entities regardless of access settings. Entities that are hidden,
however, will still be unavailable to the plugin.
3.21.1 Hooking permissions_check
In your plugin, you must register the plugin hook for permissions_check.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('permissions_check', 'all', 'myplugin_permissions_check');
3.21.2 The override function
Now create the function that will be called by the permissions check hook. In this function we determine if the entity
(in parameters) has write access. Since it is important to keep Elgg secure, write access should be given only after
checking a variety of situations including page context, logged in user, etc. Note that this function can return 3 values:
true if the entity has write access, false if the entity does not, and null if this plugin doesn’t care and the security system
should consult other plugins.
function myplugin_permissions_check($hook_name, $entity_type, $return_value, $parameters) {
$has_access = determine_access_somehow();
if ($has_access === true) {

return true;
} else if ($has_access === false) {
return false;
}
3.21. Permissions Check 133

return null;
}
3.21.3 Full Example
This is a full example using the context to determine if the entity has write access.
<?php
function myaccess_init() {
// Register cron hook
if (!elgg_get_plugin_setting('period', 'myaccess')) {
elgg_set_plugin_setting('period', 'fiveminute', 'myaccess');
}
// override permissions for the myaccess context

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('permissions_check', 'all', 'myaccess_permissions_check');
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('cron', elgg_get_plugin_setting('period', 'myaccess'), 'myaccess

}
/**
* Hook for cron event.
*/
function myaccess_cron($event, $object_type, $object) {
elgg_push_context('myaccess_cron');
// returns all entities regardless of access permissions.

// will NOT return hidden entities.
$entities = get_entities();
elgg_pop_context();
}
/**
* Overrides default permissions for the myaccess context
*/
function myaccess_permissions_check($hook_name, $entity_type, $return_value, $parameters) {
if (elgg_in_context('myaccess_cron')) {
return true;
}
return null;
}
// Initialise plugin
register_elgg_event_handler('init', 'system', 'myaccess_init');
?>
3.22 Plugin settings
You need to perform some extra steps if your plugin needs settings to be saved and controlled via the administration
panel:

• Create a file in your plugin’s default view folder called plugins/your_plugin/settings.php, where
your_plugin is the name of your plugin’s directory in the mod hierarchy
• Fill this file with the form elements you want to display together with internationalised text labels
• Set the name attribute in your form components to params[‘varname‘] where varname is the name of
the variable. These will be saved as private settings attached to a plugin entity. So, if your variable is called
params[myparameter] your plugin (which is also passed to this view as $vars[’entity’]) will be
called $vars[’entity’]->myparameter
An example settings.php would look like:
<p>
<?php echo elgg_echo('myplugin:settings:limit'); ?>
<select name="params[limit]">
<option value="5" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 5) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>5</optio
<option value="8" <?php if ((!$vars['entity']->limit) || ($vars['entity']->limit == 8)) echo "
<option value="12" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 12) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>12</op
<option value="15" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 15) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>15</op
</select>
</p>
Note: You don’t need to add a save button or the form, this will be handled by the framework.
Note: You cannot use form components that send no value when “off.” These include radio inputs and check boxes.
3.22.1 User settings
Your plugin might need to store per user settings too, and you would like to have your plugin’s options to appear in the
user’s settings page. This is also easy to do and follows the same pattern as setting up the global plugin configuration
explained earlier. The only difference is that instead of using a settings file you will use usersettings. So,
the path to the user edit view for your plugin would be plugins/your_plugin/usersettings.php.
Note: The title of the usersettings form will default to the plugin name. If you want to change this, add a translation
for plugin_id:usersettings:title.
3.22.2 Retrieving settings in your code
To retrieve settings from your code use:

$setting = elgg_get_plugin_setting($name, $plugin_id);
or for user settings

$user_setting = elgg_get_plugin_user_setting($name, $user_guid, $plugin_id);
where:
• $name Is the value you want to retrieve
• $user_guid Is the user you want to retrieve these for (defaults to the currently logged in user)
3.22. Plugin settings 135

• $plugin_name Is the name of the plugin (detected if run from within a plugin)
3.22.3 Setting values while in code
Values may also be set from within your plugin code, to do this use one of the following functions:
elgg_set_plugin_setting($name, $value, $plugin_id);
or
elgg_set_plugin_user_setting($name, $value, $user_guid, $plugin_id);
Warning: The $plugin_id needs to be provided when setting plugin (user)settings.
3.22.4 Default plugin (user) settings
If a plugin or a user not have a setting stored in the database, you sometimes have the need for a certain default value.
You can pass this when using the getter functions.
$user_setting = elgg_get_plugin_user_setting($name, $user_guid, $plugin_id, $default);
$plugin_setting = elgg_get_plugin_setting($name, $plugin_id, $default);
Alternatively you can also provide default plugin and user settings in the elgg-plugin.php file.
<?php
return [
'settings' => [
'key' => 'value',
],
'user_settings' => [
'key' => 'value',
],
];
3.23 River
Elgg natively supports the “river”, an activity stream containing descriptions of activities performed by site members.
This page gives an overview of adding events to the river in an Elgg plugin.
3.23.1 Pushing river items
Items are pushed to the activity river through a function call, which you must include in your plugins for the items to
appear.
Here we add a river item telling that a user has created a new blog post:
<?php
elgg_create_river_item(array(
'view' => 'river/object/blog/create',

'action_type' => 'create',

'subject_guid' => $blog->owner_guid,
'object_guid' => $blog->getGUID(),
));
All available parameters:

• view => STR The view that will handle the river item (must exist)
• action_type => STR An arbitrary string to define the action (e.g. ‘create’, ‘update’, ‘vote’, ‘review’, etc)
• subject_guid => INT The GUID of the entity doing the action
• object_guid => INT The GUID of the entity being acted upon
• target_guid => INT The GUID of the the object entity’s container (optional)
• access_id => INT The access ID of the river item (default: same as the object)
• posted => INT The UNIX epoch timestamp of the river item (default: now)
• annotation_id => INT The annotation ID associated with this river entry (optional)
When an item is deleted or changed, the river item will be updated automatically.
3.23.2 River views
In order for events to appear in the river you need to provide a corresponding view with the name specified in the
function above.
We recommend /river/{type}/{subtype}/{action}, where:
• {type} is the entity type of the content we’re interested in (object for objects, user for users, etc)
• {subtype} is the entity subtype of the content we’re interested in (blog for blogs, photo_album for albums,
etc)
• {action} is the action that took place (‘’create’‘, ‘’update’‘, etc)
River item information will be passed in an object called $vars[’item’], which contains the following important
parameters:
• $vars[’item’]->subject_guid The GUID of the user performing the action
• $vars[’item’]->object_guid The GUID of the entity being acted upon
Timestamps etc will be generated for you.
For example, the blog plugin uses the following code for its river view:
<?php
$object = $vars['item']->getObjectEntity();
$excerpt = $object->excerpt ? $object->excerpt : $object->description;

$excerpt = strip_tags($excerpt);
$excerpt = elgg_get_excerpt($excerpt);
echo elgg_view('river/elements/layout', array(

'item' => $vars['item'],
'message' => $excerpt,
));
3.23. River 137

3.24 Themes
Customize the look and feel of Elgg.

A theme is a type of plugin that overrides display aspects of Elgg.
This guide assumes you are familiar with:
• Plugins
• Views
Contents
• Create your plugin
• Customize the CSS
– View extension
– View overloading
– Icons
• Tools
• Customizing the front page
3.24.1 Create your plugin
Create your plugin as described in the developer guide.

• Create a new directory under mod/
• Create a new start.php
• Create a manifest.xml file describing your theme.
3.24.2 Customize the CSS
As of Elgg 1.8, the css is split into several files based on what aspects of the site you’re theming. This allows you to
tackle them one at a time, giving you a chance to make real progress without getting overwhelmed.
Here is a list of the existing CSS views:
• elements/buttons.css: Provides a way to style all the different kinds of buttons your site will use. There are 5
kinds of buttons that plugins will expect to be available: action, cancel, delete, submit, and special.
• elements/chrome.css: This file has some miscellaneous look-and-feel classes.
• elements/components.css: This file contains many “css objects” that are used all over the site: media block, list,
gallery, table, owner block, system messages, river, tags, photo, and comments.
• elements/forms.css: This file determines what your forms and input elements will look like.
• elements/icons.css: Contains styles for the icons and avatars used on your site.
• elements/layout.css: Determines what your page layout will look like: sidebars, page wrapper, main body,
header, footer, etc.
• elements/modules.css: Lots of content in Elgg is displayed in boxes with a title and a content body. We called
these modules. There are a few kinds: info, aside, featured, dropdown, popup, widget. Widget styles are
included in this file too, since they are a subset of modules.

• elements/navigation.css: This file determines what all your menus will look like.
• elements/typography.css: This file determines what the content and headings of your site will look like.
• rtl.css: Custom rules for users viewing your site in a right-to-left language.
• admin.css: A completely separate theme for the admin area (usually not overridden).
• elgg.css: Compiles all the core elements/* files into one file (DO NOT OVERRIDE).
• elements/core.css: Contains base styles for the more complicated “css objects”. If you find yourself wanting to
override this, you probably need to report a bug to Elgg core instead (DO NOT OVERRIDE).
• elements/reset.css: Contains a reset stylesheet that forces elements to have the same default
View extension
There are two ways you can modify views:

The first way is to add extra stuff to an existing view via the extend view function from within your start.php’s
initialization function.
For example, the following start.php will add mytheme/css to Elgg’s core css file:
<?php
function mytheme_init() {
elgg_extend_view('elgg.css', 'mytheme/css');
}
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'mytheme_init');

?>
View overloading
Plugins can have a view hierarchy, any file that exists here will replace any files in the existing core view hierarchy...
so for example, if my plugin has a file:
/mod/myplugin/views/default/elements/typography.css
it will replace:
/views/default/elements/typography.css
But only when the plugin is active.
This gives you total control over the way Elgg looks and behaves. It gives you the option to either slightly modify or
totally replace existing views.
Icons
As of Elgg 2.0 the default Elgg icons come from the FontAwesome library. You can use any of these icons by calling:
elgg_view_icon(’icon-name’);
icon-name can be any of the FontAwesome icons without the fa--prefix.
3.24. Themes 139

3.24.3 Tools
Starting in Elgg 1.8, we’ve provided you with some development tools to help you with theming: Turn on the “Devel-
opers” plugin and go to the “Theme Preview” page to start tracking your theme’s progress.
3.24.4 Customizing the front page
The main Elgg index page runs a plugin hook called ‘index,system’. If this returns true, it assumes that another front
page has been drawn and doesn’t display the default page.
Therefore, you can override it by registering a function to the ‘index,system’ plugin hook and then returning true from
that function.
Here’s a quick overview:
• Create your new plugin
• In the start.php you will need something like the following:
<?php
function pluginname_init() {
// Replace the default index page
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('index', 'system', 'new_index');
}
function new_index() {
if (!include_once(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)) . "/pluginname/pages/index.php"))
return false;
return true;
}
// register for the init, system event when our plugin start.php is loaded
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'pluginname_init');
?>
• Then, create an index page (/pluginname/pages/index.php) and use that to put the content you would like on the
front page of your Elgg site.
3.25 Views

Contents
• Introduction
• Using views
• Views as templates
• Views as cacheable assets
• Views and third-party assets
• Viewtypes
• Altering views via plugins
• Displaying entities
• Full and partial entity views
• Listing entities
• Related
3.25.1 Introduction
Views are responsible for creating output. They handle everything from:
• the layout of pages
• chunks of presentation output (like a footer or a toolbar)
• individual links and form inputs.
• the images, js, and css needed by your web page
3.25.2 Using views
At their most basic level, the default views are just PHP files with snippets of html:
<h1>Hello, World!</h1>
Assuming this view is located at /views/default/hello.php, we could output it like so:

echo elgg_view('hello');
For your convenience, Elgg comes with quite a lot of views by default. In order to keep things manageable, they are
organized into subdirectories. Elgg handles this situation quite nicely. For example, our simple view might live in
/views/default/hello/world.php, in which case it would be called like so:
echo elgg_view('hello/world');
The name of the view simply reflects the location of the view in the views directory.
3.25.3 Views as templates
You can pass arbitrary data to a view via the $vars array. Our hello/world view might be modified to accept a
variable like so:
<h1>Hello, <?= $vars['name']; ?>!</h1>
In this case, we can pass an arbitrary name parameter to the view like so:
echo elgg_view('hello/world', ['name' => 'World']);
which would produce the following output:
3.25. Views 141

Warning: Views don’t do any kind of automatic output sanitization by default. You are responsible for doing the
correct sanitization yourself to prevent XSS attacks and the like.
3.25.4 Views as cacheable assets
As mentioned before, views can contain JS, CSS, or even images.

Asset views must meet certain requirements:
• They must not take any $vars parameters
• They must not change their output based on global state like
– who is logged in
– the time of day
• They must contain a valid file extension
– Bad: my/cool/template
– Good: my/cool/template.html
For example, suppose you wanted to load some CSS on a page. You could define a view mystyles.css, which
would look like so:
/* /views/default/mystyles.css */
.mystyles-foo {
background: red;
}
Note: Leave off the trailing ”.php” from the filename and Elgg will automatically recognize the view as cacheable.
To get a URL to this file, you would use elgg_get_simplecache_url:

// Returns "https://mysite.com/.../289124335/default/mystyles.css
elgg_get_simplecache_url('mystyles.css');
Elgg automatically adds the magic numbers you see there for cache-busting and sets long-term expires headers on the
returned file.
Warning: Elgg may decide to change the location or structure of the returned URL in a future release for whatever
reason, and the cache-busting numbers change every time you flush Elgg’s caches, so the exact URL is not stable
by design.
With that in mind, here’s a couple anti-patterns to avoid:
• Don’t rely on the exact structure/location of this URL
• Don’t try to generate the URLs yourself
• Don’t store the returned URLs in a database
In your plugin’s init function, register the css file:

elgg_register_css('mystyles', elgg_get_simplecache_url('mystyles.css'));
Then on the page you want to load the css, call:

elgg_load_css('mystyles');
3.25.5 Views and third-party assets
The best way to serve third-party assets is through views. However, instead of manually copy/pasting the assets into
the right location in /views/*, you can map the assets into the views system via the "views" key in your plugin’s
elgg-plugin.php config file.
The views value must be a 2 dimensional array. The first level maps a viewtype to a list of view mappings. The
secondary lists map view names to file paths, either absolute or relative to the Elgg root directory.
If you check your assets into source control, point to them like this:
return [
// view mappings
'views' => [
// viewtype
'default' => [
// view => /path/from/filesystem/root
'js/jquery-ui.js' => __DIR__ . '/bower_components/jquery-ui/jquery-ui.min.js',
],
],
];
To point to assets installed with fxp/composer-asset-plugin, use install-root-relative paths by leaving off the
leading slash:
return [
'views' => [
'default' => [
// view => path/from/install/root
'js/jquery-ui.js' => 'vendor/bower-asset/jquery-ui/jquery-ui.min.js',
],
],
];
Elgg core uses this feature extensively, though the value is returned directly from /engine/views.php.
Note: You don’t have to use Bower, Composer Asset Plugin, or any other script for managing your plugin’s assets,
but we highly recommend using a package manager of some kind because it makes upgrading so much easier.
Specifying additional views directories
In elgg-plugin.php you can also specify directories to be scanned for views. Just provide a view name prefix
ending with / and a directory path (like above).
<?php // mod/file/elgg-plugin.php
return [
'views' => [
'default' => [
'file/icon/' => __DIR__ . '/graphics/icons',
],
3.25. Views 143

],
];
With the above, files found within the icons folder will be interpreted as views. E.g. the view
file/icon/general.gif will be created and mapped to mod/file/graphics/icons/general.gif.
Note: This is a fully recursive scan. All files found will be brought into the views system.
Multiple paths can share the same prefix, just give an array of paths:
<?php // mod/file/elgg-plugin.php
return [
'views' => [
'default' => [
'file/icon/' => [
__DIR__ . '/graphics/icons',
__DIR__ . '/more_icons', // processed 2nd (may override)
],
],
],
];
3.25.6 Viewtypes
You might be wondering: “Why /views/default/hello/world.php instead of just

/views/hello/world.php?”.
The subdirectory under /views determines the viewtype of the views below it. A viewtype generally corresponds to
the output format of the views.
The default viewtype is assumed to be HTML and other static assets necessary to render a responsive web page in a
desktop or mobile browser, but it could also be:
• RSS
• ATOM
• JSON
• Mobile-optimized HTML
• TV-optimized HTML
• Any number of other data formats
You can force Elgg to use a particular viewtype to render the page by setting the view input variable like so:
https://mysite.com/?view=rss.
You could also write a plugin to set this automatically using the elgg_set_viewtype() function. For example,
your plugin might detect that the page was accessed with an iPhone’s browser string, and set the viewtype to iphone
by calling:
elgg_set_viewtype('iphone');
The plugin would presumably also supply a set of views optimized for those devices.

3.25.7 Altering views via plugins
Without modifying Elgg’s core, Elgg provides several ways to customize almost all output:
• You can override a view, completely changing the file used to render it.
• You can extend a view by prepending or appending the output of another view to it.
• You can alter a view’s inputs by plugin hook.
• You can alter a view’s output by plugin hook.
Overriding views
Views in plugin directories always override views in the core directory; however, when plugins override the views of
other plugins, later plugins take precedent.
For example, if we wanted to customize the hello/world view to use an h2 instead of an h1, we could create a
file at /mod/example/views/default/hello/world.php like this:
<h2>Hello, <?= $vars['name']; ?></h2>
Note: When considering long-term maintenance, overriding views in the core and bundled plugins has a cost: Up-
grades may bring changes in views, and if you have overridden them, you will not get those changes.
You may instead want to alter the input or the output of the view via plugin hooks.
Note: Elgg caches view locations. This means that you should disable the system cache while developing with views.
When you install the changes to a production environment you must flush the caches.
Extending views
There may be other situations in which you don’t want to override the whole view, you just want to prepend or append
some more content to it. In Elgg this is called extending a view.
For example, instead of overriding the hello/world view, we could extend it like so:
elgg_extend_view('hello/world', 'hello/greeting');
If the contents of /views/default/hello/greeting.php is:

<h2>How are you today?</h2>
Then every time we call elgg_view(’hello/world’);, we’ll get:

<h2>How are you today?</h2>
You can prepend views by passing a value to the 3rd parameter that is less than 500:
// appends 'hello/greeting' to every occurrence of 'hello/world'
elgg_extend_view('hello/world', 'hello/greeting');
// prepends 'hello/greeting' to every occurrence of 'hello/world'

elgg_extend_view('hello/world', 'hello/greeting', 450);
3.25. Views 145

All view extensions should be registered in your plugin’s init,system event handler in start.php.
Altering view input
It may be useful to alter a view’s $vars array before the view is rendered.
Since 1.11, before each view rendering the $vars array is filtered by the plugin hook ["view_vars",
$view_name]. Each registered handler function is passed these arguments:
• $hook - the string "view_vars"
• $view_name - the view name being rendered (the first argument passed to elgg_view())
• $returnvalue - the modified $vars array
• $params - an array containing:
– vars - the original $vars array, unaltered
– view - the view name
– viewtype - The viewtype being rendered
Altering view input example
Here we’ll alter the default pagination limit for the comments view:
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('view_vars', 'page/elements/comments', 'myplugin_alter_comments_lim
function myplugin_alter_comments_limit($hook, $type, $vars, $params) {

// only 10 comments per page
$vars['limit'] = elgg_extract('limit', $vars, 10);
return $vars;
}
Altering view output
Sometimes it is preferable to alter the output of a view instead of overriding it.

The output of each view is run through the plugin hook ["view", $view_name] before being returned by
elgg_view(). Each registered handler function is passed these arguments:
• $hook - the string "view"
• $view_name - the view name being rendered (the first argument passed to elgg_view())
• $result - the modified output of the view
• $params - an array containing:
– viewtype - The viewtype being rendered
To alter the view output, the handler just needs to alter $returnvalue and return a new string.
Altering view output example
Here we’ll eliminate breadcrumbs that don’t have at least one link.

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('view', 'navigation/breadcrumbs', 'myplugin_alter_breadcrumb');
function myplugin_alter_breadcrumb($hook, $type, $returnvalue, $params) {

// we only want to alter when viewtype is "default"
if ($params['viewtype'] !== 'default') {
return $returnvalue;
}
// output nothing if the content doesn't have a single link

if (false === strpos($returnvalue, '<a ')) {
return '';
}
// returning nothing means "don't alter the returnvalue"

}
Replacing view output completely
You can pre-set the view output by setting $vars[’__view_output’]. The value will be returned as a string.
View extensions will not be used and the view hook will not be triggered.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('view_vars', 'navigation/breadcrumbs', 'myplugin_no_page_breadcrumb
function myplugin_no_page_breadcrumbs($hook, $type, $vars, $params) {

if (elgg_in_context('pages')) {
return ['__view_output' => ""];
}
}
3.25.8 Displaying entities
If you don’t know what an entity is, check this page out first.
The following code will automatically display the entity in $entity:
echo elgg_view_entity($entity);
As you’ll know from the data model introduction, all entities have a type (object, site, user or group), and optionally a
subtype (which could be anything - ‘blog’, ‘forumpost’, ‘banana’).
elgg_view_entity will automatically look for a view called type/subtype; if there’s no subtype, it will look
for type/type. Failing that, before it gives up completely it tries type/default.
RSS feeds in Elgg generally work by outputting the object/default view in the ‘rss’ viewtype.
For example, the view to display a blog post might be object/blog. The view to display a user is user/default.
3.25.9 Full and partial entity views
elgg_view_entity actually has a number of parameters, although only the very first one is required. The first
three are:
• $entity - The entity to display
• $viewtype - The viewtype to display in (defaults to the one we’re currently in, but it can be forced - eg to
display a snippet of RSS within an HTML page)
3.25. Views 147

• $full_view - Whether to display a full version of the entity. (Defaults to false.)

This last parameter is passed to the view as $vars[’full_view’]. It’s up to you what you do with it; the usual
behaviour is to only display comments and similar information if this is set to true.
3.25.10 Listing entities
This is then used in the provided listing functions. To automatically display a list of blog posts (see the full tutorial),
you can call:
echo elgg_list_entities([
'type' => 'object',
'subtype' => 'blog',
]);
This function checks to see if there are any entities; if there are, it first displays the navigation/pagination
view in order to display a way to move from page to page. It then repeatedly calls elgg_view_entity on each
entity before returning the result.
Note that elgg_list_entities allows the URL to set its limit and offset options, so set those explicitly if
you need particular values (e.g. if you’re not using it for pagination).
Elgg knows that it can automatically supply an RSS feed on pages that use elgg_list_entities. It initializes
the ["head","page"] plugin hook (which is used by the header) in order to provide RSS autodiscovery, which is
why you can see the orange RSS icon on those pages in some browsers.
If your entity list will display the entity owners, you can improve performance a bit by preloading all owner entities:
'type' => 'object',
// enable owner preloading

'preload_owners' => true,
]);
See also this background information on Elgg’s database.

If you want to show a message when the list does not contain items to list, you can pass a no_results message. If
you want even more controle over the no_results message you can also pass a Closure (an anonymous function).
'type' => 'object',
'no_results' => elgg_echo('notfound'),

]);
Rendering a list with an alternate view
Since 1.11, you can define an alternative view to render list items using ’item_view’ parameter.
In some cases, default entity views may be unsuitable for your needs. Using item_view allows you to customize
the look, while preserving pagination, list’s HTML markup etc.
Consider these two examples:

echo elgg_list_entities_from_relationship([
'type' => 'group',
'relationship' => 'member',
'relationship_guid' => elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid(),
'inverse_relationship' => false,
'full_view' => false,
]);
echo elgg_list_entities_from_relationship([
'type' => 'group',
'relationship' => 'invited',
'relationship_guid' => (int) $user_guid,
'inverse_relationship' => true,
'item_view' => 'group/format/invitationrequest',
]);
In the first example, we are displaying a list of groups a user is a member of using the default group view. In the
second example, we want to display a list of groups the user was invited to.
Since invitations are not entities, they do not have their own views and can not be listed using elgg_list_*. We
are providing an alternative item view, that will use the group entity to display an invitation that contains a group name
and buttons to access or reject the invitation.
Rendering a list as a table
Since 2.3 you can render lists as tables. Set $options[’list_type’] = ’table’ and provide an array of
TableColumn objects as $options[’columns’]. The service elgg()->table_columns provides several
methods to create column objects based around existing views (like page/components/column/*), properties,
or methods.
In this example, we list the latest my_plugin objects in a table of 3 columns: entity icon, the display name, and a
friendly format of the time.
'type' => 'object',
'subtype' => 'my_plugin',
'list_type' => 'table',

'columns' => [
elgg()->table_columns->icon(),
elgg()->table_columns->getDisplayName(),
elgg()->table_columns->time_created(null, [
'format' => 'friendly',
]),
],
]);
See the Elgg\Views\TableColumn\ColumnFactory class for more details on how columns are specified and
rendered. You can add or override methods of elgg()->table_columns in a variety of ways, based on views,
properties/methods on the items, or given functions.
3.25. Views 149

3.25.11 Related
Page structure best practice
Elgg pages have an overall pageshell and a main content area. In Elgg 1.0+, we’ve marked out a space “the canvas”
for items to write to the page. This means the user always has a very consistent experience, while giving maximum
flexibility to plugin authors for laying out their functionality.
Think of the canvas area as a big rectangle that you can do what you like in. We’ve created a couple of standard
canvases for you:
• one column
• two column
• content
• widgets
are the main ones. You can access these with the function:
$canvas_area = elgg_view_layout($canvas_name, array(
'content' => $content,
'section' => $section
));
The content sections are passed as an array in the second parameter. The array keys correspond to sections in the
layout, the choice of layout will determine which sections to pass. The array values contain the html that should be
displayed in those areas. Examples of two common layouts:
$canvas_area = elgg_view_layout('one_column', array(
'content' => $content
));
$canvas_area = elgg_view_layout('one_sidebar', array(

'sidebar' => $sidebar
));
You can then, ultimately, pass this into the elgg_view_page function:
echo elgg_view_page($title, $canvas_area);
You may also have noticed that we’ve started including a standard title area at the top of each plugin page (or at least,
most plugin pages). This is created using the following wrapper function, and should usually be included at the top of
the plugin content:
$start_of_plugin_content = elgg_view_title($title_text);
This will also display any submenu items that exist (unless you set the second, optional parameter to false). So how
do you add submenu items?
In your plugin_init function, include the following call:
if (elgg_get_context() == "your_plugin") {
// add a site navigation item
$item = new ElggMenuItem('identifier', elgg_echo('your_plugin:link'), $url);
elgg_register_menu_item('page', $item);
}
The submenu will then automatically display when your page is rendered. The ‘identifier’ is a machine name for the
link, it should be unique per menu.

Simplecache
See also:
• Performance
• Views
The Simplecache is a mechanism designed to alleviate the need for certain views to be regenerated dynamically.
Instead, they are generated once, saved as a static file, and served in a way that entirely bypasses the Elgg engine.
If Simplecache is turned off (which can be done from the administration panel), these views will be served as normal,
with the exception of site CSS.
The criteria for whether a view is suitable for the Simplecache is as follows:
• The view must not change depending on who or when it is being looked at
• The view must not depend on variables fed to it (except for global variables like site URL that never change)
Regenerating the Simplecache
You can regenerate the Simplecache at any time by:

• Loading /upgrade.php, even if you have nothing to upgrade
• In the admin panel click on ‘Flush the caches’
• Enabling or disabling a plugin
• Reordering your plugins
Using the Simplecache in your plugins
Registering views with the Simplecache

You can register a view with the Simplecache with the following function at init-time:
elgg_register_simplecache_view($viewname);
Accessing the cached view

If you registered a JavaScript or CSS file with Simplecache and put in the view folder as
your_view.js or your_view.css you can very easily get the url to this cached view by calling
elgg_get_simplecache_url($view). For example:
$js = elgg_get_simplecache_url('your_view.js');
$css = elgg_get_simplecache_url('your_view.css');
Page/elements/foot vs footer
page/elements/footer is the content that goes inside this part of the page:
<div class="elgg-page-footer">
<div class="elgg-inner">

</div>
</div>
3.25. Views 151

It’s content is visible to end users and usually where you would put a sitemap or other secondary global navigation,
copyright info, powered by elgg, etc.
page/elements/foot is inserted just before the ending </body> tag and is mostly meant as a place to in-
sert scripts that don’t already work with elgg_register_js(array(’location’ => ’footer’)); or
elgg_require_js(’amd/module’);. In other words, you should never override this view and probably don’t
need to extend it either. Just use the elgg_*_js functions instead
3.26 Widgets
Widgets are content areas that users can drag around their page to customize the layout. They can typically be
customized by their owner to show more/less content and determine who sees the widget. By default Elgg provides
plugins for customizing the profile page and dashboard via widgets.
Contents
• Structure
• Register the widget
– Multiple widgets
– Magic widget name and description
– How to restrict where widgets can be used
– Allow multiple widgets on the same page
– Register widgets in a hook
– Modify widget properties of existing widget registration
• Default widgets
3.26.1 Structure
To create a widget, create two views:

• widgets/widget/edit
• widgets/widget/content
content.php is responsible for all the content that will output within the widget. The edit.php file contains any
extra edit functions you wish to present to the user. You do not need to add access level as this comes as part of the
widget framework.
Note: Using HTML checkboxes to set widget flags is problematic because if unchecked, the checkbox input is
omitted from form submission. The effect is that you can only set and not clear flags. The “input/checkboxes” view
will not work properly in a widget’s edit panel.
3.26.2 Register the widget
Once you have created your edit and view pages, you need to initialize the plugin widget.
The easiest way to do this is to add the widgets section to your elgg-plugin.php config file.
return [
'widgets' => [
'filerepo' => [

'context' => ['profile'],

],
]
];
Alternatively you can also use an function to add a widget. This is done within the plugins init() function.
// Add generic new file widget
elgg_register_widget_type([
'id' => 'filerepo',
'name' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo:name'),
'description' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo:description'),
]);
Note: The only required attribute is the id.
Multiple widgets
It is possible to add multiple widgets for a plugin. You just initialize as many widget directories as you need.
// Add generic new file widget
'id' => 'filerepo',
'name' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo:name'),
'description' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo:description'),
]);
// Add a second file widget

'id' => 'filerepo2',
'name' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo2:name'),
'description' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo2:description'),
'context' => ['dashboard'],
]);
// Add a third file widget

'id' => 'filerepo3',
'name' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo3:name'),
'description' => elgg_echo('widgets:filerepo3:description'),
'context' => ['profile', 'dashboard'],
]);
Make sure you have the corresponding directories within your plugin views structure:
'Plugin'
/views
/default
/widgets
/filerepo
/edit.php
/content.php
/filerepo2
/edit.php
3.26. Widgets 153

/content.php
/filerepo3
/edit.php
/content.php
Magic widget name and description
When registering a widget you can omit providing a name and a description. If a translation in the following
format is provided, they will be used. For the name: widgets:<widget_id>:name and for the description
widgets:<widget_id>:description. If you make sure these translation are available in a translation file,
you have very little work registering the widget.
elgg_register_widget_type(['id' => 'filerepo']);
How to restrict where widgets can be used
The widget can specify the context that it can be used in (just profile, just dashboard, etc.).
'id' => 'filerepo',
'context' => ['profile', 'dashboard', 'other_context'],
]);
Allow multiple widgets on the same page
By default you can only add one widget of the same type on the page. If you want more of the same widget on the
page, you can specify this when registering the widget:
'id' => 'filerepo',
'multiple' => true,
]);
Register widgets in a hook
If, for example, you wish to conditionally register widgets you can also use a hook to register widgets.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('handlers', 'widgets', 'my_plugin_conditional_widgets_hook');
}
function my_plugin_conditional_widgets_hook($hook, $type, $return, $params) {

if (!elgg_is_active_plugin('file')) {
return;
}
$return[] = \Elgg\WidgetDefinition::factory([
'id' => 'filerepo',
]);
return $return;
}

Modify widget properties of existing widget registration
If, for example, you wish to change the allowed contexts of an already registered widget you can do so by re-registering
the widget with elgg_register_widget_type as it will override an already existing widget definition. If you
want even more control you can also use the handlers, widgets hook to change the widget definition.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('handlers', 'widgets', 'my_plugin_change_widget_definition_hook
}
function my_plugin_change_widget_definition_hook($hook, $type, $return, $params) {

foreach ($return as $key => $widget) {
if ($widget->id === 'filerepo') {
$return[$key]->multiple = false;
}
}
return $return;
}
3.26.3 Default widgets
If your plugin uses the widget canvas, you can register default widget support with Elgg core, which will handle
everything else.
To announce default widget support in your plugin, register for the get_list, default_widgets plugin hook:
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('get_list', 'default_widgets', 'my_plugin_default_widgets_hook');
In the plugin hook handler, push an array into the return value defining your default widget support and when to create
default widgets. Arrays require the following keys to be defined:
• name - The name of the widgets page. This is displayed on the tab in the admin interface.
• widget_context - The context the widgets page is called from. (If not explicitly set, this is your plugin’s id.)
• widget_columns - How many columns the widgets page will use.
• event - The Elgg event to create new widgets for. This is usually create.
• entity_type - The entity type to create new widgets for.
• entity_subtype - The entity subtype to create new widgets for. The can be ELGG_ENTITIES_ANY_VALUE to
create for all entity types.
When an object triggers an event that matches the event, entity_type, and entity_subtype parameters passed, Elgg
core will look for default widgets that match the widget_context and will copy them to that object’s owner_guid and
container_guid. All widget settings will also be copied.
function my_plugin_default_widgets_hook($hook, $type, $return, $params) {
$return[] = array(
'name' => elgg_echo('my_plugin'),
'widget_context' => 'my_plugin',
'widget_columns' => 3,
'event' => 'create',

'entity_type' => 'user',
'entity_subtype' => ELGG_ENTITIES_ANY_VALUE,
);
3.26. Widgets 155

return $return;
}
3.27 Walled Garden
Elgg supports a “Walled Garden” mode. In this mode, almost all pages are restricted to logged in users. This is useful
for sites that don’t allow public registration.
3.27.1 Activating Walled Garden mode
To activate Walled Garden mode in Elgg 1.8, go to the Administration section. On the right sidebar menu, under the
“Configure” section, expand “Settings,” then click on “Advanced.”
From the Advanced Settings page, find the option labelled “Restrict pages to logged-in users.” Enable this option, then
click “Save” to switch your site into Walled Garden mode.
3.27.2 Exposing pages through Walled Gardens
Many plugins extend Elgg by adding pages. Walled Garden mode will prevent these pages from being viewed by
logged out users. Elgg uses plugin hook to manage which pages are visible through the Walled Garden.
Plugin authors must register pages as public if they should be viewable through Walled Gardens by responding to the
public_pages, walled_garden plugin hook.
The returned value is an array of regexp expressions for public pages.
The following code shows how to expose http://example.org/my_plugin/public_page through a Walled Garden. This
assumes the plugin has registered a Page handler for my_plugin.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('public_pages', 'walled_garden', 'my_plugin_walled_garden_public_pa
function my_plugin_walled_garden_public_pages($hook, $type, $pages) {

$pages[] = 'my_plugin/public_page';
return $pages;
}
3.28 Web services
Build an HTTP API for your site.

Elgg provides a powerful framework for building web services. This allows developers to expose functionality to other
web sites and desktop applications along with doing integrations with third-party web applications. While we call the
API RESTful, it is actually a REST/RPC hybrid similar to the APIs provided by sites like Flickr and Twitter.
To create an API for your Elgg site, you need to do 4 things:
• enable the web services plugin
• expose methods
• setup API authentication
• setup user authentication

Additionally, you may want to control what types of authentication are available on your site. This will also be covered.
Contents
• Security
• Exposing methods
– Response formats
– Parameters
– Receive parameters as associative array
• API authentication
– Key-based authentication
– Signature-based authentication
– OAuth
• User authentication
• Building out your API
• Determining the authentication available
• Related
3.28.1 Security
It is crucial that the web services are consumed via secure protocols. Do not enable web services if your site is not
served via HTTPs. This is especially important if you allow API key only authentication.
If you are using third-party tools that expose API methods, make sure to carry out a thorough security audit. You
may want to make sure that API authentication is required for ALL methods, even if they require user authentication.
Methods that do not require API authentication can be easily abused to spam your site.
Ensure that the validity of API keys is limited and provide mechanisms for your API clients to renew their keys.
3.28.2 Exposing methods
The function to use to expose a method is elgg_ws_expose_function(). As an example, let’s assume you
want to expose a function that echos text back to the calling application. The function could look like this
function my_echo($string) {
return $string;
}
Since we are providing this function to allow developers to test their API clients, we will require neither API authen-
tication nor user authentication. This call registers the function with the web services API framework:
elgg_ws_expose_function(
"test.echo",
"my_echo",
[
"string" => [
'type' => 'string',
]
],
'A testing method which echos back a string',
'GET',
false,
false
);
3.28. Web services 157

If you add this code to a plugin and then go to http://yoursite.com/services/api/rest/json/?method=system.api.list, you

should now see your test.echo method listed as an API call. Further, to test the exposed method from a web browser,
you could hit the url: http://yoursite.com/services/api/rest/json/?method=test.echo&string=testing and you should see
JSON data like this:
{"status":0,"result":"testing"}
Plugins can filter the output of individual API methods by registering a handler for ’rest:output’,$method
plugin hook.
Response formats
JSON is the default format, however XML and serialized PHP can be fetched by enabling the data_views plugin
and substituting xml or php in place of json in the above URLs.
You can also add additional response formats by defining new viewtypes.
Parameters
Parameters expected by each method should be listed as an associative array, where the key represents the parameter
name, and the value contains an array with type, default and required fields.
Values submitted with the API request for each parameter should match the declared type. API will throw on exception
if validation fails.
Recognized parameter types are:
• integer (or int)
• boolean (or bool)
• string
• float
• array
Unrecognized types will throw an API exception.
You can use additional fields to describe your parameter, e.g. description.
'test.greet',
'my_greeting',
[
'name' => [
'type' => 'string',
'required' => true,
'description' => 'Name of the person to be greeted by the API',
],
'greeting' => [
'type' => 'string',
'required' => false,
'default' => 'Hello',
'description' => 'Greeting to be used, e.g. "Good day" or "Hi"',
],
],
'A testing method which greets the user with a custom greeting',
'GET',
false,

false
);
Note: If a missing parameter has no default value, the argument will be null. Before 2.1, a bug caused later
arguments to be shifted left in this case.
Receive parameters as associative array
If you have a large number of method parameters, you can force the execution script to invoke the callback function
with a single argument that contains an associative array of parameter => input pairs (instead of each parameter being
a separate argument). To do that, set $assoc to true in elgg_ws_expose_function().
function greet_me($values) {
$name = elgg_extract('name', $values);
$greeting = elgg_extract('greeting', $values, 'Hello');
return "$greeting, $name";
}
"test.greet",
"greet_me",
[
"name" => [
'type' => 'string',
],
"greeting" => [
'type' => 'string',
'default' => 'Hello',
],
],
'A testing method which echos a greeting',
'GET',
false,
false,
true // $assoc makes the callback receive an associative array
);
Note: If a missing parameter has no default value, null will be used.
3.28.3 API authentication
You may want to control access to some of the functions that you expose. Perhaps you are exposing functions in order
to integrate Elgg with another open source platform on the same server. In that case, you only want to allow that other
application access to these methods. Another possibility is that you want to limit what external developers have access
to your API. Or maybe you want to limit how many calls a developer can make against your API in a single day.
In all of these cases, you can use Elgg’s API authentication functions to control access. Elgg provides two built-
in methods to perform API authentication: key based and HMAC signature based. You can also add your own
authentication methods. The key based approach is very similar to what Google, Flickr, or Twitter. Developers
can request a key (a random string) and pass that key with all calls that require API authentication. The keys are

stored in the database and if an API call is made without a key or a bad key, the call is denied and an error message is
returned.
Key-based authentication
As an example, let’s write a function that returns the number of users that have viewed the site in the last x minutes.
function count_active_users($minutes=10) {
$seconds = 60 * $minutes;
$count = count(find_active_users($seconds, 9999));
return $count;
}
Now, let’s expose it and make the number of minutes an optional parameter:
"users.active",
"count_active_users",
[
"minutes" => [
'type' => 'int',
],
],
'Number of users who have used the site in the past x minutes',
'GET',
true,
false
);
This function is now available and if you check system.api.list, you will see that it requires API au-
thentication. If you hit the method with a web browser, it will return an error message about failing the API
authentication. To test this method, you need an API key. Fortunately, there is a plugin called apiadmin that
creates keys for you. It is available in the Elgg plugin repository. It will return a public and private key and you
will use the public key for this kind of API authentication. Grab a key and then do a GET request with your
browser on this API method passing in the key string as the parameter api_key. It might look something like this:
http://yoursite.com/services/api/rest/xml/?method=users.active&api_key=1140321cb56c71710c38feefdf72bc462938f59f.
Signature-based authentication
The HMAC Authentication is similar to what is used with OAuth or Amazon’s S3 service. This involves both the
public and private key. If you want to be very sure that the API calls are coming from the developer you think they
are coming from and you want to make sure the data is not being tampered with during transmission, you would use
this authentication method. Be aware that it is much more involved and could turn off developers when there are other
sites out there with key-based authentication.
OAuth
With the addition of the OAuth plugin, Elgg also fully supports the OAuth 1.0a authorization standard. Clients can
then use standard OAuth libraries to make any API calls to the site.

3.28.4 User authentication
So far you have been allowing developers to pull data out of your Elgg site. Now we’ll move on to pushing data into
Elgg. In this case, it is going to be done by a user. Maybe you have created a desktop application that allows your
Users to post to the wire without going to the site. You need to expose a method for posting to the wire and you
need to make sure that a user cannot post using someone else’s account. Elgg provides a token-based approach for
user authentication. It allows a user to submit their username and password in exchange for a token using the method
auth.gettoken. This token can then be used for some amount of time to authenticate all calls to the API before it
expires by passing it as the parameter auth_token. If you do not want to have your users trusting their passwords
to 3rd-party applications, you can also extend the current capability to use an approach like OAuth.
Let’s write our wire posting function:
function my_post_to_wire($text) {
$text = substr($text, 0, 140);
$access = ACCESS_PUBLIC;
// returns guid of wire post

return thewire_save_post($text, $access, "api");
}
Exposing this function is the same as the previous except we require user authentication and we’re going to make this
use POST rather than GET HTTP requests.
"thewire.post",
"my_post_to_wire",
[
"text" => [
'type' => 'string',
],
],
'Post to the wire. 140 characters or less',
'POST',
true,
true
);
Please note that you will not be able to test this using a web browser as you did with the other methods. You need to
write some client code to do this. There is some example client code in /engine/lib/api.php. Take a look at
send_api_post_call(). You can also do a search for clients that have been written for the APIs of Flickr or Twitter or
any other similar API. You will find a wide variety written in almost any language you can think of.
3.28.5 Building out your API
As soon as you feel comfortable with Elgg’s web services API framework, you will want to step back and design your
API. What sort of data are you trying to expose? Who or what will be API users? How do you want them to get
access to authentication keys? How are you going to document your API? Be sure to take a look at the APIs created
by popular Web 2.0 sites for inspiration. If you are looking for 3rd party developers to build applications using your
API, you will probably want to provide one or more language-specific clients.

3.28.6 Determining the authentication available
Elgg’s web services API uses a type of pluggable authentication module (PAM) architecture to manage how users and
developers are authenticated. This provides you the flexibility to add and remove authentication modules. Do you
want to not use the default user authentication PAM but would prefer using OAuth? You can do this.
The first step is registering a callback function for the rest, init plugin hook:
register_plugin_hook('rest', 'init', 'rest_plugin_setup_pams');
Then in the callback function, you register the PAMs that you want to use:
function rest_plugin_setup_pams() {
// user token can also be used for user authentication
register_pam_handler('pam_auth_usertoken');
// simple API key check

register_pam_handler('api_auth_key', "sufficient", "api");
// override the default pams

return true;
}
When testing, you may find it useful to register the pam_auth_session PAM so that you can easily test your
methods from the browser. Be careful not to use this PAM on a production site because it could open up your users to
a CSRF attack.
Right now, the only other PAMs publicly available besides those provided by the Elgg core are the OAuth PAMs. See
Justin Richer’s OAuth plugin for more detail.
3.28.7 Related
HMAC Authentication
Elgg’s RESTful API framework provides functions to support a HMAC signature scheme for API authentication. The
client must send the HMAC signature together with a set of special HTTP headers when making a call that requires
API authentication. This ensures that the API call is being made from the stated client and that the data has not been
tampered with.
The HMAC must be constructed over the following data:
• The public API key identifying you to the Elgg api server as provided by the APIAdmin plugin
• The private API Key provided by Elgg (that is companion to the public key)
• The current unix time in seconds
• A nonce to guarantee two requests the same second have different signatures
• URL encoded string representation of any GET variable parameters, eg method=test.test&foo=bar
• If you are sending post data, the hash of this data
Some extra information must be added to the HTTP header in order for this data to be correctly processed:
• X-Elgg-apikey - The public API key
• X-Elgg-time - Unix time used in the HMAC calculation
• X-Elgg-none - a random string
• X-Elgg-hmac - The HMAC as base64 encoded

• X-Elgg-hmac-algo - The algorithm used in the HMAC calculation - eg, sha1, md5 etc.
If you are sending POST data you must also send:
• X-Elgg-posthash - The hash of the POST data
• X-Elgg-posthash-algo - The algorithm used to produce the POST data hash - eg, md5
• Content-type - The content type of the data you are sending (if in doubt use application/octet-stream)
• Content-Length - The length in bytes of your POST data
Elgg provides a sample API client that implements this HMAC signature: send_api_call(). It serves as a good reference
on how to implement it.
3.29 Upgrading Plugins
Prepare your plugin for the next version of Elgg.

See the administrator guides for how to upgrade a live site.
3.29. Upgrading Plugins 163

Contents
• From 2.x to 3.0
– Removed views
– Removed functions/methods
– Removed global vars
– Removed classes/interfaces
– Schema changes
– Multi Site Changes
– Search changes
– Form and field related changes
– Removed libraries
– Removed pagehandling
– Removed actions
– Inheritance changes
– Removed JavaScript APIs
– Removed hooks/events
– Removed forms/actions
– APIs that now accept only an $options array
– Plugin functions that now require an explicit $plugin_id
– Class constructors that now accept only a stdClass object or null
– Miscellaneous API changes
– JavaScript hook calling order may change
– Widget layout related changes
– HtmLawed is no longer a plugin
– New approach to page layouts
– Notifications plugin
– Theme and styling changes
– Comment notifications
– Object listing views
– Menu changes
– Entity icons
– Autocomplete (user and friends pickers)
– Friends collections
• From 2.2 to 2.3
– PHP Version
– Deprecated APIs
– Deprecated Views
– New API for page and action handling
– New API for working with file uploads
– New API for manipulating images
– New API for events
– New API for signing URLs
– Extendable form views
– Metadata access_id
– New API for extracting class names from arrays
– Notifications
– Entity list functions can output tables
– Inline tabs components
– API to alter registration and login URL
– Support for fieldsets in forms
• From 2.1 to 2.2
– Deprecated APIs
– Deprecated Views
– Added elgg/popup module
– Added elgg/lightbox module
164 – Added elgg/embed module Chapter 3. Developer Guides
– New API for handling entity icons
– Removed APIs
– Improved elgg/ckeditor module
3.29.1 From 2.x to 3.0
Removed views
• resources/file/download
• output/checkboxes: use output/tags if you want the same behaviour
• input/write_access: mod/pages now uses the access:collections:write plugin hook.
• invitefriends/form
• page/layouts/content: use page/layouts/default
• page/layouts/one_column: use page/layouts/default
• page/layouts/one_sidebar: use page/layouts/default
• page/layouts/two_sidebar: use page/layouts/default
• page/layouts/walled_garden: use page/layouts/default
• page/layouts/walled_garden/cancel_button
• page/layouts/two_column_left_sidebar
• page/layouts/widgets/add_panel
• groups/group_sort_menu: use register, filter:menu:groups/all plugin hook
• subscriptions/form/additions: extend notifications/settings/other instead
• messageboard/css
• notifications/subscriptions/personal
• notifications/subscriptions/collections
• notifications/subscriptions/form
• notifications/subscriptions/jsfuncs
• notifications/subscriptions/forminternals
• notifications/css
• admin.js
• aalborg_theme/homepage.png
• aalborg_theme/css
• resources/avatar/view: Use entity icon API
• ajax_loader.gif
• button_background.gif
• button_graduation.png
• elgg_toolbar_logo.gif
• header_shadow.png
• powered_by_elgg_badge_drk_bckgnd.gif
• powered_by_elgg_badge_light_bckgnd.gif
• sidebar_background.gif

• spacer.gif
• toptoolbar_background.gif
• two_sidebar_background.gif
• ajax_loader_bw.gif: use graphics/ajax_loader_bw.gif
• elgg_logo.png: use graphics/elgg_logo.png
• favicon-128.png: use graphics/favicon-128.png
• favicon.ico: use graphics/favicon.ico
• favicon.svg: use graphics/favicon.svg
• friendspicker.png: use graphics/friendspicker.png
• walled_garden.jpg: use graphics/walled_garden.jpg
• core/friends/collection
• core/friends/collections
• core/friends/collectiontabs
• core/friends/tablelist
• core/friends/talbelistcountupdate
Removed functions/methods
All the functions in engine/lib/deprecated-1.9.php were removed. See

https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/blob/2.0/engine/lib/deprecated-1.9.php for these functions. Each @deprecated dec-
laration includes instructions on what to use instead. All the functions in engine/lib/deprecated-1.10.php
were removed. See https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/blob/2.0/engine/lib/deprecated-1.10.php for these functions. Each
@deprecated declaration includes instructions on what to use instead.
• _elgg_manage_pagesetup
• datalist_get
• datalist_set
• developers_setup_menu
• elgg_get_metastring_id
• elgg_get_metastring_map
• get_default_filestore
• garbagecollector_orphaned_metastrings
• groups_setup_sidebar_menus
• set_default_filestore
• generate_user_password: Use ElggUser::setPassword
• row_to_elggrelationship

• run_function_once: Use Elgg\Upgrade\Batch interface

• system_messages
• notifications_plugin_pagesetup
• elgg_format_url(): Use elgg_format_element() or the “output/text” view for HTML escaping.
• ElggEntity::addToSite
• ElggEntity::getSites
• ElggEntity::removeFromSite
• ElggFile::setFilestore: ElggFile objects can no longer use custom filestores.
• ElggFile::size: Use getSize
• ElggDiskFilestore::makeFileMatrix: Use Elgg\EntityDirLocator
• ElggData::get: Usually can be replaced by property read
• ElggData::getClassName: Use get_class()
• ElggData::set: Usually can be replaced by property write
• ElggEntity::setURL: See getURL for details on the plugin hook
• ElggFileCache::sanitise_filename: Use sanitizeFilename
• ElggMenuBuilder::compareByWeight: Use compareByPriority
• ElggMenuItem::getWeight: Use getPriority
• ElggMenuItem::getContent: Use elgg_view_menu_item()
• ElggMenuItem::setWeight: Use setPriority
• ElggRiverItem::getPostedTime: Use getTimePosted
• ElggSession has removed all deprecated methods
• ElggSite::addEntity
• ElggSite::addObject
• ElggSite::addUser
• ElggSite::getEntities: Use elgg_get_entities_from_relationship()
• ElggSite::getExportableValues: Use toObject
• ElggSite::getMembers: Use elgg_get_entities_from_relationship()
• ElggSite::getObjects: Use elgg_get_entities_from_relationship()
• ElggSite::listMembers: Use elgg_list_entities_from_relationship()
• ElggSite::removeEntity
• ElggSite::removeObject
• ElggSite::removeUser
• ElggSite::isPublicPage: Logic moved to the router and should not be accessed directly
• ElggSite::checkWalledGarden: Logic moved to the router and should not be accessed directly
• ElggUser::countObjects: Use elgg_get_entities()
• Logger::getClassName: Use get_class()

• Elgg\Application\Database::getTablePrefix: Read the prefix property

• elgg_view_access_collections()
• ElggSession::get_ignore_access: Use getIgnoreAccess
• ElggSession::set_ignore_access: Use setIgnoreAccess
• profile_pagesetup
• groups_setup_sidebar_menus
• groups_set_icon_url
Removed global vars
• $DEFAULT_FILE_STORE
• $ENTITY_CACHE
• $SESSION: Use the API provided by elgg_get_session()
• $CONFIG->site_id: Use elgg_get_config(’site_guid’) or
elgg_get_site_entity()->guid
• $CONFIG->search_info
Removed classes/interfaces
• FilePluginFile: replace with ElggFile (or load with get_entity())

• Elgg_Notifications_Notification
• Elgg\Database\EntityTable\UserFetchResultException.php
• Elgg\Database\MetastringsTable
• Exportable and its methods export and getExportableValues: Use toObject
• ExportException
• Importable and its method import.
• ImportException
• ODD and all classes beginning with ODD*.
• XmlElement
Schema changes
The storage engine for the database tables has been changed from MyISAM to InnoDB. You maybe need to optimize
your database settings for this change. The datalists table has been removed. All settings from datalists table
have been merged into the config table.
Metastrings in the database have been denormalized for performance purposes. We removed the metastrings table and
put all the string values directly in the metadata and annotation tables. You need to update your custom queries to
reflect these changes. Also the msv and msn table aliases are no longer available. It is best practice not to rely on the
table aliases used in core queries. If you need to use custom clauses you should do your own joins.

Multi Site Changes
Pre 3.0 Elgg has some (partial) support for having multiple sites in the same database. This Multi Site concept has
been completely removed in 3.0. Entities no longer have the site_guid attribute. This means there is no longer the
ability to have entities on different sites. If you currently have multiple sites in your database, upgrading Elgg to 3.0
will fail. You need to separate the different sites into separate databases/tables.
Related to the removal of the Multi Site concept in Elgg, there is no longer a need for entities having a ‘mem-
ber_of_site’ relationship with the Site Entity. All functions related to adding/removing this relationship has been
removed. All existing relationships will be removed as part of this upgrade.
Search changes
The FULLTEXT indices have been removed on various tables. The search plugin will now always use a like query
when performing a search.
• search_get_where_sql no longer supports the argument use_fulltext
• search_get_ft_min_max function is removed
• $CONFIG->search_info is no longer provided
Form and field related changes
• input/password: by default this field will no longer show a value passed to it, this can be overridden by
passing the view var always_empty and set it to false
• input/submit, input/reset and input/button are now rendered with a <button> instead of the
<input> tag. These input view also accept text and icon parameters.
• output/url now sets .elgg-anchor class on anchor elements and accepts icon parameter. If no text
is set, the href parameter used as a label will be restricted to 100 characters.
• output/url now supports a badge parameter, which can be used where a counter, a badge, or similar is
required as a postfix (mainly in menu items that have counters).
• output/tags no longer uses <ul> tags with floats and instead it relies on inherently inline elements such as
<span> and <a>
Removed libraries
• elgg:discussion
Removed pagehandling
• file/download
• groupicon
• twitterservice
• collections/pickercallback

Removed actions
• file/download: Use elgg_get_inline_url or elgg_get_download_url

• import/opendd
Inheritance changes
• ElggData (and hence most Elgg domain objects) no longer implements Exportable
• ElggEntity no longer implements Importable
• ElggGroup no longer implements Friendable
• ElggRelationship no longer implements Importable
• ElggSession no longer implements ArrayAccess
• Elgg\Application\Database no longer extends Elgg\Database
Removed JavaScript APIs
• admin.js
• elgg.widgets: Use the elgg/widgets module. The “widgets” layouts do this module automatically
• lightbox.js: Use the elgg/lightbox module as needed
• lightbox/settings.js: Use the getOptions, ui.lightbox JS hook or the
data-colorbox-opts attribute
• elgg.ui.popupClose: Use the elgg/popup module
• elgg.ui.popupOpen: Use the elgg/popup module
• elgg.ui.initAccessInputs
• elgg.ui.river
• elgg.ui.initDatePicker: Use the input/date module
• elgg.ui.likesPopupHandler
• elgg.embed: Use the elgg/embed module
• embed/custom_insert_js: Use the embed, editor JS hook
• elgg/ckeditor/insert.js
• likes.js: The elgg/likes module is loaded automatically
• messageboard.js
• elgg.autocomplete is no longer defined.
• elgg.messageboard is no longer defined.
• jQuery.fn.friendsPicker

Removed hooks/events
• Event login, user: Use login:before or login:after. Note the user is not logged in during the login:before event.
• Event delete, annotations: Use delete, annotation
• Event pagesetup, system: Use the menu or page shell hooks instead.
• Hook index, system: Override the resources/index view
• Hook object:notifications, <type>: Use the hook send:before, notifications
• Hook output:before, layout: Use view_vars, page/layout/<layout_name>
• Hook output:after, layout: Use view, page/layout/<layout_name>
Removed forms/actions
• notificationsettings/save form and action

• notificationsettings/groupsave form and action
APIs that now accept only an $options array
• ElggEntity::getAnnotations
• ElggEntity::getEntitiesFromRelationship
• ElggGroup::getMembers
• ElggUser::getGroups
• ElggUser::getFriends (as part of Friendable)
• ElggUser::getFriendsOf (as part of Friendable)
• ElggUser::getFriendsObjects (as part of Friendable)
• ElggUser::getObjects (as part of Friendable)
• find_active_users
Plugin functions that now require an explicit $plugin_id
• elgg_get_all_plugin_user_settings
• elgg_set_plugin_user_setting
• elgg_unset_plugin_user_setting
• elgg_get_plugin_user_setting
• elgg_set_plugin_setting
• elgg_get_plugin_setting
• elgg_unset_plugin_setting
• elgg_unset_all_plugin_settings

Class constructors that now accept only a stdClass object or null
• ElggAnnotation: No longer accepts an annotation ID

• ElggGroup: No longer accepts a GUID
• ElggMetadata: No longer accepts a metadata ID
• ElggObject: No longer accepts a GUID
• ElggRelationship: No longer accepts a relationship ID or null
• ElggSite: No longer accepts a GUID or URL
• ElggUser: No longer accepts a GUID or username
Miscellaneous API changes
• ElggBatch: You may only access public properties

• ElggEntity: The tables_split and tables_loaded properties were removed
• ElggEntity: Empty URLs will no longer be normalized. This means entities without URLs will no longer
result in the site URL
• ElggGroup::removeObjectFromGroup requires passing in an ElggObject (no longer accepts a
GUID)
• ElggUser::$salt no longer exists as an attribute, nor is it used for authentication
• ElggUser::$password no longer exists as an attribute, nor is it used for authentication
• elgg_get_widget_types no longer supports $exact as the 2nd argument
• elgg_instanceof no longer supports the fourth class argument
• elgg_view_icon no longer supports true as the 2nd argument
• elgg_list_entities no longer supports the option view_type_toggle
• elgg_list_registered_entities no longer supports the option view_type_toggle
• elgg_log no longer accepts the level "DEBUG"
• elgg_gatekeeper and elgg_admin_gatekeeper no longer report login or admin as forward rea-
son, but 403
• Application::getDb() no longer returns an instance of Elgg\Database, but rather a
Elgg\Application\Database
• $CONFIG is no longer available as a local variable inside plugin start.php files.
• elgg_get_config(’siteemail’) is no longer available. Use
elgg_get_site_entity()->email.
• Group entities do no longer have the magic username attribute.
• Pagehandling will no longer detect group:<guid> in the URL
• The CRON interval reboot is removed.
• The URL endpoints js/ and css/ are no longer supported. Use elgg_get_simplecache_url().
• The generic comment save action no longer sends the notification directly, this has been offloaded to the notifi-
cation system.
• The script engine/start.php is removed.

• The functions set_config, unset_config and get_config have been deprecated and replaced by
elgg_set_config, elgg_remove_config and elgg_get_config.
JavaScript hook calling order may change
When registering for hooks, the all keyword for wildcard matching no longer has any effect on the order that handlers
are called. To ensure your handler is called last, you must give it the highest priority of all matching handlers, or to
ensure your handler is called first, you must give it the lowest priority of all matching handlers.
If handlers were registered with the same priority, these are called in the order they were registered.
To emulate prior behavior, Elgg core handlers registered with the all keyword have been raised in priority. Some of
these handlers will most likely be called in a different order.
Widget layout related changes
The widget layout usage has been changed. Content is no longer drawn as part of the layout. You need to wrap you
content in another layout and use the widgets layout as part of your content. If you want some special content to show
if there are no widgets in the layout, you can now pass a special no_widgets parameter (as String or as a Closure).
When registering widgets you can no longer omit passing a context as the all context is no longer supported. You
need to explicitely pass the contexts for which the widget is intended.
HtmLawed is no longer a plugin
• Do not call elgg_load_library(’htmlawed’).

• In the hook params for ’config’, ’htmlawed’, the hook_tag function name changed.
New approach to page layouts
one_column, one_sidebar, two_sidebar and content layouts have been removed - instead layout render-
ing has been centralized in the default. Updated default layout provides full control over the layout elements
via $vars. For maximum backwards compatibility, calls to elgg_view_layout() with these layout names will
still yield expected output, but the plugins should start using the default layout with an updated set of parameters.
Page layouts have been decomposed into smaller elements, which should make it easier for themes to target specific
layout elements without having to override layouts at large.
As a result of these changes:
• all layouts are consistent in how they handle title and filter menus, breadcrumbs and layout subviews
• all layouts can now be easily extended to have multiple tabs. Plugins can pass filter_id parameter that will
allow other plugins to hook into register, menu:filter:<filter_id> hook and add new tabs. If no
filter_id is provided, default register, menu:filter hook can be used.
• layout views and subviews now receive identifier and segments of the page being rendered
• layout parameters are available to title and filter menu hooks, which allows resources to provide additional
context information, for example, an $entity in case of a profile resource
Plugins and themes should:
• Update calls to elgg_view_layout() to use default layout
• Update replace nav parameter in layout views with breadcrumbs parameter

• Update their use of filter parameter in layout views by either providing a default set of filter tabs, or setting
a filter_id parameter and using hooks
• Remove page/layouts/one_column view
• Remove page/layouts/one_sidebar view
• Remove page/layouts/two_sidebar view
• Remove page/layouts/content view
• Update their use of page/layouts/default
• Update their use of page/layouts/error
• Update their use of page/layouts/elements/filter
• Update their use of page/layouts/elements/header
• Update their use of page/layouts/elements/footer
• Update their use of page/elements/title
• Update their use of navigation/breadcrumbs to pass $vars[’breadcrumbs’] to
elgg_get_breadcrumbs()
• Update hook registrations for output:before, layout to view_vars,
page/layout/<layout_name>
• Update hook registrations for output:after, layout to view, page/layout/<layout_name>
• RSS extras menu is now registered with register, menu:extras hook
Notifications plugin
Notifications plugin has been rewritten dropping many views and actions. The purpose of this rewrite was to implement
a more efficient, extendable and scalable interface for managing notifications preferences. We have implemented a
much simpler markup and removed excessive styling and javascript that was required to make the old interface work.
If your plugin is extending any of the views or relies on any actions in the notifications plugin, it has to be updated.
Theme and styling changes
Aalborg theme is no longer bundled with Elgg, instead all styles have been either moved to core views or to an
appropriate core plugin.
This change may affect themes and plugins that were developed without Aalborg stylesheets loaded or were relying
on a certain priority of views with Aalborg stylesheets loaded.
Notable changes in plugins:
• search plugin no longer extends page/elements/header and instead extends
page/elements/sidebar
• .elgg-icon no longer has a global font-size, line-height or color: these values will be inherited
from parent items
• Support for .elgg-icon-hover has been dropped
• Admin theme now reuses icon classes from elements/icons.css

Comment notifications
• The language keys related to comment notifications have changed. Check the
generic_comment:notification:owner: language keys
• The action for creating a comment (action/comment/save) was changed. If your plugin overruled this
action you should have a look at it in order to prevent double notifications
Object listing views
• object/elements/full/body now wraps the full listing body in a .elgg-listing-full-body

wrapper
• object/elements/full now supports attachments and responses which are rendered after listing
body
• In core plugins, resource views no longer render comments/replies - instead they pass a show_responses
flag to the entity view, which renders the responses and passes them to the full listing view. Third party plugins
will need to update their uses of object/<subtype> and resources/<handler>/view views.
• Full discussion view is now rendered using object/elements/full view
• object/file now passes image (specialcontent) view as an attachment to the full listing view
Menu changes
Support for icon and badge parameters was added. Plugins should start using these parameters and prefer them to
a single text parameter. CSS should be used to control visibility of the label, icon and badge, instead of conditionals
in preparing menu items.
topbar menu:
• account menu item with priority 800 added to alt section
• site_notifications menu item is now a child of account with priority 100
• usersettings menu item is now a child of account with priority 300
• administration menu item is now a child of account with priority 800
• logout menu item is now a child of account with priority 900
• dashboard menu item now has priority of 100
• In default section (profile, friends, messages), core menu items now use icon parameter and use
CSS to hide the label. Plugins that register items to this section and expect a visible label need to update their
CSS.
• profile menu item now uses icon parameter
• friends menu item now uses icon parameter
• messages menu item now uses icon and badge parameters
extras menu:
• bookmark, report_this and rss menu items now use icon parameter

Entity icons
Default icon image files have been moved and re-mapped as follows:
• Default icons: views/default/icon/default/$size.png
• User icons: views/default/icon/user/default/$size.gif
• Group icons: views/default/icon/group/default/$size.gif in the groups plugin
Groups icon files have been moved from groups/<guid><size>.jpg relative to group owner’s directory on
filestore to a location prescribed by the entity icon service. Plugins should stop accessing files on the filestore directly
and use the entity icon API. Upgrade script is available via admin interface.
Autocomplete (user and friends pickers)
Friends Picker input is now rendered using input/userpicker.

Plugins should:
• Update overriden input/userpicker to support new only_friends parameter
• Remove friends picker CSS from their stylesheets
Friends collections
Friends collections UI has been moved to its own plugins - friends_collections.
3.29.2 From 2.2 to 2.3
PHP Version
PHP 5.5 has reached end of life in July 2016. To ensure that Elgg sites are secure, we now require PHP 5.6 for new
installations.
Existing installations can continue using PHP 5.5 until Elgg 3.0.
In order to upgrade Elgg to 2.3 using composer while using PHP 5.5, you may need to use
--ignore-platform-reqs flag.
Deprecated APIs
• Registering for to:object hook by the extender name: Use to:object, annotation and
to:object, metadata hooks instead.
• ajax_forward_hook(): No longer used as handler for ‘forward’,’all’ hook. Ajax response is now wrapped
by the ResponseFactory
• ajax_action_hook(): No longer used as handler for ‘action’,’all’ hook. Output buffering now starts before
the hook is triggered in ActionsService
• elgg_error_page_handler(): No longer used as a handler for ‘forward’,<error_code> hooks
• get_uploaded_file(): Use new file uploads API instead
• get_user_notification_settings(): Use ElggUser::getNotificationSettings()
• set_user_notification_setting(): Use ElggUser::setNotificationSetting()

• pagesetup, system event: Use the menu or page shell hooks instead.
• elgg.walled_garden JavaScript is deprecated: Use elgg/walled_garden AMD module instead.
• elgg()->getDb()->getTableprefix(): Use elgg_get_config(’dbprefix’).
• Private update_entity_last_action(): Refrain from manually updating last action timestamp.
• Setting non-public access_id on metadata is deprecated. See below.
• get_resized_image_from_existing_file(): Use elgg_save_resized_image().
• get_resized_image_from_uploaded_file(): Use elgg_save_resized_image() in combi-
nation with upload API.
• get_image_resize_parameters() will be removed.
• elgg_view_input(): Use elgg_view_field(). Apologies for the API churn.
Deprecated Views
• resources/file/world: Use the resources/file/all view instead.

• resources/pages/world: Use the resources/pages/all view instead.
• walled_garden.js: Use the elgg/walled_garden module instead.
New API for page and action handling
Page handlers and action script files should now return an instance of \Elgg\Http\ResponseBuilder. Plugins
should use the following convenience functions to build responses:
• elgg_ok_response() sends a 2xx response with HTML (page handler) or JSON data (actions)
• elgg_error_response() sends a 4xx or 5xx response without content/data
• elgg_redirect_response() silently redirects the request
New API for working with file uploads
• elgg_get_uploaded_files() - returns an array of Symfony uploaded file objects

• ElggFile::acceptUploadedFile() - moves an uploaded file to Elgg’s filestore
New API for manipulating images
New image manipulation service implements a more efficient approach to cropping and resizing images.
• elgg_save_resized_image() - crops and resizes an image to preferred dimensions
New API for events
• elgg_clear_event_handlers() - similar to elgg_clear_plugin_hook_handlers this func-

tions removes all registered event handlers

New API for signing URLs
URLs can now be signed with a SHA-256 HMAC key and validated at any time before URL expiry. This feature can
be used to tokenize action URLs in email notifications, as well as other uses outside of the Elgg installation.
• elgg_http_get_signed_url() - signs the URL with HMAC key
• elgg_http_validate_signed_url() - validates the signed URL
• elgg_signed_request_gatekeeper() - gatekeeper that validates the signature of the current request
Extendable form views
Form footer rendering can now be deferred until the form view and its extensions have finished rendering. This allows
plugins to collaborate on form views without breaking the markup logic.
• elgg_set_form_footer() - sets form footer for deferred rendering
• elgg_get_form_footer() - returns currently set form footer
Metadata access_id
It’s now deprecated to create metadata with an explicit access_id value other than ACCESS_PUBLIC.
In Elgg 3.0, metadata will not be access controlled, and will be available in all contexts. If your plugin relies on access
control of metadata, it would be wise to migrate storage to annotations or entities instead.
New API for extracting class names from arrays
Similar to elgg_extract(), elgg_extract_class() extracts the “class” key (if present), merges into exist-
ing class names, and always returns an array.
Notifications
• A high level ’prepare’,’notification’ hook is now triggered for instant and subscription notifications
and can be used to alter notification objects irrespective of their type.
• ’format’,’notification:<method>’ hook is now triggered for instant and subscription notifications
and can be used to format the notification (e.g. strip HTML tags, wrap the notification body in a template etc).
• Instant notifications are now handled by the notifications service, hence almost all hooks applicable to subscrip-
tion notifications also apply to instant notifications.
• elgg_get_notification_methods() can be used to obtain registered notification methods
• Added ElggUser::getNotificationSettings() and ElggUser::setNotificationSetting()
Entity list functions can output tables
In functions like elgg_list_entities($options), table output is possible by set-

ting $options[’list_type’] = ’table’ and providing an array of table columns as
$options[’columns’]. Each column is an Elgg\Views\TableColumn object, usually created via
methods on the service elgg()->table_columns.
Plugins can provide or alter these factory methods (see Elgg\Views\TableColumn\ColumnFactory). See
the view admin/users/newest for a usage example.

Inline tabs components
Inline tabs component can now be rendered with page/components/tabs view. The components al-
lows to switch between pre-poluated and ajax-loaded. See page/components/tabs in core views and
theme_sandbox/components/tabs in developers plugin for usage instructions and examples.
API to alter registration and login URL
• elgg_get_registration_url() should be used to obtain site’s registration URL

• elgg_get_login_url() should be used to obtain site’s login URL
• registration_url, site hook can be used to alter the default registration URL
• login_url, site hook can be used to alter the default login URL
Support for fieldsets in forms
• elgg_view_field() replaces elgg_view_input(). It has a similar API, but accepts a single array.
• elgg_view_field() supports #type, #label, #help and #class, allowing unprefixed versions to be
sent to the input view $vars.
• The new view input/fieldset can be used to render a set of fields, each rendered with
elgg_view_field().
3.29.3 From 2.1 to 2.2
Deprecated APIs
• elgg.ui.river JavaScript library: Remove calls to elgg_load_js(’elgg.ui.river’) from plugin

code. Update core/river/filter and forms/comment/save, if overwritten, to require component
AMD modules
• elgg.ui.popupOpen() and elgg.ui.popupClose() methods in elgg.ui JS library: Use
elgg/popup module instead.
• lightbox.js library: Do not use elgg_load_js(’lightbox.js’); unless your code references dep-
recated elgg.ui.lightbox namespace. Use elgg/lightbox AMD module instead.
• elgg.embed library and elgg.embed object: Do not use elgg_load_js(’elgg.embed’). Use
elgg/embed AMD module instead
• Accessing icons_sizes config value directly: Use elgg_get_icon_sizes()
• can_write_to_container(): Use ElggEntity::canWriteToContainer()
Deprecated Views
• elgg/ui.river.js is deprecated: Do not rely on simplecache URLs to work.

• groups/js is deprecated: Use groups/navigation AMD module as a menu item dependency for “fea-
ture” and “unfeature” menu items instead.
• lightbox/settings.js is deprecated: Use getOptions, ui.lightbox JS plugin hook or
data-colorbox-opts attribute.

• elgg/ckeditor/insert.js is deprecated: You no longer need to include it, hook registration takes place
in elgg/ckeditor module
• embed/embed.js is deprecated: Use elgg/embed AMD module.
Added elgg/popup module
New elgg/popup module can be used to build out more complex trigger-popup interactions, including binding custom
anchor types and opening/closing popups programmatically.
Added elgg/lightbox module
New elgg/lightbox module can be used to open and close the lightbox programmatically.
Added elgg/embed module
Even though rarely necessary, elgg/embed AMD module can be used to access the embed methods programmati-
cally. The module bootstraps itself when necessary and is unlikely to require further decoration.
New API for handling entity icons
• ElggEntity now implements \Elgg\EntityIcon interface

• elgg_get_icon_sizes() - return entity type/subtype specific icon sizes
• ElggEntity::saveIconFromUploadedFile() - creates icons from an uploaded file
• ElggEntity::saveIconFromLocalFile() - creates icons from a local file
• ElggEntity::saveIconFromElggFile() - creates icons from an instance of ElggFile
• ElggEntity::getIcon() - returns an instanceof ElggIcon that points to entity icon location on filestore
(this may be just a placeholder, use ElggEntity::hasIcon() to validate if file has been written)
• ElggEntity::deleteIcon() - deletes entity icons
• ElggEntity::getIconLastChange() - return modified time of the icon file
• ElggEntity::hasIcon() - checks if an icon with given size has been created
• elgg_get_embed_url() - can be used to return an embed URL for an entity’s icon (served via /serve-icon
handler)
Removed APIs
Just a warning that the private entity cache functions (e.g. _elgg_retrieve_cached_entity) have been re-
moved. Some plugins may have been using them. Plugins should not use private APIs as they will more often be
removed without notice.
Improved elgg/ckeditor module
elgg/ckeditor module can now be used to add WYSIWYG to a textarea programmatically with
elgg/ckeditor#bind.

3.29.4 From 2.0 to 2.1
Deprecated APIs
• ElggFile::setFilestore
• get_default_filestore
• set_default_filestore
• elgg_get_config(’siteemail’): Use elgg_get_site_entity()->email
• URLs starting with /css/ and /js/: Use elgg_get_simplecache_url()
• elgg.ui.widgets JavaScript object is deprecated by elgg/widgets AMD module
Application::getDb() changes
If you’re using this low-level API, do not expect it to return an Elgg\Database instance in 3.0. It now returns
an Elgg\Application\Database with many deprecated. These methods were never meant to be made public
API, but we will do our best to support them in 2.x.
Added elgg/widgets module
If your plugin code calls elgg.ui.widgets.init(), instead use the elgg/widgets module.
3.29.5 From 1.x to 2.0
Elgg can be now installed as a composer dependency instead of at document root
That means an Elgg site can look something like this:

settings.php
vendor/
elgg/
elgg/
engine/
start.php
_graphics/
elgg_sprites.png
mod/
blog
bookmarks
...
elgg_get_root_path and $CONFIG->path will return the path to the application root directory, which is not
necessarily the same as Elgg core’s root directory (which in this case is vendor/elgg/elgg/).
Do not attempt to access the core Elgg from your plugin directly, since you cannot rely on its location on the filesystem.
In particular, don’t try load engine/start.php.
// Don't do this!
dirname(__DIR__) . "/engine/start.php";
To boot Elgg manually, you can use the class Elgg\Application.

// boot Elgg in mod/myplugin/foo.php

require_once dirname(dirname(__DIR__)) . '/vendor/autoload.php';
\Elgg\Application::start();
However, use this approach sparingly. Prefer Routing instead whenever possible as that keeps your public URLs and
your filesystem layout decoupled.
Also, don’t try to access the _graphics files directly.
readfile(elgg_get_root_path() . "_graphics/elgg_sprites.png");
Use Views instead:

echo elgg_view('elgg_sprites.png');
Cacheable views must have a file extension in their names
This requirement makes it possibile for us to serve assets directly from disk for performance, instead of serving them
through PHP.
It also makes it much easier to explore the available cached resources by navigating to dataroot/views_simplecache
and browsing around.
• Bad: my/cool/template
• Good: my/cool/template.html
We now cache assets by "$viewtype/$view", not md5("$viewtype|$view"), which can result in conflicts
between cacheable views that don’t have file extensions to disambiguate files from directories.
Dropped jquery-migrate and upgraded jquery to ^2.1.4
jQuery 2.x is API-compatible with 1.x, but drops support for IE8-, which Elgg hasn’t supported for some time anyways.
See http://jquery.com/upgrade-guide/1.9/ for how to move off jquery-migrate.
If you’d prefer to just add it back, you can use this code in your plugin’s init:
elgg_register_js('jquery-migrate', elgg_get_simplecache_url('jquery-migrate.js'), 'head');
elgg_load_js('jquery-migrate');
Also, define a jquery-migrate.js view containing the contents of the script.
JS and CSS views have been moved out of the js/ and css/ directories
They also have been given .js and .css extensions respectively if they didn’t already have them:
Old view New view
js/view view.js
js/other.js other.js
css/view view.css
css/other.css other.css
js/img.png img.png
The main benefit this brings is being able to co-locate related assets. So a template (view.php) can have its CSS/JS
dependencies right next to it (view.css, view.js).

Care has been taken to make this change as backwards-compatible as possible, so you should not need to update any
view references right away. However, you are certainly encouraged to move your JS and CSS views to their new,
canonical locations.
Practically speaking, this carries a few gotchas:
The view_vars, $view_name and view, $view_name hooks will operate on the canonical view name:
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('view', 'css/elgg', function($hook, $view_name) {
assert($view_name == 'elgg.css') // not "css/elgg"
});
Using the view, all hook and checking for individual views may not work as intended:
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('view', 'all', function($hook, $view_name) {
// Won't work because "css/elgg" was aliased to "elgg.css"
if ($view_name == 'css/elgg') {
// Never executed...
}
// Won't work because no canonical views start with css/* anymore

if (strpos($view_name, 'css/') === 0) {
// Never executed...
}
});
Please let us know about any other BC issues this change causes. We’d like to fix as many as possible to make the
transition smooth.
fxp/composer-asset-plugin is now required to install Elgg from source
We use fxp/composer-asset-plugin to manage our browser assets (js, css, html) with Composer, but it must
be installed globally before installing Elgg in order for the bower-asset/* packages to be recognized. To install
it, run:
composer global require fxp/composer-asset-plugin
If you don’t do this before running composer install or composer create-project, you will get an error
message:
[InvalidArgumentException]
Package fxp/composer-asset-plugin not found
List of deprecated views and view arguments that have been removed
We dropped support for and/or removed the following views:

• canvas/layouts/*
• categories
• categories/view
• core/settings/tools
• embed/addcontentjs
• footer/analytics (Use page/elements/foot instead)
• groups/left_column

• groups/right_column
• groups/search/finishblurb
• groups/search/startblurb
• input/calendar (Use input/date instead)
• input/datepicker (Use input/date instead)
• input/pulldown (Use input/select instead)
• invitefriends/formitems
• js/admin (Use AMD and elgg_require_js instead of extending JS views)
• js/initialise_elgg (Use AMD and elgg_require_js instead of extending JS views)
• members/nav
• metatags (Use the ‘head’, ‘page’ plugin hook instead)
• navigation/topbar_tools
• navigation/viewtype
• notifications/subscriptions/groupsform
• object/groupforumtopic
• output/calendar (Use output/date instead)
• output/confirmlink (Use output/url instead)
• page_elements/contentwrapper
• page/elements/shortcut_icon (Use the ‘head’, ‘page’ plugin hook instead)
• page/elements/wrapper
• profile/icon (Use elgg_get_entity_icon)
• river/object/groupforumtopic/create
• settings/{plugin}/edit (Use plugins/{plugin}/settings instead)
• user/search/finishblurb
• user/search/startblurb
• usersettings/{plugin}/edit (Use plugins/{plugin}/usersettings instead)
• widgets/{handler}/view (Use widgets/{handler}/content instead)
We also dropped the following arguments to views:
• “value” in output/iframe (Use “src” instead)
• “area2” and “area3” in page/elements/sidebar (Use “sidebar” or view extension instead)
• “js” in icon views (e.g. icon/user/default)
• “options” to input/radio and input/checkboxes which aren’t key-value pairs will no longer be acceptable.

All scripts moved to bottom of page
You should test your plugin with the JavaScript error console visible. For performance reasons, Elgg no longer
supports script elements in the head element or in HTML views. elgg_register_js will now load all scripts
at the end of the body element.
You must convert inline scripts to AMD or to external scripts loaded with elgg_load_js.
Early in the page, Elgg provides a shim of the RequireJS require() function that simply queues code until the
AMD elgg and jQuery modules are defined. This provides a straightforward way to convert many inline scripts to
use require().
Inline code which will fail because the stack is not yet loaded:
<script>
$(function () {
// code using $ and elgg
});
</script>
This should work in Elgg 2.0:

<script>
require(['elgg', 'jquery'], function (elgg, $) {
$(function () {
// code using $ and elgg
});
});
</script>
Attribute formatter removes keys with underscores
elgg_format_attributes() (and all APIs that use it) now filter out attributes whose name contains an under-
score. If the attribute begins with data-, however, it will not be removed.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumb display now removes the last item if it does not contain a link. To restore the previous behavior, replace
the plugin hook handler elgg_prepare_breadcrumbs with your own:
elgg_unregister_plugin_hook_handler('prepare', 'breadcrumbs', 'elgg_prepare_breadcrumbs');
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('prepare', 'breadcrumbs', 'myplugin_prepare_breadcrumbs');
function myplugin_prepare_breadcrumbs($hook, $type, $breadcrumbs, $params) {

// just apply excerpt to titles
foreach (array_keys($breadcrumbs) as $i) {
$breadcrumbs[$i]['title'] = elgg_get_excerpt($breadcrumbs[$i]['title'], 100);
}
return $breadcrumbs;
}
Callbacks in Queries
Make sure to use only valid callable values for “callback” argument/options in the API.
Querying functions will now will throw a RuntimeException if is_callable() returns false for the given
callback value. This includes functions such as elgg_get_entities(), get_data(), and many more.

Comments plugin hook
Plugins can now return an empty string from ’comments’,$entity_type hook in order to override the default
comments component view. To force the default comments component, your plugin must return false. If you were
using empty strings to force the default comments view, you need to update your hook handlers to return false.
Container permissions hook
The behavior of the container_permissions_check hook has changed when an entity is being created: Before
2.0, the hook would be called twice if the entity’s container was not the owner. On the first call, the entity’s owner
would be passed in as $params[’container’], which could confuse handlers.
In 2.0, when an entity is created in a container like a group, if the owner is the same as the logged in user (almost
always the case), this first check is bypassed. So the container_permissions_check hook will almost always
be called once with $params[’container’] being the correct container of the entity.
Creating or deleting a relationship triggers only one event
The “create” and “delete” relationship events are now only fired once, with "relationship" as the object type.
E.g. Listening for the "create", "member" or "delete", "member" event(s) will no longer capture group
membership additions/removals. Use the "create", "relationship" or "delete", "relationship"
events.
Discussion feature has been pulled from groups into its own plugin
The object, groupforumtopic subtype has been replaced with the object, discussion subtype. If
your plugin is using or altering the old discussion feature, you should upgrade it to use the new subtype.
Nothing changes from the group owners’ point of view. The discussion feature is still available as a group tool and all
old discussions are intact.
Dropped login-over-https feature
For the best security and performance, serve all pages over HTTPS by switching the scheme in your site’s wwwroot
to https at http://yoursite.tld/admin/settings/advanced
Elgg has migrated from ext/mysql to PDO MySQL
Elgg now uses a PDO_MYSQL connection and no longer uses any ext/mysql functions. If you use mysql_* functions,
implicitly relying on an open connection, these will fail.
If your code uses one of the following functions, read below.
• execute_delayed_write_query()
• execute_delayed_read_query()
If you provide a callable $handler to be called with the results, your handler will now receive a
\Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\Statement object. Formerly this was an ext/mysql result resource.

Event/Hook calling order may change
When registering for events/hooks, the all keyword for wildcard matching no longer has any effect on the order that
handlers are called. To ensure your handler is called last, you must give it the highest priority of all matching handlers,
or to ensure your handler is called first, you must give it the lowest priority of all matching handlers.
If handlers were registered with the same priority, these are called in the order they were registered.
To emulate prior behavior, Elgg core handlers registered with the all keyword have been raised in priority. Some of
these handlers will most likely be called in a different order.
export/ URLs are no longer available
Elgg no longer provides this endpoint for exposing resource data.
Icons migrated to Font Awesome
Elgg’s sprites and most of the CSS classes beginning with elgg-icon- have been removed.
Usage of elgg_view_icon() is backward compatible, but static HTML using the elgg-icon classes will have
to be updated to the new markup.
Increase of z-index value in elgg-menu-site class
The value of z-index in the elgg-menu-site class has been increased from 1 to 50 to allow for page elements in the
content area to use the z-index property without the “More” site menu’s dropdown being displayed behind these
elements. If your plugin/theme overrides the elgg-menu-site class or views/default/elements/navigation.css please
adjust the z-index value in your modified CSS file accordingly.
input/autocomplete view
Plugins that override the input/autocomplete view will need to include the source URL in the data-source
attribute of the input element, require the new elgg/autocomplete AMD module, and call its init method. The
1.x javascript library elgg.autocomplete is no longer used.
Introduced third-party library for sending email
We are using the excellent Zend\Mail library to send emails in Elgg 2.0. There are likely edge cases that the library
handles differently than Elgg 1.x. Take care to test your email notifications carefully when upgrading to 2.0.
Label elements
The following views received label elements around some of the input fields. If your plugin/theme overrides these
views please check for the new content.
• views/default/core/river/filter.php
• views/default/forms/admin/plugins/filter.php
• views/default/forms/admin/plugins/sort.php
• views/default/forms/login.php

Plugin Aalborg Theme
The view page/elements/navbar now uses a Font Awesome icon for the mobile menu selector instead of an
image. The bars.png image and supporting CSS for the 1.12 rendering has been removed, so update your theme
accordingly.
Plugin Likes
Objects are no longer likable by default. To support liking, you can register a handler to permit the annotation, or more
simply register for the hook ["likes:is_likable", "<type>:<subtype>"] and return true. E.g.
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('likes:is_likable', 'object:mysubtype', 'Elgg\Values::getTrue');
Just as before, the permissions_check:annotate hook is still called and may be used to override default
behavior.
Plugin Messages
If you’ve removed or replaced the handler function messages_notifier to hide/alter the inbox icon, you’ll instead
need to do the same for the topbar menu handler messages_register_topbar. messages_notifier is no
longer used to add the menu link.
Messages will no longer get the metadata ‘msg’ for newly created messages. This means you can not rely on that
metadata to exist.
Plugin Blog
The blog pages showing ‘Mine’ or ‘Friends’ listings of blogs have been changed to list all the blogs owned by the
users (including those created in groups).
Plugin Bookmarks
The bookmark pages showing ‘Mine’ or ‘Friends’ listings of bookmarks have been changed to list all the bookmarks
owned by the users (including those created in groups).
Plugin File
The file pages showing ‘Mine’ or ‘Friends’ listings of files have been changed to list all the files owned by the users
(including those created in groups).
Removed Classes
• ElggInspector
• Notable
• FilePluginFile: replace with ElggFile (or load with get_entity())

Removed keys available via elgg_get_config()
• allowed_ajax_views
• dataroot_in_settings
• externals
• externals_map
• i18n_loaded_from_cache
• language_paths
• pagesetupdone
• registered_tag_metadata_names
• simplecache_enabled_in_settings
• translations
• viewpath
• views
• view_path
• viewtype
• wordblacklist
Also note that plugins should not be accessing the global $CONFIG variable except for in settings.php.
Removed Functions
• blog_get_page_content_friends
• blog_get_page_content_read
• count_unread_messages()
• delete_entities()
• delete_object_entity()
• delete_user_entity()
• elgg_get_view_location()
• elgg_validate_action_url()
• execute_delayed_query()
• extend_view()
• get_db_error()
• get_db_link()
• get_entities()
• get_entities_from_access_id()
• get_entities_from_access_collection()
• get_entities_from_annotations()
• get_entities_from_metadata()

• get_entities_from_metadata_multi()
• get_entities_from_relationship()
• get_filetype_cloud()
• get_library_files()
• get_views()
• is_ip_in_array()
• list_entities()
• list_entities_from_annotations()
• list_group_search()
• list_registered_entities()
• list_user_search()
• load_plugins()
• menu_item()
• make_register_object()
• mysql_*(): Elgg no longer uses ext/mysql
• remove_blacklist()
• search_for_group()
• search_for_object()
• search_for_site()
• search_for_user()
• search_list_objects_by_name()
• search_list_groups_by_name()
• search_list_users_by_name()
• set_template_handler()
• test_ip()
Removed methods
• ElggCache::set_variable()
• ElggCache::get_variable()
• ElggData::initialise_attributes()
• ElggData::getObjectOwnerGUID()
• ElggDiskFilestore::make_directory_root()
• ElggDiskFilestore::make_file_matrix()
• ElggDiskFilestore::user_file_matrix()
• ElggDiskFilestore::mb_str_split()
• ElggEntity::clearMetadata()

• ElggEntity::clearRelationships()
• ElggEntity::clearAnnotations()
• ElggEntity::getOwner()
• ElggEntity::setContainer()
• ElggEntity::getContainer()
• ElggEntity::getIcon()
• ElggEntity::setIcon()
• ElggExtender::getOwner()
• ElggFileCache::create_file()
• ElggObject::addToSite(): parent function in ElggEntity still available
• ElggObject::getSites(): parent function in ElggEntity still available
• ElggSite::getCollections()
• ElggUser::addToSite(): parent function in ElggEntity still available
• ElggUser::getCollections()
• ElggUser::getOwner()
• ElggUser::getSites(): parent function in ElggEntity still available
• ElggUser::listFriends()
• ElggUser::listGroups()
• ElggUser::removeFromSite(): parent function in ElggEntity still available
The following arguments have also been dropped:
• ElggSite::getMembers() - 2: $offset
• elgg_view_entity_list() - 3: $offset - 4: $limit - 5: $full_view - 6:
$list_type_toggle - 7: $pagination
Removed Plugin Hooks
• [display, view]: See the new plugin hook.
Removed Actions
• widgets/upgrade
Removed Views
• forms/admin/plugins/change_state

Removed View Variables
During rendering, the view system no longer injects these into the scope:
• $vars[’url’]: replace with elgg_get_site_url()
• $vars[’user’]: replace with elgg_get_logged_in_user_entity()
• $vars[’config’]: use elgg_get_config() and elgg_set_config()
• $CONFIG: use elgg_get_config() and elgg_set_config()
Also several workarounds for very old views are no longer performed. Make these changes:
• Set $vars[’full_view’] instead of $vars[’full’].
• Set $vars[’name’] instead of $vars[’internalname’].
• Set $vars[’id’] instead of $vars[’internalid’].
Removed libraries
• elgg:markdown: Elgg no longer provides a markdown implementation. You must provide your own.
Specifying View via Properties
The metadata $entity->view no longer specifies the view used to render in elgg_view_entity().
Similarly the property $annotation->view no longer has an effect within elgg_view_annotation().
Viewtype is static after the initial elgg_get_viewtype() call
elgg_set_viewtype() must be used to set the viewtype at runtime. Although Elgg still checks the view input
and $CONFIG->view initially, this is only done once per request.
Deprecations
It’s deprecated to read or write to metadata keys starting with filestore:: on ElggFile objects. In Elgg 3.0
this metadata will be deleted if it points to the current data root path, so few file objects will have it. Plugins should
only use ElggFile::setFilestore if files need to be stored in a custom location.
Note: This is not the only deprecation in Elgg 2.0. Plugin developers should watch their site error logs.
3.29.6 From 1.10 to 1.11
Comment highlighting
If your theme is using the file views/default/css/elements/components.php, you must add the follow-
ing style definitions in it to enable highlighting for comments and discussion replies:

.elgg-comments .elgg-state-highlight {
-webkit-animation: comment-highlight 5s;
animation: comment-highlight 5s;
}
@-webkit-keyframes comment-highlight {
from {background: #dff2ff;}
to {background: white;}
}
@keyframes comment-highlight {
from {background: #dff2ff;}
to {background: white;}
}
3.29.7 From 1.9 to 1.10
File uploads
If your plugin is using a snippet copied from the file/upload action to fix detected mime types for Microsoft
zipped formats, it can now be safely removed.
If your upload action performs other manipulations on detected mime and simple types, it is recommended to make
use of available plugin hooks:
• ’mime_type’,’file’ for filtering detected mime types
• ’simple_type’,’file’ for filtering parsed simple types
3.29.8 From 1.8 to 1.9
In the examples we are upgrading an imaginary “Photos” plugin.

Only the key changes are included. For example some of the deprecated functions are not mentioned here separately.
Each section will include information whether the change is backwards compatible with Elgg 1.8.
The manifest file
No changes are needed if your plugin is compatible with 1.8.

It’s however recommended to add the <id> tag. It’s value should be the name of the directory where the plugin is
located inside the mod/ directory.
If you make changes that break BC, you must update the plugin version and the required Elgg release.
Example of (shortened) old version:
<name>Photos</name>
<author>John Doe</author>
<description>Adds possibility to upload photos and arrange them into albums.</description>
<requires>
</requires>
</plugin_manifest>

Example of (shortened) new version:

<name>Photos</name>
<id>photos</id>
<author>John Doe</author>
<description>Adds possibility to upload photos and arrange them into albums.</description>
<requires>
</requires>
</plugin_manifest>
$CONFIG and $vars[’config’]
Both the global $CONFIG variable and the $vars[’config’] parameter have been deprecated. They should be
replaced with the elgg_get_config() function.
Example of old code:
// Using the global $CONFIG variable:
global $CONFIG;
$plugins_path = $CONFIG->plugins_path
// Using the $vars view parameter:

$plugins_path = $vars['plugins_path'];
Example of new code:

$plugins_path = elgg_get_config('plugins_path');
Note: Compatible with 1.8
Note: See how the community_plugins plugin was updated: https://github.com/Elgg/community_plugins/commit/f233999bbd1478a200
Language files
In Elgg 1.8 the language files needed to use the add_translation() function. In 1.9 it is enough to just return
the array that was previously passed to the function as a parameter. Elgg core will use the file name (e.g. en.php) to
tell which language the file contains.
Example of the old way in languages/en.php:
$english = array(
'photos:all' => 'All photos',
);
add_translation('en', $english);
Example of new way:

return array(
'photos:all' => 'All photos',
);
Warning: Not compatible with 1.8
Notifications
One of the biggest changes in Elgg 1.9 is the notifications system. The new system allows more flexible and scalable
way of sending notifications.
Example of the old way:
// Tell core that we want to send notifications about new photos
register_notification_object('object', 'photo', elgg_echo('photo:new'));
// Register a handler that creates the notification message

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('notify:entity:message', 'object', 'photos_notify_message');
}
/**
* Set the notification message body
*
* @param string $message The current message body
* @param array $params Parameters about the photo
* @return string
*/
function photos_notify_message($hook, $type, $message, $params) {
$to_entity = $params['to_entity'];
if (elgg_instanceof($entity, 'object', 'photo')) {
$descr = $entity->excerpt;
$title = $entity->title;
$owner = $entity->getOwnerEntity();
return elgg_echo('photos:notification', array(
$owner->name,
$title,
$descr,
$entity->getURL()
));
}
return null;
}
Example of the new way:

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('prepare', 'notification:publish:object:photo', 'photos_prepare
}
/**
* Prepare a notification message about a new photo

*
* @param Elgg_Notifications_Notification $notification The notification to prepare
* @return Elgg_Notifications_Notification
*/
function photos_prepare_notification($hook, $type, $notification, $params) {
$entity = $params['event']->getObject();
$owner = $params['event']->getActor();
$recipient = $params['recipient'];
$language = $params['language'];
// Title for the notification

$notification->subject = elgg_echo('photos:notify:subject', array($entity->title), $language);
// Message body for the notification

$notification->body = elgg_echo('photos:notify:body', array(
$owner->name,
$entity->title,
$entity->getExcerpt(),
$entity->getURL()
), $language);
// The summary text is used e.g. by the site_notifications plugin

$notification->summary = elgg_echo('photos:notify:summary', array($entity->title), $language);
return $notification;
}
Note: See how the community_plugins plugin was updated to use the new system:
https://github.com/Elgg/community_plugins/commit/bfa356cfe8fb99ebbca4109a1b8a1383b70ff123
Notifications can also be sent with the notify_user() function.

It has however been updated to support three new optional parameters passed inside an array as the fifth parameter.
The parameters give notification plugins more control over the notifications, so they should be included whenever
possible. For example the bundled site_notifications plugin won’t work properly if the parameters are missing.
Parameters:
• object The object that we are notifying about (e.g. ElggEntity or ElggAnnotation). This is needed so that
notification plugins can provide a link to the object.
• action String that describes the action that triggered the notification (e.g. “create”, “update”, etc).
• summary String that contains a summary of the notification. (It should be more informative than the notification
subject but less informative than the notification body.)
// Notify $owner that $user has added a $rating to an $entity created by him
$subject = elgg_echo('rating:notify:subject');

$body = elgg_echo('rating:notify:body', array(

$owner->name,
$user->name,
$entity->title,
$entity->getURL(),
));
notify_user($owner->guid,
$user->guid,
$subject,
$body
);

// Notify $owner that $user has added a $rating to an $entity created by him
$subject = elgg_echo('rating:notify:subject');
$summary = elgg_echo('rating:notify:summary', array($entity->title));
$body = elgg_echo('rating:notify:body', array(
$owner->name,
$user->name,
$entity->title,
$entity->getURL(),
));
$params = array(
'object' => $rating,
'action' => 'create',
'summary' => $summary,
);
notify_user($owner->guid,
$user->guid,
$subject,
$body,
$params
);
Note: Compatible with 1.8
Adding items to the Activity listing
add_to_river('river/object/photo/create', 'create', $user_guid, $photo_guid);
elgg_create_river_item(array(
'view' => 'river/object/photo/create',
'action_type' => 'create',
'subject_guid' => $user_guid,
'object_guid' => $photo_guid,
));
You can also add the optional target_guid parameter which tells the target of the create action.
If the photo would had been added for example into a photo album, we could add it by passing in also:

'target_guid' => $album_guid,
Entity URL handlers
The elgg_register_entity_url_handler() function has been deprecated. In 1.9 you should use the
’entity:url’, ’object’ plugin hook instead.
/**
* Initialize the photo plugin
*/
my_plugin_init() {
elgg_register_entity_url_handler('object', 'photo', 'photo_url_handler');
}
/**
* Returns the URL from a photo entity
*
* @param ElggEntity $entity
* @return string
*/
function photo_url_handler($entity) {
return "photo/view/{$entity->guid}";
}

/**
* Initialize the photo plugin
*/
my_plugin_init() {
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('entity:url', 'object', 'photo_url_handler');
}
/**
* Returns the URL from a photo entity
*
* @param string $hook 'entity:url'
* @param string $type 'object'
* @param string $url The current URL
* @return string
*/
function photo_url_handler($hook, $type, $url, $params) {
// Check that the entity is a photo object

if ($entity->getSubtype() !== 'photo') {
// This is not a photo object, so there's no need to go further
return;
}
return "photo/view/{$entity->guid}";
}

Web services
In Elgg 1.8 the web services API was included in core and methods were exposed using expose_function().
To enable the same functionality for Elgg 1.9, enable the “Web services 1.9” plugin and replace all calls to
expose_function() with elgg_ws_expose_function().
3.29.9 From 1.7 to 1.8
Elgg 1.8 is the biggest leap forward in the development of Elgg since version 1.0. As such, there is more work to
update core and plugins than with previous upgrades. There were a small number of API changes and following our
standard practice, the methods we deprecated have been updated to work with the new API. The biggest changes are
in the standardization of plugins and in the views system.
Updating core
Delete the following core directories (same level as _graphics and engine):
• _css
• account
• admin
• dashboard
• entities
• friends
• search
• settings
• simplecache
• views
Warning: If you do not delete these directories before an upgrade, you will have problems!
Updating plugins
Use standardized routing with page handlers
• All: /page_handler/all
• User’s content: /page_handler/owner/:username
• User’s friends’ content: /page_handler/friends/:username
• Single entity: /page_handler/view/:guid/:title
• Added: /page_handler/add/:container_guid
• Editing: /page_handler/edit/:guid

• Group list: /page_handler/group/:guid/all
Include page handler scripts from the page handler
Almost every page handler should have a page handler script. (Example: bookmarks/all =>
mod/bookmarks/pages/bookmarks/all.php)
• Call set_input() for entity guids in the page handler and use get_input() in the page handler scripts.
• Call gatekeeper() and admin_gatekeeper() in the page handler function if required.
• The group URL should use the pages/:handler/owner.php script.
• Page handlers should not contain HTML.
• Update the URLs throughout the plugin. (Don’t forget to remove /pg/!)
Use standardized page handlers and scripts
• Store page handler scripts in mod/:plugin/pages/:page_handler/:page_name.php

• Use the content page layout in page handler scripts:
$content = elgg_view_layout('content', $options);
• Page handler scripts should not contain HTML.

• Call elgg_push_breadcrumb() in the page handler scripts.
• No need to set page owner if the URLs are in the standardized format.
• For group content, check the container_guid by using elgg_get_page_owner_entity().
The object/:subtype view
• Make sure there are views for $vars[’full_view’] == true and $vars[’full_view’] ==
false. $vars[’full_view’] replaced $vars[’full].
• Check for the object in $vars[’entity’]. Use elgg_instance_of() to make sure it’s the type of
entity you want.
• Return true to short circuit the view if the entity is missing or wrong.
• Use elgg_view(‘object/elements/summary’, array(‘entity’ => $entity)); and
elgg_view_menu(‘entity’, array(‘entity’ => $entity)); to help format. You should use
very little markup in these views.
Update action structure
• Namespace action files and action names (example: mod/blog/actions/blog/save.php =>

action/blog/save)
• Use the following action URLs:
– Add: action/:plugin/save
– Edit: action/:plugin/save
– Delete: action/:plugin/delete

• Make the delete action accept action/:handler/delete?guid=:guid so the metadata entity menu
has the correct URL by default.
Update deprecated functions
• Functions deprecated in 1.7 will produce visible errors in 1.8.

• You can also update functions deprecated in 1.8.
– Many registration functions simply added an elgg_ prefix for consistency, and should be easy to update.
– See /engine/lib/deprecated-1.8.php for the full list.
– You can set the debug level to “warning” to get visual reminders of deprecated functions.
Update the widget views
See the blog or file widgets for examples.
Update the group profile module
Use the blog or file plugins for examples. This will help with making your plugin themeable by the new CSS frame-
work.
Update forms
• Move form bodies to the forms/:action view to use Evan’s new elgg_view_form.
• Use input views in form bodies rather than html. This helps with theming and future-proofing.
• Add a function that prepares the form (see mod/file/lib/file.php for an example)
• Make your forms sticky (see the file plugin’s upload action and form prepare function).
The forms API is discussed in more detail in Forms + Actions.
Clean up CSS/HTML
We have added many CSS patterns to the base CSS file (modules, image block, spacing primitives). We encourage
you to use these patterns and classes wherever possible. Doing so should:
1. Reduce maintenance costs, since you can delete most custom CSS.
2. Make your plugin more compatible with community themes.
Look for patterns that can be moved into core if you need significant CSS.
We use hyphens rather than underscores in classes/ids and encourage you do the same for consistency.
If you do need your own CSS, you should use your own namespace, rather than elgg-.
Update manifest.xml
• Use http://el.gg/manifest17to18 to automate this.

• Don’t use the “bundled” category with your plugins. That is only for plugins distributed with Elgg.

Update settings and user settings views
• The view for settings is now plugins/:plugin/settings (previously settings/:plugin/edit).

• The view for user settings is now plugins/:plugin/usersettings (previously
usersettings/:plugin/edit).
3.30 Upgrading plugin data
Every now and then there comes a time when a plugin needs to change the contents or the structure of the data it has
stored either in the database or the dataroot.
The motivation for this may be that the data structure needs to be converted to more efficient or flexible structure. Or
perhaps due to a bug the data items have been saved in an invalid way, and they needs to be converted to the correct
format.
Migrations and convertions like this may take a long time if there is a lot of data to be processed. This is why Elgg
provides the Elgg\Upgrade\Batch interface that can be used for implementing long-running upgrades.
3.30.1 Declaring a plugin upgrade
Plugin can communicate the need for an upgrade under the upgrades key in elgg-plugin.php file. Each value
of the array must be the fully qualified name of an upgrade class that implements the Elgg\Upgrade\Batch
interface.
Example from mod/blog/elgg-plugin.php file:
return [
'upgrades' => [
Blog\Upgrades\AccessLevelFix::class,
Blog\Upgrades\DraftStatusUpgrade::class,
]
];
The class names in the example refer to the classes:

• mod/blog/classes/Blog/Upgrades/AccessLevelFix
• mod/blog/classes/Blog/Upgrades/DraftStatusUpgrade
3.30.2 The upgrade class
A class implemening the Elgg\Upgrade\Batch interface has a lot of freedom on how it wants to handle the actual
processing of the data. It must however declare some constant variables and also take care of marking whether each
processed item was upgraded successfully or not.
The basic structure of the class is the following:
<?php
namespace Blog\Upgrades;
/**
* Fixes invalid blog access values
*/
class AccessLevelFix implements \Elgg\Upgrade\Batch {

const INCREMENT_OFFSET = true;
const VERSION = 2016120300;
/**
* Check whether the upgrade is needed
*
* @return bool
*/
public function isRequired() {
/**
* Count the amount of items that need to be processed
*
* @return int
*/
public function countItems() {
/**
* Run the upgrade
*
* @param Result $result
* @param int $offset
* @return Result result
*/
public function run(\Elgg\Upgrade\Result $result, $offset) {
}
}
Class constants
The class must declare the following constant variables:
INCREMENT_OFFSET
This is a boolean value that tells Elgg core whether it should increment the offset of the upgrade after each run. If
the upgrade leaves the data itself intact and simply modifies it in some way, the value should be set to true. If the
upgrade either moves or completely deletes the items within the data, the value should be false.
VERSION
The version constant tells the date when the upgrade was added. It consists of eight digits and is in format
yyyymmddnn where:
• yyyy is the year
• mm is the month (with leading zero)
• dd is the day (with leading zero)
3.30. Upgrading plugin data 203

• nn is an incrementing number (starting from 00) that is used in case two separate upgrades have been added
during the same day
Class methods
isRequired()
Checks the database or the dataroot whether there are items that need to be upgraded.
countItems()
Counts and returns the total amount of items that need to be processed by the upgrade.
run()
Takes care of the actual upgrade. It takes two parameters:

• $result: An instance of Elgg\Upgrade\Result object
• $offset: The offset where the next upgrade batch should start
For each item the method processes, it must call either:
• $result->addSuccesses(): If the item was upgraded successfully
• $result->addFailures(): If it failed to upgrade the item
Both methods default to one item, but you can optionally pass in the number of items.
Additionally it can set as many error messages as it sees necessary in case something goes wrong:
• $result->addError("Error message goes here")
In most cases the $offset parameter is passed directly to one of the elgg_get_entities*() functions:
/**
* Process blog posts
*
* @param Result $result Object that holds results of the batch
* @param int $offset Starting point of the batch
* @return Result Instance of \Elgg\Upgrade\Result;
*/
public function run(Result $result, $offset) {
$blogs = elgg_get_entitites([
'type' => 'object'
'subtype' => 'blog'
'offset' => $offset,
]);
foreach ($blogs as $blog) {

// Do something to the blog objects here
if (do_something($blog)) {
$result->addSuccesses()
} else {
$result->addFailures();
$result->addError("Failed to fix the blog {$blog->guid}.");
}
}

return $result;
}
3.30.3 Administration interface
Each upgrade implementing the Elgg\Upgrade\Batch interface gets listed in the admin panel after triggering the
site upgrade from the Administration dashboard.
While running the upgrades Elgg provides:
• Estimated duration of the upgrade
• Count of processed items
• Number of errors
• Possible error messages
3.31 List of events in core
Contents
• System events
• User events
• Relationship events
• Entity events
• Metadata events
• Annotation events
• River events
• File events
• Notes
3.31.1 System events
boot, system First event triggered. Triggered before plugins have been loaded.
plugins_boot, system Triggered just after the plugins are loaded. Rarely used. init, system is used instead.
init, system Plugins tend to use this event for initialization (extending views, registering callbacks, etc.)
ready, system Triggered after the init, system event. All plugins are fully loaded and the engine is ready to
serve pages.
shutdown, system Triggered after the page has been sent to the user. Expensive operations could be done here and
not make the user wait.
Note: Depending upon your server configuration the PHP output might not be shown until after the process is
completed. This means that any long-running processes will still delay the page load.
3.31. List of events in core 205

Note: This event is prefered above using register_shutdown_function as you may not have access to all
the Elgg services (eg. database) in the shutdown function but you will in the event.
regenerate_site_secret:before, system Return false to cancel regenerating the site secret. You should also provide a
message to the user.
regenerate_site_secret:after, system Triggered after the site secret has been regenerated.
log, systemlog Called for all triggered events. Used internally by system_log_default_logger() to populate
the system_log table.
upgrade, system Triggered after a system upgrade has finished. All upgrade scripts have run, but the caches are not
cleared.
upgrade, upgrade
A single upgrade script finished executing. Handlers are passed a stdClass object with the properties
• from - The version of Elgg upgrading from.

• to - The version just upgraded to.
activate, plugin Return false to prevent activation of the plugin.
deactivate, plugin Return false to prevent deactivation of the plugin.
init:cookie, <name> Return false to override setting a cookie.
cache:flush, system Reset internal and external caches, by default including system_cache, simplecache, and mem-
cache. One might use it to reset others such as APC, OPCache, or WinCache.
send:before, http_response Triggered before an HTTP response is sent. Handlers will receive an instance of Sym-
fonyComponentHttpFoundationResponse that is to be sent to the requester. Handlers can terminate the event
and prevent the response from being sent by returning false.
send:after, http_response Triggered after an HTTP response is sent. Handlers will receive an instance of Symfony-
ComponentHttpFoundationResponse that was sent to the requester.
3.31.2 User events
login:before, user Triggered during login. Returning false prevents the user from logging
login:after, user Triggered after the user logs in.
logout:before, user Triggered during logout. Returning false should prevent the user from logging out.
logout:after, user Triggered after the user logouts.
validate, user When a user registers, the user’s account is disabled. This event is triggered to allow a plugin to
determine how the user should be validated (for example, through an email with a validation link).
validate:after, user Triggered when user’s account has been validated.
invalidate:after, user Triggered when user’s account validation has been revoked.
profileupdate, user User has changed profile
profileiconupdate, user User has changed profile icon
ban, user Triggered before a user is banned. Return false to prevent.
unban, user Triggered before a user is unbanned. Return false to prevent.

make_admin, user Triggered before a user is promoted to an admin. Return false to prevent.
remove_admin, user Triggered before a user is demoted from an admin. Return false to prevent.
3.31.3 Relationship events
create, relationship Triggered after a relationship has been created. Returning false deletes the relationship that was
just created.
Note: This event was broken in Elgg 1.9 - 1.12.3, returning false would not delete the relationship. This is working
as of 1.12.4
delete, relationship Triggered before a relationship is deleted. Return false to prevent it from being deleted.
join, group Triggered after the user $params[’user’] has joined the group $params[’group’].
leave, group Triggered before the user $params[’user’] has left the group $params[’group’].
3.31.4 Entity events
create, <entity type> Triggered for user, group, object, and site entities after creation. Return false to delete entity.
update, <entity type> Triggered before an update for the user, group, object, and site entities. Return false to prevent
update. The entity method getOriginalAttributes() can be used to identify which attributes have
changed since the entity was last saved.
update:after, <entity type> Triggered after an update for the user, group, object, and site entities. The entity method
getOriginalAttributes() can be used to identify which attributes have changed since the entity was
last saved.
delete, <entity type> Triggered before entity deletion. Return false to prevent deletion.
disable, <entity type> Triggered before the entity is disabled. Return false to prevent disabling.
disable:after, <entity type> Triggered after the entity is disabled.
enable, <entity type> Return false to prevent enabling.
enable:after, <entity type> Triggered after the entity is enabled.
3.31.5 Metadata events
create, metadata Called after the metadata has been created. Return false to delete the metadata that was just created.
update, metadata Called after the metadata has been updated. Return false to delete the metadata.
delete, metadata Called before metadata is deleted. Return false to prevent deletion.
enable, metadata Called when enabling metadata. Return false to prevent enabling.
disable, metadata Called when disabling metadata. Return false to prevent disabling.
3.31. List of events in core 207

3.31.6 Annotation events
annotate, <entity type> Called before the annotation has been created. Return false to prevent annotation of this
entity.
create, annotation Called after the annotation has been created. Return false to delete the annotation.
update, annotation Called after the annotation has been updated. Return false to delete the annotation.
delete, annotation Called before annotation is deleted. Return false to prevent deletion.
enable, annotation Called when enabling annotations. Return false to prevent enabling.
disable, annotations Called when disabling annotations. Return false to prevent disabling.
3.31.7 River events
created, river Called after a river item is created.
Note: Use the plugin hook creating, river to cancel creation (or alter options).
delete:before, river Triggered before a river item is deleted. Returning false cancels the deletion.
delete:after, river Triggered after a river item was deleted.
3.31.8 File events
upload:after, file Called after an uploaded file has been written to filestore. Receives an instance of ElggFile the
uploaded file was written to. The ElggFile may or may not be an entity with a GUID.
3.31.9 Notes
Because of bugs in the Elgg core, some events may be thrown more than once on the same action. For example,
update, object is thrown twice.
3.32 List of plugin hooks in core

Contents
• System hooks
• User hooks
• Object hooks
• Action hooks
• Ajax
• Permission hooks
• Notifications
• Routing
• Views
• Files
• Other
• Plugins
3.32.1 System hooks
page_owner, system Filter the page_owner for the current page. No options are passed.
siteid, system
gc, system Allows plugins to run garbage collection for $params[’period’].
unit_test, system Add a Simple Test test. (Deprecated.)
diagnostics:report, system Filter the output for the diagnostics report download.
search_types, get_types
cron, <period> Triggered by cron for each period.
validate, input Filter GET and POST input. This is used by get_input() to sanitize user input.
geocode, location Deprecated as of 1.9.
diagnostics:report, system Filters the output for a diagnostic report.
debug, log Triggered by the Logger. Return false to stop the default logging method. $params includes:
• level - The debug level. One of:
– Elgg_Logger::OFF
– Elgg_Logger::ERROR
– Elgg_Logger::WARNING
– Elgg_Logger::NOTICE
– Elgg_Logger::INFO
• msg - The message
• display - Should this message be displayed?
format, friendly:title Formats the “friendly” title for strings. This is used for generating URLs.
format, friendly:time Formats the “friendly” time for the timestamp $params[’time’].
format, strip_tags Filters a string to remove tags. The original string is passed as
$params[’original_string’] and an optional set of allowed tags is passed as
$params[’allowed_tags’].
3.32. List of plugin hooks in core 209

output:before, page In elgg_view_page(), this filters $vars before it’s passed to the page shell
view (page/<page_shell>). To stop sending the X-Frame-Options header, unregister the handler
_elgg_views_send_header_x_frame_options() from this hook.
output, page In elgg_view_page(), this filters the output return value.
parameters, menu:<menu_name> Triggered by elgg_view_menu(). Used to change menu variables (like sort
order) before rendering.
register, menu:<menu_name> Filters the initial list of menu items pulled from configuration, before the menu has
been split into sections. Triggered by elgg_view_menu() and elgg()->menus->getMenu().
prepare, menu:<menu_name> Filters the array of menu sections before they’re displayed. Each section is a string
key mapping to an area of menu items. This is a good hook to sort, add, remove, and modify menu items.
Triggered by elgg_view_menu() and elgg()->menus->prepareMenu().
register, menu:filter:<filter_id> Allows plugins to modify layout filter tabs on layouts that specify <filter_id>
parameter.
filter_tabs, <context> Filters the array of ElggMenuItem used to display the All/Mine/Friends tabs. The
$params array includes:
• selected: the selected menu item name
• user: the logged in ElggUser or null
• vars: The $vars argument passed to elgg_get_filter_tabs
creating, river The options for elgg_create_river_item are filtered through this hook. You may alter values
or return false to cancel the item creation.
simplecache:generate, <view> Triggered when generating the cached content of a view.
prepare, breadcrumbs In elgg_get_breadcrumbs(), this filters the registered breadcrumbs before returning
them, allowing a plugin to alter breadcrumb strategy site-wide. $params array includes:
• breadcrumbs - an array of bredcrumbs, each with title and link keys
• identifier - route identifier of the current page
• segments - route segments of the current page
add, river
elgg.data, site Filters cached configuration data to pass to the client. More info
elgg.data, page Filters uncached, page-specific configuration data to pass to the client. More info
registration_url, site Filters site’s registration URL. Can be used by plugins to attach invitation codes, referrer codes
etc. to the registration URL. $params array contains an array of query elements added to the registration URL
by the invoking script. The hook must return an absolute URL to the registration page.
login_url, site Filters site’s login URL. $params array contains an array of query elements added to the login URL
by the invoking script. The hook must return an absolute URL of the login page.
3.32.2 User hooks
usersettings:save, user Triggered in the aggregate action to save user settings. Return false prevent sticky forms from
being cleared.
access:collections:write, user Filters an array of access permissions that the user $params[’user_id’] is al-
lowed to save content with. Permissions returned are of the form (id => ‘Human Readable Name’).

registeruser:validate:username, all Return boolean for if the string in $params[’username’] is valid for a
username.
registeruser:validate:password, all Return boolean for if the string in $params[’password’] is valid for a
password.
registeruser:validate:email, all Return boolean for if the string in $params[’email’] is valid for an email ad-
dress.
register, user Triggered by the register action after the user registers. Return false to delete the user. Note the
function register_user does not trigger this hook.
login:forward, user Filters the URL to which the user will be forwarded after login.
find_active_users, system Return the number of active users.
status, user Triggered by The Wire when adding a post.
username:character_blacklist, user Filters the string of blacklisted characters used to validate username during
registration. The return value should be a string consisting of the disallowed characters. The default string can
be found from $params[’blacklist’].
3.32.3 Object hooks
comments, <entity_type> Triggered in elgg_view_comments(). If returning content, this overrides the

page/elements/comments view.
comments:count, <entity_type> Return the number of comments on $params[’entity’].
likes:count, <entity_type> Return the number of likes for $params[’entity’].
3.32.4 Action hooks
action, <action> Triggered before executing action scripts. Return false to abort action.
action_gatekeeper:permissions:check, all Triggered after a CSRF token is validated. Return false to prevent vali-
dation.
action_gatekeeper:upload_exceeded_msg, all Triggered when a POST exceeds the max size allowed by the server.
Return an error message to display.
forward, <reason> Filter the URL to forward a user to when forward($url, $reason) is called.
response, action:<action> Filter an instance of \Elgg\Http\ResponseBuilder before it is sent to the client.
This hook can be used to modify response content, status code, forward URL, or set additional response headers.
Note that the <action> value is parsed from the request URL, therefore you may not be able to filter the
responses of action() calls if they are nested within the another action script file.
3.32.5 Ajax
ajax_response, * When the elgg/Ajax AMD module is used, this hook gives access to the response object
(\Elgg\Services\AjaxResponse) so it can be altered/extended. The hook type depends on the method
call:
elgg/Ajax method plugin hook type
action() action:<action_name>
path() path:<url_path>
view() view:<view_name>
form() form:<action_name>

output, ajax This filters the JSON output wrapper returned to the legacy ajax API (elgg.ajax, elgg.action,
etc.). Plugins can alter the output, forward URL, system messages, and errors. For the elgg/Ajax AMD
module, use the ajax_response hook documented above.
3.32.6 Permission hooks
container_logic_check, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity:canWriteToContainer() before trigger-

ing permissions_check and container_permissions_check hooks. Unlike permissions hooks,
logic check can be used to prevent certain entity types from being contained by other entity types, e.g. discus-
sion replies should only be contained by discussions. This hook can also be used to apply status logic, e.g. do
disallow new replies for closed discussions.
The handler should return false to prevent an entity from containing another entity. The default value passed
to the hook is null, so the handler can check if another hook has modified the value by checking if return value
is set. Should this hook return false, container_permissions_check and permissions_check
hooks will not be triggered.
The $params array will contain:
• container - An entity that will be used as a container
• user - User who will own the entity to be written to container
• subtype - Subtype of the entity to be written to container (entity type is assumed from hook type)
container_permissions_check, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can use
the entity $params[’container’] as a container for an entity of <entity_type> and subtype
$params[’subtype’].
In the rare case where an entity is created with neither the container_guid nor the owner_guid matching
the logged in user, this hook is called twice, and in the first call $params[’container’] will be the owner,
not the entity’s real container.
The $params array will contain:
• container - An entity that will be used as a container
• user - User who will own the entity to be written to container
• subtype - Subtype of the entity to be written to container (entity type is assumed from hook type)
permissions_check, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can edit the entity
$params[’entity’].
permissions_check:delete, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can delete the entity
$params[’entity’]. Defaults to $entity->canEdit().
permissions_check:delete, river Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can delete the river item
$params[’item’]. Defaults to true for admins and false for other users.
Note: This check is not performed when using the deprecated elgg_delete_river().
permissions_check, widget_layout Return boolean for if $params[’user’] can edit the widgets in the context
passed as $params[’context’] and with a page owner of $params[’page_owner’].
permissions_check:metadata, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can edit the
metadata $params[’metadata’] on the entity $params[’entity’].
permissions_check:comment, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can comment on
the entity $params[’entity’].

permissions_check:annotate:<annotation_name>, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user

$params[’user’] can create an annotation <annotation_name> on the entity
$params[’entity’]. If logged in, the default is true.
Note: This is called before the more general permissions_check:annotate hook, and its return value
is that hook’s initial value.
permissions_check:annotate, <entity_type> Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] can create an an-
notation $params[’annotation_name’] on the entity $params[’entity’]. if logged in, the default
is true.
Warning: This is functions differently than the permissions_check:metadata hook by passing the
annotation name instead of the metadata object.
permissions_check:annotation Return boolean for if the user in $params[’user’] can edit the annotation
$params[’annotation’] on the entity $params[’entity’]. The user can be null.
fail, auth Return the failure message if authentication failed. An array of previous PAM failure methods is passed as
$params.
api_key, use Triggered by api_auth_key(). Returning false prevents the key from being authenticated.
access:collections:read, user Filters an array of access IDs that the user $params[’user_id’] can see.
Warning: The handler needs to either not use parts of the API that use the access system (triggering the
hook again) or to ignore the second call. Otherwise, an infinite loop will be created.
access:collections:write, user Filters an array of access IDs that the user $params[’user_id’] can write to.
In get_write_access_array(), this hook filters the return value, so it can be used to alter the available options
in the input/access view. For core plugins, the value “input_params” has the keys “entity” (ElggEntity|false),
“entity_type” (string), “entity_subtype” (string), “container_guid” (int) are provided. An empty entity value
generally means the form is to create a new object.
Warning: The handler needs to either not use parts of the API that use the access system (triggering the
hook again) or to ignore the second call. Otherwise, an infinite loop will be created.
access:collections:addcollection, collection Triggered after an access collection $params[’collection_id’]

is created.
access:collections:deletecollection, collection Triggered before an access collection
$params[’collection_id’] is deleted. Return false to prevent deletion.
access:collections:add_user, collection Triggered before adding user $params[’user_id’] to collection
$params[’collection_id’]. Return false to prevent adding.
access:collections:remove_user, collection Triggered before removing user $params[’user_id’] to collection
$params[’collection_id’]. Return false to prevent removal.
get_sql, access Filters the SQL clauses used in _elgg_get_access_where_sql().
gatekeeper, <entity_type>:<entity_subtype> Filters the result of elgg_entity_gatekeeper() to prevent ac-
cess to an entity that user would otherwise have access to. A handler should return false to deny access to an
entity.

3.32.7 Notifications
These hooks are listed chronologically in the lifetime of the notification event. Note that not all hooks apply to instant
notifications.
enqueue, notification Can be used to prevent a notification event from sending subscription notifications. Hook
handler must return false to prevent a subscription notification event from being enqueued.
• object - object of the notification event
• action - action that triggered the notification event. E.g. corresponds to publish when
elgg_trigger_event(’publish’, ’object’, $object) is called
get, subscriptions Filters subscribers of the notification event. Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications.
In case of a subscription event, by default, the subscribers list consists of the users subscribed to the container
entity of the event object. In case of an instant notification event, the subscribers list consists of the users passed
as recipients to notify_user()
• event - \Elgg\Notifications\NotificationEvent instance that describes the notification
event
• origin - subscriptions_service or instant_notifications
• methods_override - delivery method preference for instant notifications
Handlers must return an array in the form:
array(
<user guid> => array('sms'),
<user_guid2> => array('email', 'sms', 'ajax')
);
send:before, notifications Triggered before the notification event queue is processed. Can be used to terminate the
notification event. Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications.
event
• subscriptions - a list of subscriptions. See ’get’, ’subscriptions’ hook for details
prepare, notification A high level hook that can be used to alter an instance of
\Elgg\Notifications\Notification before it is sent to the user. Applies to
subscriptions and instant notifications. This hook is triggered before a more granular
’prepare’, ’notification:<action>:<entity_type>:<entity_subtype>’ and after
’send:before’, ’notifications. Hook handler should return an altered notification object.
$params may vary based on the notification type and may include:
event
• object - object of the notification event. Can be null for instant notifications
• action - action that triggered the notification event. May default to notify_user for instant notifi-
cations
• method - delivery method (e.g. email, site)
• sender - sender

• recipient - recipient
• language - language of the notification (recipient’s language)
prepare, notification:<action>:<entity_type>:<entity_type> A granular hook that can be used to filter a notifica-
tion \Elgg\Notifications\Notification before it is sent to the user. Applies to subscriptions and
instant notifications. In case of instant notifications that have not received an object, the hook will be called
as ’prepare’, ’notification:<action>’. In case of instant notifications that have not received an
action name, it will default to notify_user.
$params include:
event
• object - object of the notification event. Can be null for instant notifications
• action - action that triggered the notification event. May default to notify_user for instant notifi-
cations
• method - delivery method (e.g. email, site)
• sender - sender
• recipient - recipient
• language - language of the notification (recipient’s language)
format, notification:<method> This hook can be used to format a notification before it is passed to the ’send’,
’notification:<method>’ hook. Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications. The hook handler
should return an instance of \Elgg\Notifications\Notification. The hook does not receive any
$params. Some of the use cases include:
• Strip tags from notification title and body for plaintext email notifications
• Inline HTML styles for HTML email notifications
• Wrap notification in a template, add signature etc.
send, notification:<method> Delivers a notification. Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications. The handler
must return true or false indicating the success of the delivery.
• notification - a notification object \Elgg\Notifications\Notification
email, system Triggered by elgg_send_email(). Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications with
email method. This hook can be used to alter email parameters (subject, body, headers etc) - the handler
should return an array of altered parameters. This hook can also be used to implement a custom email transport
(in place of Elgg’s default plaintext \Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail) - the handler must return true
or false to indicate whether the email was sent using a custom transport.
$params contains:
• to - email address or string in the form Name <name@example.org> of the recipient
• from - email address or string in the form Name <name@example.org> of the sender
• subject - subject line of the email
• body - body of the email
• headers - an array of headers

• params - other parameters inherited from the notification object or passed directly to
elgg_send_email()
email:message, system Triggered by elgg_send_email(). Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications
with email method. This hook allows you to alter an instance of \Zend\Mail\Message before it is passed
to the email transport.
$params contains:
• to - email address or string in the form Name <name@example.org> of the recipient
• from - email address or string in the form Name <name@example.org> of the sender
• subject - subject line of the email
• body - body of the email
• headers - an array of headers
• params - other parameters inherited from the notification object or passed directly to
elgg_send_email()
send:after, notifications Triggered after all notifications in the queue for the notifications event have been processed.
Applies to subscriptions and instant notifications.
event
• subscriptions - a list of subscriptions. See ’get’, ’subscriptions’ hook for details
• deliveries - a matrix of delivery statuses by user for each delivery method
3.32.8 Routing
route, <identifier> Allows applying logic or returning a response before the page handler is called. See Routing
for details. Note that plugins using this hook to rewrite paths, will not be able to filter the response object
by its final path and should either switch to route:rewrite, <identifier> hook or use response,
path:<path> hook for the original path.
route:rewrite, <identifier> Allows altering the site-relative URL path. See Routing for details.
response, path:<path> Filter an instance of \Elgg\Http\ResponseBuilder before it is sent to the client. This
hook type will only be used if the path did not start with “action/” or “ajax/”. This hook can be used to modify
response content, status code, forward URL, or set additional response headers. Note that the <path> value is
parsed from the request URL, therefore plugins using the route hook should use the original <path> to filter
the response, or switch to using the route:rewrite hook.
ajax_response, path:<path> Filters ajax responses before they’re sent back to the elgg/Ajax module. This hook
type will only be used if the path did not start with “action/” or “ajax/”.
3.32.9 Views
view_vars, <view_name> Filters the $vars array passed to the view

view, <view_name> Filters the returned content of the view
layout, page In elgg_view_layout(), filters the layout name. $params array includes:
• identifier - ID of the page being rendered

• segments - URL segments of the page being rendered

• other $vars received by elgg_view_layout()
shell, page In elgg_view_page(), filters the page shell name
head, page In elgg_view_page(), filters $vars[’head’] Return value contains an array with title,
metas and links keys, where metas is an array of elements to be formatted as <meta> head tags, and
links is an array of elements to be formatted as <link> head tags. Each meta and link element contains a
set of key/value pairs that are formatted into html tag attributes, e.g.
return [
'title' => 'Current page title',
'metas' => [
'viewport' => [
'name' => 'viewport',
'content' => 'width=device-width',
]
],
'links' => [
'rss' => [
'rel' => 'alternative',
'type' => 'application/rss+xml',
'title' => 'RSS',
'href' => elgg_format_url($url),
],
'icon-16' => [
'rel' => 'icon',
'sizes' => '16x16',
'type' => 'image/png',
'href' => elgg_get_simplecache_url('graphics/favicon-16.png'),
],
],
];
ajax_response, view:<view> Filters ajax/view/ responses before they’re sent back to the elgg/Ajax module.
ajax_response, form:<action> Filters ajax/form/ responses before they’re sent back to the elgg/Ajax mod-
ule.
response, view:<view_name> Filter an instance of \Elgg\Http\ResponseBuilder before it is sent to the
client. Applies to request to /ajax/view/<view_name>. This hook can be used to modify response
content, status code, forward URL, or set additional response headers.
response, form:<form_name> Filter an instance of \Elgg\Http\ResponseBuilder before it is sent to the
client. Applies to request to /ajax/form/<form_name>. This hook can be used to modify response
content, status code, forward URL, or set additional response headers.
table_columns:call, <name> When the method elgg()->table_columns->$name() is called, this hook is
called to allow plugins to override or provide an implementation. Handlers receive the method arguments via
$params[’arguments’] and should return an instance of Elgg\Views\TableColumn if they wish to
specify the column directly.
3.32.10 Files
mime_type, file Return the mimetype for the filename $params[’filename’] with original file-
name $params[’original_filename’] and with the default detected mimetype of
$params[’default’].

simple_type, file In elgg_get_file_simple_type(), filters the return value. The hook uses
$params[’mime_type’] (e.g. application/pdf or image/jpeg) and determines an overall
category like document or image. The bundled file plugin and other-third party plugins usually store
simpletype metadata on file entities and make use of it when serving icons and constructing ege* filters
and menus.
upload, file Allows plugins to implement custom logic for moving an uploaded file into an instance of ElggFile.
The handler must return true to indicate that the uploaded file was moved. The handler must re-
turn false to indicate that the uploaded file could not be moved. Other returns will indicate that
ElggFile::acceptUploadedFile should proceed with the default upload logic.
• file - instance of ElggFile to write to
• upload - instance of Symfony’s UploadedFile
3.32.11 Other
config, comments_per_page Filters the number of comments displayed per page. Default is 25.
default, access In get_default_access(), this hook filters the return value, so it can be used to alter the default value
in the input/access view. For core plugins, the value “input_params” has the keys “entity” (ElggEntity|false),
“entity_type” (string), “entity_subtype” (string), “container_guid” (int) are provided. An empty entity value
generally means the form is to create a new object.
entity:icon:sizes, <entity_type> Triggered by elgg_get_icon_sizes() and sets entity type/subtype specific
icon sizes. entity_subtype will be passed with the $params array to the callback.
entity:<icon_type>:sizes, <entity_type> Allows filtering sizes for custom icon types, see entity:icon:sizes,
<entity_type>.
The hook must return an associative array where keys are the names of the icon sizes (e.g. “large”), and the
values are arrays with the following keys:
• w - Width of the image in pixels
• h - Height of the image in pixels
• square - Should the aspect ratio be a square (true/false)
• upscale - Should the image be upscaled in case it is smaller than the given width and height (true/false)
If the configuration array for an image size is empty, the image will be saved as an exact copy of the source
without resizing or cropping.
Example:
return [
'small' => [
'w' => 60,
'h' => 60,
'square' => true,
'upscale' => true,
],
'large' => [
'w' => 600,
'h' => 600,
'upscale' => false,
],

'original' => [],

];
entity:icon:url, <entity_type> Triggered when entity icon URL is requested, see entity icons. Callback should return
URL for the icon of size $params[’size’] for the entity $params[’entity’]. Following parameters
are available through the $params array:
entity Entity for which icon url is requested.
viewtype The type of view e.g. ’default’ or ’json’.
size Size requested, see entity icons for possible values.
Example on how one could default to a Gravatar icon for users that have not yet uploaded an avatar:
// Priority 600 so that handler is triggered after avatar handler
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('entity:icon:url', 'user', 'gravatar_icon_handler', 600);
/**
* Default to icon from gravatar for users without avatar.
*/
function gravatar_icon_handler($hook, $type, $url, $params) {
// Allow users to upload avatars
if ($params['entity']->icontime) {
return $url;
}
// Generate gravatar hash for user email

$hash = md5(strtolower(trim($params['entity']->email)));
// Default icon size

$size = '150x150';
// Use configured size if possible

$config = elgg_get_icon_sizes('user');
$key = $params['size'];
if (isset($config[$key])) {
$size = $config[$key]['w'] . 'x' . $config[$key]['h'];
}
// Produce URL used to retrieve icon

return "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/$hash?s=$size";
}
entity:<icon_type>:url, <entity_type> Allows filtering URLs for custom icon types, see entity:icon:url,
<entity_type>
entity:icon:file, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity::getIcon() and allows plugins to provide an alter-
native ElggIcon object that points to a custom location of the icon on filestore. The handler must return an
instance of ElggIcon or an exception will be thrown.
entity:<icon_type>:file, <entity_type> Allows filtering icon file object for custom icon types, see
entity:icon:file, <entity_type>
entity:<icon_type>:prepare, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity::saveIcon*() methods and can be
used to prepare an image from uploaded/linked file. This hook can be used to e.g. rotate the image before
it is resized/cropped, or it can be used to extract an image frame if the uploaded file is a video. The handler must
return an instance of ElggFile with a simpletype that resolves to image. The $return value passed to the
hook is an instance of ElggFile that points to a temporary copy of the uploaded/linked file.
The $params array contains:

• entity - entity that owns the icons

• file - original input file before it has been modified by other hooks
entity:<icon_type>:save, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity::saveIcon*() methods and can be used
to apply custom image manipulation logic to resizing/cropping icons. The handler must return true to prevent
the core APIs from resizing/cropping icons. The $params array contains:
• file - ElggFile object that points to the image file to be used as source for icons
• x1, y1, x2, y2 - cropping coordinates
entity:<icon_type>:saved, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity::saveIcon*() methods once icons have
been created. This hook can be used by plugins to create river items, update cropping coordinates for custom
icon types etc. The handler can access the created icons using ElggEntity::getIcon(). The $params
array contains:
• x1, y1, x2, y2 - cropping coordinates
entity:<icon_type>:delete, <entity_type> Triggered by ElggEntity::deleteIcon() method and can be
used for clean up operations. This hook is triggered before the icons are deleted. The handler can return
false to prevent icons from being deleted. The $params array contains:
entity:url, <entity_type> Return the URL for the entity $params[’entity’]. Note: Generally it is better to
override the getUrl() method of ElggEntity. This hook should be used when it’s not possible to subclass
(like if you want to extend a bundled plugin without overriding many views).
to:object, <entity_type|metadata|annotation|relationship|river_item> Converts the entity
$params[’entity’] to a StdClass object. This is used mostly for exporting entity properties for
portable data formats like JSON and XML.
extender:url, <annotation|metadata> Return the URL for the annotation or metadatum
$params[’extender’].
file:icon:url, override Override a file icon URL.
is_member, group Return boolean for if the user $params[’user’] is a member of the group
$params[’group’].
entity:annotate, <entity_type> Triggered in elgg_view_entity_annotations(), which is called by
elgg_view_entity(). Can be used to add annotations to all full entity views.
usersetting, plugin Filter user settings for plugins. $params contains:
• user - An ElggUser instance
• plugin - An ElggPlugin instance
• plugin_id - The plugin ID
• name - The name of the setting
• value - The value to set
setting, plugin Filter plugin settings. $params contains:
• plugin - An ElggPlugin instance
• plugin_id - The plugin ID
• name - The name of the setting

• value - The value to set

relationship:url, <relationship_name> Filter the URL for the relationship object
$params[’relationship’].
profile:fields, group Filter an array of profile fields. The result should be returned as an array in the format name
=> input view name. For example:
array(
'about' => 'longtext'
);
profile:fields, profile Filter an array of profile fields. The result should be returned as an array in the format name
=> input view name. For example:
array(
'about' => 'longtext'
);
widget_settings, <widget_handler> Triggered when saving a widget settings $params[’params’] for widget
$params[’widget’]. If handling saving the settings, the handler should return true to prevent the default
code from running.
handlers, widgets Triggered when a list of available widgets is needed. Plugins can conditionally add or remove
widgets from this list or modify attributes of existing widgets like context or multiple.
get_list, default_widgets Filters a list of default widgets to add for newly registered users. The list is an array of
arrays in the format:
array(
'event' => $event,
'entity_type' => $entity_type,
'entity_subtype' => $entity_subtype,
'widget_context' => $widget_context
)
public_pages, walled_garden Filters a list of URLs (paths) that can be seen by logged out users in a walled garden
mode. Handlers must return an array of regex strings that will allow access if matched. Please note that system
public routes are passed as the default value to the hook, and plugins must take care to not accidentally override
these values.
The $params array contains:
• url - URL of the page being tested for public accessibility
volatile, metadata Triggered when exporting an entity through the export handler. This is rare. This allows handler
to handle any volatile (non-persisted) metadata on the entity. It’s preferred to use the to:object, <type>
hook.
maintenance:allow, url
Return boolean if the URL $params[’current_url’] and the path $params[’current_path’]
is allowed during maintenance mode.
robots.txt, site Filter the robots.txt values for $params[’site’].
config, amd Filter the AMD config for the requirejs library.

3.32.12 Plugins
Embed
embed_get_items, <active_section>
embed_get_sections, all
embed_get_upload_sections, all
Groups
profile_buttons, group Filters buttons (ElggMenuItem instances) to be registered in the title menu of the group
profile page
tool_options, group Use this hook to influence the available group tool options
HTMLawed
allowed_styles, htmlawed Filter the HTMLawed allowed style array.

config, htmlawed Filter the HTMLawed config array.
Likes
likes:is_likable, <type>:<subtype> This is called to set the default permissions for whether to display/allow likes on
an entity of type <type> and subtype <subtype>.
Note: The callback ’Elgg\Values::getTrue’ is a useful handler for this hook.
Members
members:list, <page_segment> To handle the page /members/$page_segment, register for this hook and re-
turn the HTML of the list.
members:config, tabs This hook is used to assemble an array of tabs to be passed to the navigation/tabs view for the
members pages.
Twitter API
authorize, twitter_api Triggered when a user is authorizes Twitter for a login. $params[’token’] contains the
Twitter authorization token.
Reported Content
reportedcontent:add, system Triggered after adding the reported content object $params[’report’]. Return
false to delete report.
reportedcontent:archive, system Triggered before archiving the reported content object $params[’report’].
Return false to prevent archiving.

reportedcontent:delete, system Triggered before deleting the reported content object $params[’report’]. Re-
turn false to prevent deleting.
Search
search, <type>:<subtype> Filter more granular search results than searching by type alone. Must return an array
with count as the total count of results and entities an array of ElggUser entities.
search, tags
search, <type> Filter the search for entities for type $type. Must return an array with count as the total count of
results and entities an array of ElggUser entities.
search_types, get_types Filter an array of search types. This allows plugins to add custom types that don’t correspond
directly to entities.
search_types, get_queries Before a search this filters the types queried. This can be used to reorder the display of
search results.
Web Services
rest, init Triggered by the web services rest handler. Plugins can set up their own authentication handlers, then return
true to prevent the default handlers from being registered.
rest:output, <method_name> Filter the result (and subsequently the output) of the API method


CHAPTER 4
Tutorials
Walk through all the required steps in order to customize Elgg.

The instructions are detailed enough that you don’t need much previous experience with Elgg.
4.1 Hello world
This tutorial shows you how to create a new plugin that consists of a new page with the text “Hello world” on it.
Before anything else, you need to install Elgg.
In this tutorial we will pretend your site’s URL is https://elgg.example.com.
First, create a directory that will contain the plugin’s files. It should be located under the mod/ directory which is
located in your Elgg installation directory. So in this case, create mod/hello/.
4.1.1 Manifest file
Elgg requires that your plugin has a manifest file that contains information about the plugin. Therefore, in the directory
you just created, create a file called manifest.xml and copy this code into it:
<name>Hello world</name>
<id>hello</id>
<author>Your Name Here</author>
<description>Hello world, testing.</description>
<requires>
</requires>
</plugin_manifest>
This is the minimum amount of information in a manifest file:

• <name> is the display name of the plugin
• <id> must be the same as the directory you just created
• <requires> must include which version of Elgg your plugin requires
• <author>, <version> and <description> should have some appropriate values but can be filled freely
225
4.1.2 Initializer
Next, create start.php in the mod/hello/ directory and copy this code into it:
<?php
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'hello_world_init');
function hello_world_init() {
The above code tells Elgg that it should call the function hello_world_init() once the Elgg core system is
initiated.
4.1.3 Registering a page handler
The next step is to register a page handler which has the purpose of handling request that users make to the URL
https://elgg.example.com/hello.
Update start.php to look like this:
<?php
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'hello_world_init');
function hello_world_init() {
elgg_register_page_handler('hello', 'hello_world_page_handler');
}
function hello_world_page_handler() {
echo elgg_view_resource('hello');
}
The call to elgg_register_page_handler() tells Elgg that it should call the function
hello_world_page_handler() when a user navigates to https://elgg.example.com/hello/*.
The hello_world_page_handler() passes off rendering the actual page to a view file called hello.php.
4.1.4 View file
Create mod/hello/views/default/resources/hello.php with this content:

<?php
$params = array(
'title' => 'Hello world!',
'content' => 'My first page!',
'filter' => '',
);
$body = elgg_view_layout('content', $params);
echo elgg_view_page('Hello', $body);
The code creates an array of parameters to be given to the elgg_view_layout() function, including:
• The title of the page
226 Chapter 4. Tutorials

• The contents of the page

• Filter which is left empty because there’s currently nothing to filter
This creates the basic layout for the page. The layout is then run through elgg_view_page() which assembles
and outputs the full page.
4.1.5 Last step
Finally, activate the plugin through your Elgg administrator page: https://elgg.example.com/admin/plugins
(the new plugin appears at the bottom).
You can now go to the address https://elgg.example.com/hello/ and you should see your new page!
4.2 Customizing the Home Page
To override the homepage, just override Elgg’s resources/index view by creating a file at
/views/default/resources/index.php.
Any output from this view will become your new homepage.
You can take a similar approach with any other page in Elgg or official plugins.
4.3 Building a Blog Plugin
This tutorial will teach you how to create a simple blog plugin. The basic functions of the blog will be creating posts,
saving them and viewing them. The plugin duplicates features that are found in the bundled blog plugin. You can
disable the bundled blog plugin if you wish, but it is not necessary since the features do not conflict each other.
Contents
• Create the plugin’s directory and manifest file
• Create the form for creating a new blog post
• Create a page for composing the blogs
• Create the action file for saving the blog post
• Create start.php
• Create a page for viewing a blog post
• Create the object view
• Trying it out
• Displaying a list of blog posts
• The end
Prerequisites:
• Install Elgg
4.3.1 Create the plugin’s directory and manifest file
First, choose a simple and descriptive name for your plugin. In this tutorial, the name will be my_blog. Then, create
a directory for your plugin in the /mod/ directory found in your Elgg installation directory. Other plugins are also
4.2. Customizing the Home Page 227

located in /mod/. In this case, the name of the directory should be /mod/my_blog/. This directory is the root of
your plugin and all the files that you create for the new plugin will go somewhere under it.
Next, in the root of the plugin, create the plugin’s manifest file, manifest.xml:
<name>My Blog</name>
<id>my_blog</id>
<author>Your Name Here</author>
<description>Adds blogging capabilities.</description>
<requires>
</requires>
</plugin_manifest>
See Plugins for more information about the manifest file.
4.3.2 Create the form for creating a new blog post
Create a file at /mod/my_blog/views/default/forms/my_blog/save.php that contains the form body.

The form should have input fields for the title, body and tags of the my_blog post. It does not need form tag markup.
echo elgg_view_field([
'#type' => 'text',
'#label' => elgg_echo('title'),
'name' => 'title',
'required' => true,
]);
'#type' => 'longtext',
'#label' => elgg_echo('body'),
'name' => 'body',
'required' => true,
]);
'#type' => 'tags',
'#label' => elgg_echo('tags'),
'#help' => elgg_echo('tags:help'),
'name' => 'tags',
]);
$submit = elgg_view_field(array(
'#type' => 'submit',
'#class' => 'elgg-foot',
'value' => elgg_echo('save'),
));
elgg_set_form_footer($submit);
Notice how the form is calling elgg_view_field() to render inputs. This helper function maintains consistency
in field markup, and is used as a shortcut for rendering field elements, such as label, help text, and input. See Forms +
Actions.
You can see a complete list of input views in the /vendor/elgg/elgg/views/default/input/ directory.

It is recommended that you make your plugin translatable by using elgg_echo() whenever there is a string of text
that will be shown to the user. Read more at Internationalization.
4.3.3 Create a page for composing the blogs
Create the file /mod/my_blog/views/default/resources/my_blog/add.php. This page will view the

form you created in the above section.
<?php
// make sure only logged in users can see this page
gatekeeper();
// set the title

$title = "Create a new my_blog post";
// start building the main column of the page

$content = elgg_view_title($title);
// add the form to the main column

$content .= elgg_view_form("my_blog/save");
// optionally, add the content for the sidebar

$sidebar = "";
// layout the page

$body = elgg_view_layout('one_sidebar', array(
'sidebar' => $sidebar
));
// draw the page, including the HTML wrapper and basic page layout
echo elgg_view_page($title, $body);
The function elgg_view_form("my_blog/save") views the form that you created in the previous section. It
also automatically wraps the form with a <form> tag and the necessary attributes as well as anti-csrf tokens.
The form’s action will be "<?= elgg_get_site_url() ?>action/my_blog/save".
4.3.4 Create the action file for saving the blog post
The action file will save the my_blog post to the database. Create the file
/mod/my_blog/actions/my_blog/save.php:
<?php
// get the form inputs
$title = get_input('title');
$body = get_input('body');
$tags = string_to_tag_array(get_input('tags'));
// create a new my_blog object and put the content in it

$blog = new ElggObject();
$blog->title = $title;
$blog->description = $body;
$blog->tags = $tags;
// the object can and should have a subtype

$blog->subtype = 'my_blog';
4.3. Building a Blog Plugin 229

// for now, make all my_blog posts public

$blog->access_id = ACCESS_PUBLIC;
// owner is logged in user

$blog->owner_guid = elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid();
// save to database and get id of the new my_blog

$blog_guid = $blog->save();
// if the my_blog was saved, we want to display the new post

// otherwise, we want to register an error and forward back to the form
if ($blog_guid) {
system_message("Your blog post was saved.");
forward($blog->getURL());
} else {
register_error("The blog post could not be saved.");
forward(REFERER); // REFERER is a global variable that defines the previous page
}
As you can see in the above code, Elgg objects have several fields built into them. The title of the my_blog post is
stored in the title field while the body is stored in the description field. There is also a field for tags which are
stored as metadata.
Objects in Elgg are a subclass of something called an “entity”. Users, sites, and groups are also subclasses of entity.
An entity’s subtype allows granular control for listing and displaying, which is why every entity should have a subtype.
In this tutorial, the subtype “my_blog” identifies a my_blog post, but any alphanumeric string can be a valid subtype.
When picking subtypes, be sure to pick ones that make sense for your plugin.
The getURL method fetches the URL of the new post. It is recommended that you override this method. The
overriding will be done in the start.php file.
4.3.5 Create start.php
The /mod/my_blog/start.php file needs to register the save action you created earlier, register a page handler
and override the URL generation.
<?php
// register an initializer
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'my_blog_init');
function my_blog_init() {
// register the save action
elgg_register_action("my_blog/save", __DIR__ . "/actions/my_blog/save.php");
// register the page handler

elgg_register_page_handler('my_blog', 'my_blog_page_handler');
// register a hook handler to override urls

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('entity:url', 'object', 'my_blog_set_url');
}
Registering the save action will make it available as /action/my_blog/save. By default, all actions are available
only to logged in users. If you want to make an action available to only admins or open it up to unauthenticated users,
you can pass ‘admin’ or ‘public’ as the third parameter of elgg_register_action.
The URL overriding function will extract the ID of the given entity and use it to make a simple URL for the page that

is supposed to view the entity. In this case the entity should of course be a my_blog post. Add this function to your
start.php file:
function my_blog_set_url($hook, $type, $url, $params) {
if (elgg_instanceof($entity, 'object', 'my_blog')) {
return "my_blog/view/{$entity->guid}";
}
}
The page handler makes it possible to serve the page that generates the form and the page that views the post. The
next section will show how to create the page that views the post. Add this function to your start.php file:
function my_blog_page_handler($segments) {
if ($segments[0] == 'add') {
echo elgg_view_resource('my_blog/add');
return true;
}
else if ($segments[0] == 'view') {

$resource_vars['guid'] = elgg_extract(1, $segments);
echo elgg_view_resource('my_blog/view', $resource_vars);
return true;
}
return false;
}
The $segments variable contains the different parts of the URL as separated by /.
Page handling functions need to return true or false. true means the page exists and has been handled by the page
handler. false means that the page does not exist and the user will be forwarded to the site’s 404 page (requested
page does not exist or not found). In this particular example, the URL must contain either /my_blog/add or
/my_blog/view/id where id is a valid ID of an entity with the my_blog subtype. More information about page
handling is at Page handler.
4.3.6 Create a page for viewing a blog post
To be able to view a my_blog post on its own page, you need to make a view page. Create the file
/mod/my_blog/views/default/resources/my_blog/view.php:
<?php
// get the entity

$guid = elgg_extract('guid', $vars);
$my_blog = get_entity($guid);
// get the content of the post

$content = elgg_view_entity($my_blog, array('full_view' => true));
$params = array(
'title' => $my_blog->title,
'filter' => '',
);
$body = elgg_view_layout('content', $params);

echo elgg_view_page($my_blog->title, $body);
This page has much in common with the add.php page. The biggest differences are that some information is
extracted from the my_blog entity, and instead of viewing a form, the function elgg_view_entity is called. This
function gives the information of the entity to something called the object view.
4.3.7 Create the object view
When elgg_view_entity is called or when my_blogs are viewed in a list for example, the object view will
generate the appropriate content. Create the file /mod/my_blog/views/default/object/my_blog.php:
<?php
echo elgg_view('output/longtext', array('value' => $vars['entity']->description));

echo elgg_view('output/tags', array('tags' => $vars['entity']->tags));
As you can see in the previous section, each my_blog post is passed to the object view as $vars[’entity’].
($vars is an array used in the views system to pass variables to a view.)
The last line takes the tags on the my_blog post and automatically displays them as a series of clickable links. Search
is handled automatically.
(If you’re wondering about the “default” in /views/default/, you can create alternative views. RSS,
OpenDD, FOAF, mobile and others are all valid view types.)
4.3.8 Trying it out
Go to your Elgg site’s administration page, list the plugins and activate the my_blog plugin.
The page to create a new my_blog post should now be accessible at
https://elgg.example.com/my_blog/add, and after successfully saving the post, you should see it
viewed on its own page.
4.3.9 Displaying a list of blog posts
Let’s also create a page that lists my_blog entries that have been created.
Create /mod/my_blog/views/default/resources/my_blog/all.php:
<?php
$titlebar = "All Site My_Blogs";
$pagetitle = "List of all my_blogs";
$body = elgg_list_entities(array(
'type' => 'object',
'subtype' => 'my_blog',
));
$body = elgg_view_title($pagetitle) . elgg_view_layout('one_column', array('content' => $body));
echo elgg_view_page($titlebar, $body);
The elgg_list_entities function grabs the latest my_blog posts and passes them to the object view file. Note
that this function returns only the posts that the user can see, so access restrictions are handled transparently. The

function (and its cousins) also transparently handles pagination and even creates an RSS feed for your my_blogs if
you have defined that view.
The list function can also limit the my_blog posts to those of a specified user. For example, the function
elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid grabs the Global Unique IDentifier (GUID) of the logged in user, and by
giving that to elgg_list_entities, the list only displays the posts of the current user:
echo elgg_list_entities(array(
'type' => 'object',
'subtype' => 'my_blog',
'owner_guid' => elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid()
));
Next, you will need to modify your my_blog page handler to grab the new page when the URL is set to
/my_blog/all. Change the my_blog_page_handler function in start.php to look like this:
function my_blog_page_handler($segments) {
switch ($segments[0]) {
case 'add':
echo elgg_view_resource('my_blog/add');
break;
case 'view':
$resource_vars['guid'] = elgg_extract(1, $segments);
echo elgg_view_resource('my_blog/view', $resource_vars);
break;
case 'all':
default:
echo elgg_view_resource('my_blog/all');
break;
}
return true;
}
Now, if the URL contains /my_blog/all, the user will see an “All Site My_Blogs” page. Because of the default
case, the list of all my_blogs will also be shown if the URL is something invalid, like /my_blog or /my_blog/xyz.
You might also want to update the object view to handle different kinds of viewing, because
otherwise the list of all my_blogs will also show the full content of all my_blogs. Change
/mod/my_blog/views/default/object/my_blog.php to look like this:
<?php
$full = elgg_extract('full_view', $vars, FALSE);
// full view
if ($full) {
echo elgg_view('output/longtext', array('value' => $vars['entity']->description));
// list view or short view

} else {
// make a link out of the post's title
echo elgg_view_title(
elgg_view('output/url', array(
'href' => $vars['entity']->getURL(),
'text' => $vars['entity']->title,
'is_trusted' => true
)));


}
Now, if full_view is true (as it was pre-emptively set to be in this section), the object view will show the post’s
content and tags (the title is shown by view.php). Otherwise the object view will render just the title and tags of the
post.
4.3.10 The end
There’s much more that could be done, but hopefully this gives you a good idea of how to get started.
4.4 Integrating a Rich Text Editor
Build your own wysiwyg plugin.

Elgg is bundled with a plugin for CKEditor, and previously shipped with TinyMCE support. However, if you have a
wysiwyg that you prefer, you could use this tutorial to help you build your own.
All forms in Elgg should try to use the provided input views located in views/default/input. If these views
are used, then it is simple for plugin authors to replace a view, in this case input/longtext, with their wysiwyg.
4.4.1 Add the WYSIWYG library code
Now you need to upload TinyMCE into a directory in your plugin. We strongly encourage you to use composer to
manage third-party dependencies, since it is so much easier to upgrade and maintain that way:
.. code:: shell
composer require bower-asset/tinymce
4.4.2 Tell Elgg when and how to load TinyMCE
Now that you have:

• created your start file
• intialized the plugin
• uploaded the wysiwyg code
It is time to tell Elgg how to apply TinyMCE to longtext fields.
We’re going to do that by extending the input/longtext view and including some javascript. Create a view
tinymce/longtext and add the following code:
<?php
/**
* Elgg long text input with the tinymce text editor intacts
* Displays a long text input field
*
* @package ElggTinyMCE
*
*
*/

?>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>mod/tinymce/tiny
<!-- intialise tinymce, you can find other configurations here http://wiki.moxiecode.com/examples/tin
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
tinyMCE.init({
mode : "textareas",
theme : "advanced",
theme_advanced_buttons1 : "bold,italic,underline,separator,strikethrough,justifyleft,justifycente
theme_advanced_buttons2 : "",
theme_advanced_buttons3 : "",
theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top",
theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "left",
theme_advanced_statusbar_location : "bottom",
theme_advanced_resizing : true,
extended_valid_elements : "a[name|href|target|title|onclick],img[class|src|border=0|alt|title|hsp
hr[class|width|size|noshade],font[face|size|color|style],span[class|align|style]"
});
</script>
Then, in your plugin’s init function, extend the input/longtext view

function tinymce_init() {
elgg_extend_view('input/longtext', 'tinymce/longtext');
}
That’s it! Now every time someone uses input/longtext, TinyMCE will be loaded and applied to that textarea.
4.5 Basic Widget
Create a widget that will display “Hello, World!” and optionally any text the user wants.
In Elgg, widgets are those components that you can drag onto your profile or admin dashboard.
This tutorial assumes you are familiar with basic Elgg concepts such as:
• Views
• Plugins
You should review those if you get confused along the way.
Contents
• Adding the widget view code
• Registering your widget
• Allow user customization
4.5.1 Adding the widget view code
Elgg automatically scans particular directories under plugins looking for particular files. Views make it easy to add
your display code or do other things like override default Elgg behavior. For now, we will just be adding the view code
for your widget. Create a file at /views/default/widgets/helloworld/content.php. “helloworld”
will be the name of your widget within the hello plugin. In this file add the code:
4.5. Basic Widget 235

<?php
echo "Hello, world!";
This will add these words to the widget canvas when it is drawn. Elgg takes care of loading the widget.
4.5.2 Registering your widget
Elgg needs to be told explicitly that the plugin contains a widget so that it will scan the widget views directory. This
is done by calling the elgg_register_widget_type() function. Edit /start.php. In it add these lines:
<?php
function hello_init() {
'id' => 'helloworld',
'name' => 'Hello, world!',
'description' => 'The "Hello, world!" widget',
]);
}
elgg_register_event_handler('init', 'system', 'hello_init');
Now go to your profile page using a web browser and add the “hello, world” widget. It should display “Hello, world!”.
Note: For real widgets, it is always a good idea to support Internationalization.
4.5.3 Allow user customization
Click on the edit link on the toolbar of the widget that you’ve created. You will notice that the only control it gives
you by default is over access (over who can see the widget).
Suppose you want to allow the user to control what greeting is displayed in the widget. Just as Elgg automatically
loads content.php when viewing a widget, it loads edit.php when a user attempts to edit a widget. Put the
following code into /views/default/widgets/helloworld/edit.php:
<div>
<label>Message:</label>
<?php
//This is an instance of the ElggWidget class that represents our widget.
$widget = $vars['entity'];
// Give the user a plain text box to input a message

echo elgg_view('input/text', array(
'name' => 'params[message]',
'value' => $widget->message,
'class' => 'hello-input-text',
));
?>
</div>
Notice the relationship between the values passed to the ‘name’ and the ‘value’ fields of input/text. The name of
the input text box is params[message] because Elgg will automatically handle widget variables put in the array
params. The actual php variable name will be message. If we wanted to use the field greeting instead of
message we would pass the values params[greeting] and $widget->greeting respectively.

The reason we set the ‘value’ option of the array is so that the edit view remembers what the user typed in the previous
time he changed the value of his message text.
Now to display the user’s message we need to modify content.php to use this message variable. Edit
/views/default/widgets/helloworld/content.php and change it to:
<?php
$widget = $vars['entity'];
// Always use the corresponding output/* view for security!

echo elgg_view('output/text', array('value' => $widget->message));
You should now be able to enter a message in the text box and see it appear in the widget.
4.5. Basic Widget 237


CHAPTER 5
Design Docs
Gain a deep understanding of how Elgg works and why it’s built the way it is.
5.1 Actions
Actions are the primary way users interact with an Elgg site.
5.1.1 Overview
An action in Elgg is the code that runs to make changes to the database when a user does something. For example,
logging in, posting a comment, and making a blog post are actions. The action script processes input, makes the
appropriate modifications to the database, and provides feedback to the user about the action.
5.1.2 Action Handler
Actions are registered during the boot process by calling elgg_register_action(). All actions URLs start
with action/ and are served by Elgg’s front end controller through the action service. This approach is different
from traditional PHP applications that send information to a specific file. The action service performs CSRF security
checks, and calls the registered action script file, then optionally forwards the user to a new page. By using the action
service instead of a single script file, Elgg automatically provides increased security and extensibility.
In Elgg 1.8 and before, actions were handled by an action handler script in
‘engine/handlers/action_handler.php. This required specific rewrite rules for URLs beginning
with /action/.
See Forms + Actions for details on how to register and construct an action. To look at the core actions, check out the
directory /actions.
5.2 Database
A thorough discussion of Elgg’s data model design and motivation.
239
Contents
• Overview
• Datamodel
• Entities
– Types
– Subtypes
– Subtype Gotchas
– GUIDs
• ElggObject
• ElggUser
• ElggSite
• ElggGroup
– The Groups plugin
– Writing a group-aware plugin
• Ownership
• Containers
• Annotations
– Adding an annotation
– Reading annotations
– Useful helper functions
• Metadata
– The simple case
– Finer control
– Common mistakes
• Relationships
– Working with relationships
• Access Control
– Access controls in the data model
– How access affects data retrieval
– Write access
• Schema
– Main tables
5.2.1 Overview
In Elgg, everything runs on a unified data model based on atomic units of data called entities.
Plugins are discouraged from interacting directly with the database, which creates a more stable system and a better
user experience becase content created by different plugins can be mixed together in consistent ways. With this
approach, plugins are faster to develop, and are at the same time much more powerful.
Every entity in the system inherits the ElggEntity class. This class controls access permissions, ownership
You can extend entities with extra information in two ways:
Metadata: This is information describing the entity, usually added by the author of the entity when the entity is
created. For example, tags, an ISBN number, a file location, or source language is metadata.
Annotations: This is information about the entity, usually added by a third party after the entity is created. For
example, ratings, likes, and votes are annotations. (Comments were before 1.9.)
240 Chapter 5. Design Docs

Fig. 5.1: The Elgg data model diagram
5.2. Database 241

5.2.2 Datamodel
5.2.3 Entities
ElggEntity is the base class for the Elgg data model and supports a common set of properties and methods.
• A numeric Globally Unique IDentifier (See GUIDs).
• Access permissions. (When a plugin requests data, it never gets to touch data that the current user doesn’t have
permission to see.)
• An arbitrary subtype (more below).
• An owner.
• The site that the entity belongs to.
• A container, used to associate content with a group or a user.
Types
Actual entities will be instances of four different subclasses, each having a distinct type property and their own addi-
tional properties and methods.
Type PHP class Represents
object ElggObject Most user-created content, like blog posts, uploads, and bookmarks.
group ElggGroup An organized group of users with its own profile page
user ElggUser A system user
site ElggSite The site served by the Elgg installation
Each has its own extended API. E.g. objects have a title and description, users have a username and a way
to set their password, and so on.
Subtypes
Each entity also has a custom string subtype, which plugins use to further specialize the entity. Elgg makes it easy to
query specific subtypes as well as assign them special behaviors and views.
Subtypes are most commonly given to instances of ElggObject to denote the kind of content created. E.g. the blog
plugin creates objects with subtype "blog".
For historic reasons, the subtype API is a bit complex, but boils down to: write to ->subtype before saving,
otherwise always read getSubtype(). Below are more details.
Subtype Gotchas
• Before an entity’s save() method is called, the subtype can be set by writing a string to the subtype property.
• Subtype cannot be changed after saving.
• After saving, you must always use getSubtype() to read it.
• If no subtype was set, "" is returned, however some parts of the Elgg API (like Views) may map this value
to the string "default". E.g. a group with getSubtype() === "" will be rendered using the view
"group/default".
• Read carefully the documentation for elgg_get_entities() before trying to match subtypes; this
• API is a bit of a minefield. E.g. you cannot use "" to fetch entities with the default subtype.

GUIDs
A GUID is an integer that uniquely identifies every entity in an Elgg installation (a Globally Unique IDentifier). It’s
assigned automatically when the entity is first saved and can never be changed.
Some Elgg API functions work with GUIDs instead of ElggEntity objects.
5.2.4 ElggObject
The ElggObject entity type represents arbitrary content within an Elgg install; things like blog posts, uploaded
files, etc.
Beyond the standard ElggEntity properties, ElggObjects also support:
• title The title of the object (HTML escaped text)
• description A description of the object (HTML)
Most other data about the object is generally stored via metadata.
5.2.5 ElggUser
The ElggUser entity type represents users within an Elgg install. These will be set to disabled until their accounts
have been activated (unless they were created from within the admin panel).
Beyond the standard ElggEntity properties, ElggUsers also support:
• name The user’s plain text name. e.g. “Hugh Jackman”
• username Their login name. E.g. “hjackman”
• password A hashed version of their password
• salt The salt that their password has been hashed with
• email Their email address
• language Their default language code.
• code Their session code (moved to a separate table in 1.9).
• last_action The UNIX timestamp of the last time they loaded a page
• prev_last_action The previous value of last_action
• last_login The UNIX timestamp of their last log in
• prev_last_login the previous value of last_login
5.2.6 ElggSite
The ElggSite entity type represents sites within your Elgg install. Most installs will have only one.
Beyond the standard ElggEntity properties, ElggSites also support:
• name The site name
• description A description of the site
• url The address of the site
5.2. Database 243

5.2.7 ElggGroup
The ElggGroup entity type represents an association of Elgg users. Users can join, leave, and post content to groups.
Beyond the standard ElggEntity properties, ElggGroups also support:
• name The group’s name (HTML escaped text)
• description A description of the group (HTML)
ElggGroup has addition methods to manage content and membership.
The Groups plugin
Not to be confused with the entity type ElggGroup, Elgg comes with a plugin called “Groups” that provides a default
UI/UX for site users to interact with groups. Each group is given a discussion forum and a profile page linking users
to content within the group.
You can alter the user experience via the traditional means of extending plugins or completely replace the Groups
plugin with your own.
Because ElggGroup can be subtyped like all other ElggEntities, you can have multiple types of groups running on
the same site.
Writing a group-aware plugin
Plugin owners need not worry too much about writing group-aware functionality, but there are a few key points:
Adding content
By passing along the group as container_guid via a hidden input field, you can use a single form and action to
add both user and group content.
Use can_write_to_container to determine whether or not the current user has the right to add content to a group.
Be aware that you will then need to pass the container GUID or username to the page responsible for posting and
the accompanying value, so that this can then be stored in your form as a hidden input field, for easy passing to your
actions. Within a “create” action, you’ll need to take in this input field and save it as a property of your new element
(defaulting to the current user’s container):
$container_guid = (int)get_input('container_guid');
if ($container_guid) {
if (!can_write_to_container($user->guid, $container_guid)) {
// register error and forward
}
} else {
$container_guid = elgg_get_logged_in_user_guid();
}
$object = new ElggObject;

$object->container_guid = $container_guid;
...
$container = get_entity($container_guid);
forward($container->getURL());

Juggling users and groups
In fact, [[Engine/DataModel/Entities/ElggGroup|ElggGroup]] simulates most of the methods of

[[Engine/DataModel/Entities/ElggUser|ElggUser]]. You can grab the icon, name etc using the
same calls, and if you ask for a group’s friends, you’ll get its members. This has been designed specifically for you to
alternate between groups and users in your code easily.
Menu options
*This section is deprecated as of Elgg 1.8*

The final piece of the puzzle, for default groups, is to add a link to your functionality from the group’s profile. Here
we’ll use the file plugin as an example.
This involves creating a view within your plugin - in this case file/menu - which will extend the group’s menu.
File/menu consists of a link within paragraph tags that points to the file repository of the page_owner():
<p>
<a href="<?php echo $vars['url']; ?>pg/file/<?php echo page_owner_entity()->username; ?>">
<?php echo elgg_echo("file"); ?>
</a>
</p>
You can then extend the group’s menu view with this one, within your plugin’s input function (in this case file_init):
extend_view('groups/menu/links', 'file/menu');
5.2.8 Ownership
Entities have a owner_guid GUID property, which defines its owner. Typically this refers to the GUID of a user,
although sites and users themselves often have no owner (a value of 0).
The ownership of an entity dictates, in part, whether or not you can access or edit that entity.
5.2.9 Containers
In order to easily search content by group or by user, content is generally set to be “contained” by either the user who
posted it, or the group to which the user posted. This means the new object’s container_guid property will be set
to the GUID of the current ElggUser or the target ElggGroup.
E.g., three blog posts may be owned by different authors, but all be contained by the group they were posted to.
Note: This is not always true. Comment entities are contained by the object commented upon, and in some 3rd
party plugins the container may be used to model a parent-child relationship between entities (e.g. a “folder” object
containing a file object).
5.2.10 Annotations
Annotations are pieces of data attached to an entity that allow users to leave ratings, or other relevant feedback. A poll
plugin might register votes as annotations. Before Elgg 1.9, comments and group discussion replies were stored as
annotations.
Annotations are stored as instances of the ElggAnnotation class.
Each annotation has:
5.2. Database 245

• An internal annotation type (like comment)

• A value (which can be a string or integer)
• An access permission distinct from the entity it’s attached to
• An owner
Adding an annotation
The easiest way to annotate is to use the annotate method on an entity, which is defined as:
public function annotate(
$name, // The name of the annotation type (eg 'comment')
$value, // The value of the annotation
$access_id = 0, // The access level of the annotation
$owner_id = 0, // The annotation owner, defaults to current user
$vartype = "" // 'text' or 'integer'
)
For example, to leave a rating on an entity, you might call:

$entity->annotate('rating', $rating_value, $entity->access_id);
Reading annotations
To retrieve annotations on an object, you can call the following method:

$annotations = $entity->getAnnotations(
$name, // The type of annotation
$limit, // The number to return
$offset, // Any indexing offset
$order, // 'asc' or 'desc' (default 'asc')
);
If your annotation type largely deals with integer values, a couple of useful mathematical functions are provided:
$averagevalue = $entity->getAnnotationsAvg($name); // Get the average value
$total = $entity->getAnnotationsSum($name); // Get the total value
$minvalue = $entity->getAnnotationsMin($name); // Get the minimum value
$maxvalue = $entity->getAnnotationsMax($name); // Get the maximum value
Useful helper functions
Comments
If you want to provide comment functionality on your plugin objects, the following function will provide the full
listing, form and actions:
function elgg_view_comments(ElggEntity $entity)

5.2.11 Metadata
Metadata in Elgg allows you to store extra data on an entity beyond the built-in fields that entity supports. For
example, ElggObjects only support the basic entity fields plus title and description, but you might want to include
tags or an ISBN number. Similarly, you might want users to be able to save a date of birth.
Under the hood, metadata is stored as an instance of the ElggMetadata class, but you don’t need to worry about
that in practice (although if you’re interested, see the ElggMetadata class reference). What you need to know is:
• Metadata has an owner and access ID (see note below), both of which may be different to the owner of the entity
it’s attached to
• You can potentially have multiple items of each type of metadata attached to a single entity
Note: Metadata’s access_id value will be ignored in Elgg 3.0 and all metadata values will be available in all
contexts.
The simple case
Adding metadata
To add a piece of metadata to an entity, just call:

$entity->metadata_name = $metadata_value;
For example, to add a date of birth to a user:

$user->dob = $dob_timestamp;
Or to add a couple of tags to an object:

$object->tags = array('tag one', 'tag two', 'tag three');
When adding metadata like this:

• The owner is set to the currently logged-in user
• Access permissions are inherited from the entity (see note below)
• Reassigning a piece of metadata will overwrite the old value
This is suitable for most purposes. Be careful to note which attributes are metadata and which are built in to the entity
type that you are working with. You do not need to save an entity after adding or updating metadata. You do need
to save an entity if you have changed one of its built in attributes. As an example, if you changed the access id of an
ElggObject, you need to save it or the change isn’t pushed to the database.
Note: Metadata’s access_id value will be ignored in Elgg 3.0 and all metadata values will be available in all
contexts.
Reading metadata
To retrieve metadata, treat it as a property of the entity:
5.2. Database 247

$tags_value = $object->tags;
Note that this will return the absolute value of the metadata. To get metadata as an ElggMetadata object, you will need
to use the methods described in the finer control section below.
If you stored multiple values in this piece of metadata (as in the “tags” example above), you will get an array of all
those values back. If you stored only one value, you will get a string or integer back. Storing an array with only one
value will return a string back to you. E.g.
$object->tags = array('tag');
$tags = $object->tags;
// $tags will be the string "tag", NOT array('tag')
To always get an array back, simply cast to an array;

$tags = (array)$object->tags;
Finer control
Adding metadata
If you need more control, for example to assign an access ID other than the default, you can use the
create_metadata function, which is defined as follows:
function create_metadata(
$entity_guid, // The GUID of the parent entity
$name, // The name of the metadata (eg 'tags')
$value, // The metadata value
$value_type, // Currently either 'string' or 'integer'
$owner_guid, // The owner of the metadata
$access_id = 0, // The access restriction
$allow_multiple = false // Do we have more than one value?
)
For single values, you can therefore write metadata as follows (taking the example of a date of birth attached to a user):
create_metadata($user_guid, 'dob', $dob_timestamp, 'integer', $_SESSION['guid'], $access_id);
Note: $access_id will be ignored in Elgg 3.0 and all metadata values will be available in all contexts. Always set
it to ACCESS_PUBLIC for compatibility with Elgg 3.0.
For multiple values, you will need to iterate through and call create_metadata on each one. The following piece
of code comes from the profile save action:
$i = 0;
foreach ($value as $interval) {
$i++;
$multiple = ($i != 1);
create_metadata($user->guid, $shortname, $interval, 'text', $user->guid, $access_id, $multiple);
}
Note that the allow multiple setting is set to false in the first iteration and true thereafter.

Reading metadata
elgg_get_metadata is the best function for retrieving metadata as ElggMetadata objects:

E.g., to retrieve a user’s DOB
elgg_get_metadata(array(
'metadata_name' => 'dob',
'metadata_owner_guid' => $user_guid,
));
Or to get all metadata objects:

elgg_get_metadata(array(
'metadata_owner_guid' => $user_guid,
'limit' => 0,
));
Common mistakes
“Appending” metadata
Note that you cannot “append” values to metadata arrays as if they were normal php arrays. For example, the following
will not do what it looks like it should do.
$object->tags[] = "tag four";
Trying to store hashmaps
Elgg does not support storing ordered maps (name/value pairs) in metadata. For example, the following does not work
as you might first expect it to:
// Won't work!! Only the array values are stored
$object->tags = array('one' => 'a', 'two' => 'b', 'three' => 'c');
You can instead store the information like so:

$object->one = 'a';
$object->two = 'b';
$object->three = 'c';
Storing GUIDs in metadata
Though there are some cases to store entity GUIDs in metadata, Relationships are a much better construct for relating
entities to each other.
5.2.12 Relationships
Relationships allow you to bind entities together. Examples: an artist has fans, a user is a member of an organization,
etc.
The class ElggRelationship models a directed relationship between two entities, making the statement:
“{subject} is a {noun} of {target}.”
5.2. Database 249

API name Models Represents

guid_one The subject Which entity is being bound
relationship The noun The type of relationship
guid_two The target The entity to which the subject is bound
The type of relationship may alternately be a verb, making the statement:
“{subject} {verb} {target}.”
E.g. User A “likes” blog post B
Each relationship has direction. Imagine an archer shoots an arrow at a target; The arrow moves in one direction,
binding the subject (the archer) to the target.
A relationship does not imply reciprocity. A follows B does not imply that B follows A.
Relationships_ do not have access control. They’re never hidden from view and can be edited with code at any
privilege level, with the caveat that the entities in a relationship may be invisible due to access control!
Working with relationships
Creating a relationship
E.g. to establish that “$user is a fan of $artist” (user is the subject, artist is the target):
// option 1
$success = add_entity_relationship($user->guid, 'fan', $artist->guid);
// option 2
$success = $user->addRelationship($artist->guid, 'fan');
This triggers the event [create, relationship], passing in the created ElggRelationship object. If a handler returns
false, the relationship will not be created and $success will be false.
Verifying a relationship
E.g. to verify that “$user is a fan of $artist”:

if (check_entity_relationship($user->guid, 'fan', $artist->guid)) {
// relationship exists
}
Note that, if the relationship exists, check_entity_relationship() returns an ElggRelationship object:

$relationship = check_entity_relationship($user->guid, 'fan', $artist->guid);
if ($relationship) {
// use $relationship->id or $relationship->time_created
}
Deleting a relationship
E.g. to be able to assert that “$user is no longer a fan of $artist”:

$was_removed = remove_entity_relationship($user->guid, 'fan', $artist->guid);

This triggers the event [delete, relationship], passing in the associated ElggRelationship object. If a handler
returns false, the relationship will remain, and $was_removed will be false.
Other useful functions:
• delete_relationship() : delete by ID
• remove_entity_relationships() : delete those relating to an entity (note: in versions before Elgg
1.9, this did not trigger delete events)
Finding relationships and related entities
Below are a few functions to fetch relationship objects and/or related entities. A few are listed below:
• get_entity_relationships() : fetch relationships by subject or target entity
• get_relationship() : get a relationship object by ID
• elgg_get_entities_from_relationship() : fetch entities in relationships in a variety of ways
E.g. retrieving users who joined your group in January 2014.
$entities = elgg_get_entities_from_relationship(array(
'relationship' => 'member',
'relationship_guid' => $group->guid,
'inverse_relationship' => true,
'relationship_created_time_lower' => 1388534400, // January 1st 2014

'relationship_created_time_upper' => 1391212800, // February 1st 2014
));
5.2.13 Access Control
Granular access controls are one of the fundamental design principles in Elgg, and a feature that has been at the centre
of the system throughout its development. The idea is simple: a user should have full control over who sees an item
of data he or she creates.
Access controls in the data model
In order to achieve this, every entity, annotation and piece of metadata contains an access_id property, which in
turn corresponds to one of the pre-defined access controls or an entry in the access_collections database table.
Pre-defined access controls
• ACCESS_PRIVATE (value: 0) Private.

• ACCESS_LOGGED_IN (value: 1) Logged in users.
• ACCESS_PUBLIC (value: 2) Public data.
• ACCESS_FRIENDS (value: -2) Owner and his/her friends.
User defined access controls
You may define additional access groups and assign them to an entity, annotation or metadata. A number of functions
have been defined to assist you; see the access library reference for more information.
5.2. Database 251

How access affects data retrieval
All data retrieval functions above the database layer - for example get_entities and its cousins - will only return
items that the current user has access to see. It is not possible to retrieve items that the current user does not have
access to. This makes it very hard to create a security hole for retrieval.
Write access
The following rules govern write access:

• The owner of an entity can always edit it
• The owner of a container can edit anything therein (note that this does not mean that the owner of a group can
edit anything therein)
• Admins can edit anything
You can override this behaviour using a plugin hook called permissions_check, which passes the entity in
question to any function that has announced it wants to be referenced. Returning true will allow write access;
returning false will deny it. See the plugin hook reference for permissions_check for more details.
See also:
Access library reference
5.2.14 Schema
The database contains a number of primary tables and secondary tables. Its schema table is stored in
/engine/schema/mysql.sql.
Each table is prefixed by “prefix_”, this is replaced by the Elgg framework during installation.
Main tables
This is a description of the main tables. Keep in mind that in a given Elgg installation, the tables will have a prefix
(typically “elgg_”).
Table: entities
This is the main Entities table containing Elgg users, sites, objects and groups. When you first install Elgg this is
automatically populated with your first site.
It contains the following fields:
• guid An auto-incrementing counter producing a GUID that uniquely identifies this entity in the system.
• type The type of entity - object, user, group or site
• subtype A reference to the entity_subtypes table, or 0 for the default subtype.
• owner_guid The GUID of the owner’s entity.
• site_guid The site the entity belongs to.
• container_guid The GUID this entity is contained by - either a user or a group.
• access_id Access controls on this entity.
• time_created Unix timestamp of when the entity is created.

• time_updated Unix timestamp of when the entity was updated.

• enabled If this is ‘yes’ an entity is accessible, if ‘no’ the entity has been disabled (Elgg treats it as if it were
deleted without actually removing it from the database).
Table: entity_subtypes
This table contains entity subtype information:

• id A counter.
• type The type of entity - object, user, group or site.
• subtype The subtype name as a string.
• class Optional class name if this subtype is linked with a class
Table: metadata
This table contains Metadata, extra information attached to an entity.

• id A counter.
• entity_guid The entity this is attached to.
• name The name string table.
• value The value string.
• value_type The value class, either text or an integer.
• owner_guid The owner GUID of the owner who set this item of metadata.
• access_id An Access controls on this item of metadata.
• time_created Unix timestamp of when the metadata is created.
• enabled If this is ‘yes’ an item is accessible, if ‘no’ the item has been deleted.
Table: annotations
This table contains Annotations, this is distinct from Metadata.

• id A counter.
• entity_guid The entity this is attached to.
• name The name string
• value The value string
• value_type The value class, either text or an integer.
• owner_guid The owner GUID of the owner who set this item of metadata.
• access_id An Access controls on this item of metadata.
• time_created Unix timestamp of when the metadata is created.
• enabled If this is ‘yes’ an item is accessible, if ‘no’ the item has been deleted.
5.2. Database 253

Table: relationships
This table defines Relationships, these link one entity with another.
• guid_one The GUID of the subject entity.
• relationship The type of the relationship.
• guid_two The GUID of the target entity.
Table: objects_entity
Extra information specifically relating to objects. These are split in order to reduce load on the metadata table and
make an obvious difference between attributes and metadata.
Table: sites_entity
Extra information specifically relating to sites. These are split in order to reduce load on the metadata table and make
an obvious difference between attributes and metadata.
Table: users_entity
Extra information specifically relating to users. These are split in order to reduce load on the metadata table and make
an obvious difference between attributes and metadata.
Table: groups_entity
Extra information specifically relating to groups. These are split in order to reduce load on the metadata table and
make an obvious difference between attributes and metadata.
5.3 Events and Plugin Hooks
Contents
• Overview
– Elgg Events vs. Plugin Hooks
• Elgg Events
– Before and After Events
– Elgg Event Handlers
– Register to handle an Elgg Event
– Trigger an Elgg Event
• Plugin Hooks
– Plugin Hook Handlers
– Register to handle a Plugin Hook
– Trigger a Plugin Hook
– Unregister Event/Hook Handlers
– Handler Calling Order

5.3.1 Overview
Elgg has an event system that can be used to replace or extend core functionality.
Plugins influence the system by creating handlers (callables such as functions and methods) and registering them to
handle two types of events: Elgg Events and Plugin Hooks.
When an event is triggered, a set of handlers is executed in order of priority. Each handler is passed arguments and
has a chance to influence the process. After execution, the “trigger” function returns a value based on the behavior of
the handlers.
Elgg Events vs. Plugin Hooks
The main differences between Elgg Events and Plugin Hooks are:
1. Most Elgg events can be cancelled; unless the event is an “after” event, a handler that returns false can cancel
the event, and no more handlers are called.
2. Plugin hooks cannot be cancelled; all handlers are always called.
3. Plugin hooks pass an arbitrary value through the handlers, giving each a chance to alter along the way.
5.3.2 Elgg Events
Elgg Events are triggered when an Elgg object is created, updated, or deleted; and at important milestones while the
Elgg framework is loading. Examples: a blog post being created or a user logging in.
Unlike Plugin Hooks, most Elgg events can be cancelled, halting the execution of the handlers, and possibly cancelling
an some action in the Elgg core.
Each Elgg event has a name and an object type (system, user, object, relationship name, annotation, group) describing
the type of object passed to the handlers.
Before and After Events
Some events are split into “before” and “after”. This avoids confusion around the state of the system while in flux.
E.g. Is the user logged in during the [login, user] event?
Before Events have names ending in ”:before” and are triggered before something happens. Like traditional events,
handlers can cancel the event by returning false.
After Events, with names ending in ”:after”, are triggered after something happens. Unlike traditional events, handlers
cannot cancel these events; all handlers will always be called.
Where before and after events are available, developers are encouraged to transition to them, though older events will
be supported for backwards compatibility.
Elgg Event Handlers
Elgg event handlers are callables with one of the following prototypes:
<?php
/**
* @param \Elgg\Event $event The event object
*
* @return bool if false, the handler is requesting to cancel the event
5.3. Events and Plugin Hooks 255

*/
function event_handler1(\Elgg\Event $event) {
...
}
/**
* @param string $event The name of the event
* @param string $object_type The type of $object (e.g. "user", "group")
* @param mixed $object The object of the event
*
* @return bool if false, the handler is requesting to cancel the event
*/
function event_handler2($event, $object_type, $object) {
...
}
In event_handler1, the Event object has various methods for getting the name, object type, and object of the
event. See the Elgg\Event interface for details.
In both cases, if a handler returns false, the event is cancelled, preventing execution of the other handlers. All other
return values are ignored.
Note: If the event type is “object” or “user”, use type hint \Elgg\ObjectEvent or \Elgg\UserEvent instead,
which clarify the return type of the getObject() method.
Register to handle an Elgg Event
Register your handler to an event using elgg_register_event_handler:

<?php
elgg_register_event_handler($event, $object_type, $handler, $priority);
Parameters:
• $event The event name.
• $object_type The object type (e.g. “user” or “object”) or ‘all’ for all types on which the event is fired.
• $handler The callback of the handler function.
• $priority The priority - 0 is first and the default is 500.
Object here does not refer to an ElggObject but rather a string describing any object in the framework: system,
user, object, relationship, annotation, group.
Example:
<?php
// Register the function myPlugin_handle_create_object() to handle the

// create object event with priority 400.
elgg_register_event_handler('create', 'object', 'myPlugin_handle_create_object', 400);
Warning: If you handle the “update” event on an object, avoid calling save() in your event handler. For one
it’s probably not necessary as the object is saved after the event completes, but also because save() calls another
“update” event and makes $object->getOriginalAttributes() no longer available.

Invokable classes as handlers
You may use a class with an __invoke() method as a handler. Just register the class name and it will be instantiated
(with no arguments) for the lifetime of the event (or hook).
<?php
namespace MyPlugin;
class UpdateObjectHandler {
public function __invoke(\Elgg\ObjectEvent $event) {
}
}
// in init, system
elgg_register_event_handler('update', 'object', MyPlugin\UpdateObjectHandler::class);
Trigger an Elgg Event
You can trigger a custom Elgg event using elgg_trigger_event:

<?php
if (elgg_trigger_event($event, $object_type, $object)) {

// Proceed with doing something.
} else {
// Event was cancelled. Roll back any progress made before the event.
}
For events with ambiguous states, like logging in a user, you should use Before and After Events by calling
elgg_trigger_before_event or elgg_trigger_after_event. This makes it clear for the event handler
what state to expect and which events can be cancelled.
<?php
// handlers for the user, login:before event know the user isn't logged in yet.
if (!elgg_trigger_before_event('login', 'user', $user)) {
return false;
}
// handlers for the user, login:after event know the user is logged in.
elgg_trigger_after_event('login', 'user', $user);
Parameters:
• $event The event name.
• $object_type The object type (e.g. “user” or “object”).
• $object The object (e.g. an instance of ElggUser or ElggGroup)
The function will return false if any of the selected handlers returned false and the event is stoppable, otherwise
it will return true.

5.3.3 Plugin Hooks
Plugin Hooks provide a way for plugins to collaboratively determine or alter a value. For example, to decide whether
a user has permission to edit an entity or to add additional configuration options to a plugin.
A plugin hook has a value passed into the trigger function, and each handler has an opportunity to alter the value
before it’s passed to the next handler. After the last handler has completed, the final value is returned by the trigger.
Plugin Hook Handlers
Hook handlers are callables with one of the following prototypes:

<?php
/**
* @param \Elgg\Hook $hook The hook object
*
* @return mixed if not null, this will be the new value of the plugin hook
*/
function plugin_hook_handler1(\Elgg\Hook $hook) {
...
}
/**
* @param string $hook The name of the plugin hook
* @param string $type The type of the plugin hook
* @param mixed $value The current value of the plugin hook
* @param mixed $params Data passed from the trigger
*
* @return mixed if not null, this will be the new value of the plugin hook
*/
function plugin_hook_handler2($hook, $type, $value, $params) {
...
}
In plugin_hook_handler1, the Hook object has various methods for getting the name, type, value, and param-
eters of the hook. See the Elgg\Hook interface for details.
In both cases, if the handler returns no value (or null explicitly), the plugin hook value is not altered. Otherwise the
returned value becomes the new value of the plugin hook, and it will then be available as $hook->getValue() (or
$value) in the next handler.
Register to handle a Plugin Hook
Register your handler to a plugin hook using elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler:

<?php
elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler($hook, $type, $handler, $priority);
Parameters:
• $hook The name of the plugin hook.
• $type The type of the hook or ‘all’ for all types.
• $handler The callback of the handler function.
• $priority The priority - 0 is first and the default is 500.

Type can vary in meaning. It may mean an Elgg entity type or something specific to the plugin hook name.
Example:
<?php
// Register the function myPlugin_hourly_job() to be called with priority 400.

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('cron', 'hourly', 'myPlugin_hourly_job', 400);
Trigger a Plugin Hook
You can trigger a custom plugin hook using elgg_trigger_plugin_hook:

<?php
// filter $value through the handlers

$value = elgg_trigger_plugin_hook($hook, $type, $params, $value);
Parameters:
• $hook The name of the plugin hook.
• $type The type of the hook or ‘all’ for all types.
• $params Arbitrary data passed from the trigger to the handlers.
• $value The initial value of the plugin hook.
Warning: The $params and $value arguments are reversed between the plugin hook handlers and trigger func-
tions!
Unregister Event/Hook Handlers
The functions elgg_unregister_event_handler and elgg_unregister_plugin_hook_handler

can be used to remove handlers already registered by another plugin or Elgg core. The parameters are in the same
order as the registration functions, except there’s no priority parameter.
<?php
elgg_unregister_event_handler('login', 'user', 'myPlugin_handle_login');
Anonymous functions or invokable objects cannot be unregistered, but dynamic method callbacks can be unregistered
by giving the static version of the callback:
<?php
$obj = new MyPlugin\Handlers();

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('foo', 'bar', [$obj, 'handleFoo']);
// ... elsewhere
elgg_unregister_plugin_hook_handler('foo', 'bar', 'MyPlugin\Handlers::handleFoo');
Even though the event handler references a dynamic method call, the code above will successfully remove the handler.

Handler Calling Order
Handlers are called first in order of priority, then registration order.
Note: Before Elgg 2.0, registering with the all keywords caused handlers to be called later, even if they were
registered with lower priorities.
5.4 Internationalization
Elgg 1.0+ departs from previous versions in that it uses a custom text array rather than gettext. This improves system
performance and reliability of the translation system.
TODO: more plz
5.5 AMD
5.5.1 Overview
There are two JavaScript system in Elgg: the deprecated 1.8 system, and the newer AMD (Asynchronous Module
Definition) compatible system introduced in 1.9.
This discusses the benefits of using AMD in Elgg.
5.5.2 Why AMD?
We have been working hard to make Elgg’s JavaScript more maintainable and useful. We made some strides in 1.8
with the introduction of the “elgg” JavaScript object and library, but have quickly realized the approach we were
taking was not scalable.
The size of JS on the web is growing quickly, and JS in Elgg is growing too. We want Elgg to be able to offer a
solution that makes JS development as productive and maintainable as possible going forward.
The reasons to choose AMD are plenteous and well-documented. Let’s highlight just a few of the most relevant reasons
as they relate to Elgg specifically.
1. Simplified dependency management
AMD modules load asynchronously and execute as soon as their dependencies are available, so this eliminates the need
to specify “priority” and “location” when registering JS libs in Elgg. Also, you don’t need to worry about explicitly
loading a module’s dependencies in PHP. The AMD loader (RequireJS in this case) takes care of all that hassle for
you. It’s also possible have text dependencies with the RequireJS text plugin, so client-side templating should be a
breeze.
2. AMD works in all browsers. Today.
Elgg developers are already writing lots of JavaScript. We know you want to write more. We cannot accept waiting
5-10 years for a native JS modules solution to be available in all browsers before we can organize our JavaScript in a
maintainable way.

3. You do not need a build step to develop in AMD.
We like the edit-refresh cycle of web development. We wanted to make sure everyone developing in Elgg could
continue experiencing that joy. Synchronous module formats like Closure or CommonJS just weren’t an option for us.
But even though AMD doesn’t require a build step, it is still very build-friendly. Because of the define() wrapper,
it’s possible to concatenate multiple modules into a single file and ship them all at once in a production environment. 1
AMD is a battle-tested and well thought out module loading system for the web today. We’re very thankful for the
work that has gone into it, and are excited to offer it as the standard solution for JavaScript development in Elgg
starting with Elgg 1.9.
5.6 Security
Elgg’s approach to the various security issues common to all web applications.
Tip: To report a potential vulnerability in Elgg, email security@elgg.org.
Contents
• Passwords
– Password validation
– Password salting
– Password hashing
– Password storage
– Password throttling
– Password resetting
• Sessions
– Session fixation
– Session hijacking
– “Remember me” cookie
• Alternative authentication
• HTTPS
• XSS
• CSRF / XSRF
• SQL Injection
• Privacy
5.6.1 Passwords
Password validation
The only restriction that Elgg places on a password is that it must be at least 6 characters long by default, though this
may be changed in /elgg-config/settings.php. Additional criteria can be added by a plugin by registering
for the registeruser:validate:password plugin hook.
1 This is not currently supported by Elgg core, but we’ll be looking into it since reducing round-trips is critical for a good first-view experience,
especially on mobile devices.
5.6. Security 261

Password salting
Elgg salts passwords with a unique 8 character random string. The salt is generated each time the password is set. The main sec
• preventing anyone with access to the database from conducting a precomputed dictionary attack
• preventing a site administration from noting users with the same password.
Password hashing
The hashed password is computed using md5 from the user’s password text and the salt.
Password storage
The hashed password and the salt are stored in the users table. Neither are stored in any cookies on a user’s computer.
Password throttling
Elgg has a password throttling mechanism to make dictionary attacks from the outside very difficult. A user is only
allowed 5 login attempts over a 5 minute period.
Password resetting
If a user forgets his password, a new random password can be requested. After the request, an email is sent with a
unique URL. When the user visits that URL, a new random password is sent to the user through email.
5.6.2 Sessions
Elgg uses PHP’s session handling with custom handlers. Session data is stored in the database. The session cookie
contains the session id that links the user to the browser. The user’s metadata is stored in the session including GUID,
username, email address. The session’s lifetime is controlled through the server’s PHP configuration.
Session fixation
Elgg protects against session fixation by regenerating the session id when a user logs in.
Session hijacking
Warning: This section is questionable.
Besides protecting against session fixation attacks, Elgg also has a further check to try to defeat session hijacking if
the session identifier is compromised. Elgg stores a hash of the browser’s user agent and a site secret as a session
fingerprint. The use of the site secret is rather superfluous but checking the user agent might prevent some session
hijacking attempts.

“Remember me” cookie
To allow users to stay logged in for a longer period of time regardless of whether the browser has been closed, Elgg
uses a cookie (called elggperm) that contains what could be considered a super session identifier. This identifier is
stored in a cookies table. When a session is being initiated, Elgg checks for the presence of the elggperm cookie. If it
exists and the session code in the cookie matches the code in the cookies table, the corresponding user is automatically
logged in.
5.6.3 Alternative authentication
Note: This section is very hand-wavy
To replace Elgg’s default user authentication system, a plugin would have to replace the default action
with its own through register_action(). It would also have to register its own pam handler using
register_pam_handler().
Note: The pam_authenticate() function used to call the different modules has a bug related to the importance
variable.
5.6.4 HTTPS
Note: You must enable SSL support on your server for any of these techniques to work.
To make the login form submit over https, turn on login-over-ssl from Elgg’s admin panel.
You can also serve your whole site over SSL by simply changing the site URL to include “https” instead of just “http.”
5.6.5 XSS
Filtering is used in Elgg to make XSS attacks more difficult. The purpose of the filtering is to remove Javascript and
other dangerous input from users.
Filtering is performed through the function filter_tags(). This function takes in a string and returns a filtered
string. It triggers a validate, input plugin hook.
By default Elgg comes with the htmLawed filtering code as a plugin. Developers can drop in any additional or
replacement filtering code as a plugin.
The filter_tags() function is called on any user input as long as the input is obtained through a call to
get_input(). If for some reason a developer did not want to perform the default filtering on some user input,
the get_input() function has a parameter for turning off filtering.
5.6.6 CSRF / XSRF
Elgg generates security tokens to prevent cross-site request forgery. These are embedded in all forms and state-
modifying AJAX requests as long as the correct API is used. Read more in the Forms + Actions developer guide.
5.6. Security 263

5.6.7 SQL Injection
Elgg’s API sanitizes all input before issuing DB queries. Read more in the Database design doc.
5.6.8 Privacy
Elgg uses an ACL system to control which users have access to various pieces of content. Read more in the Database
design doc.
5.7 Loggable
Loggable is an interface inherited by any class that wants events relating to its member objects to be saved to the
system log. ElggEntity and ElggExtender both inherit Loggable.
Loggable defines several class methods that are used in saving to the default system log, and can be used to define
your own (as well as for other purposes):
• getSystemLogID() Return a unique identifier for the object for storage in the system log. This is likely to
be the object’s GUID
• getClassName() Return the class name of the object
• getType() Return the object type
• getSubtype() Get the object subtype
• getObjectFromID($id) For a given ID, return the object associated with it
5.7.1 Database details
The default system log is stored in the system_log database table. It contains the following fields:
• id - A unique numeric row ID
• object_id - The GUID of the entity being acted upon
• object_class - The class of the entity being acted upon (eg ElggObject)
• object_type - The type of the entity being acted upon (eg object)
• object_subtype - The subtype of the entity being acted upon (eg blog)
• event - The event being logged (eg create or update)
• performed_by_guid - The GUID of the acting entity (the user performing the action)
• owner_guid - The GUID of the user which owns the entity being acted upon
• access_id - The access restriction associated with this log entry
• time_created - The UNIX epoch timestamp of the time the event took place

CHAPTER 6
Contributor Guides
Participate in making Elgg even better.

Elgg is a community-driven project. It relies on the support of volunteers to succeed. Here are some ways you can
help:
6.1 Translations
Translations multiply the impact that Elgg can have by making it accessible to a larger percentage of the world.
The community will always be indebted to those of you who work hard to provide high quality translations for Elgg’s
UI and docs.
6.1.1 Transifex
All translation for the Elgg project is organized through Transifex.

https://www.transifex.com/organization/elgg
Plugin authors are encouraged to coordinate translations via Transifex as well so the whole community can be unified
and make it really easy for translators to contribute to any plugin in the Elgg ecosystem.
6.2 Reporting Issues
Report bugs and features requests to https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/issues. See below for guidelines.
6.2.1 DISCLAIMERS
• SECURITY ISSUES SHOULD BE REPORTED TO security @ elgg . org! Please do not post any security
issues on github!!
• Support requests belong on the community site. Tickets with support requests will be closed.
• We cannot make any guarantees as to when your ticket will be resolved.
265
6.2.2 Bug reports
Before submitting a bug report:

• Search for an existing ticket on the issue you’re having. Add any extra info there.
• Verify the problem is reproducible
– On the latest version of Elgg
– With all third-party plugins disabled
Good bug report checklist:
• Expected behavior and actual behavior
• Clear steps to reproduce the problem
• The version of Elgg you’re running
• Browsers affected by this problem
6.2.3 Feature requests
Before submitting a feature request:

• Check the community site for a plugin that has the features you need.
• Consider if you can develop a plugin that does what you need.
• Search through the closed tickets to see if someone else suggested the same feature, but got turned down. You’ll
need to be able to explain why your suggestion should be considered this time.
Good feature request checklist:
• Detailed explanation of the feature
• Real-life use-cases
• Proposed API
6.3 Writing Code
Understand Elgg’s standards and processes to get your changes accepted as quickly as possible.
Contents
• License agreement
• Pull requests
• Testing
• Coding best practices
• Deprecating APIs
6.3.1 License agreement
By submitting a patch you are agreeing to license the code under a GPLv2 license and MIT license.
266 Chapter 6. Contributor Guides

6.3.2 Pull requests
Pull requests (PRs) are the best way to get code contributed to Elgg core. The core development team uses them even
for the most trivial changes.
For new features, submit a feature request or talk to us first and make sure the core team approves of your direction
before spending lots of time on code.
Checklists
Use these markdown checklists for new PRs on github to ensure high-quality contributions and help everyone under-
stand the status of open PRs.
Bugfix PRs:
- [ ] Commit messages are in the standard format
- [ ] Includes regression test
- [ ] Includes documentation update (if applicable)
- [ ] Is submitted against the correct branch
- [ ] Has LGTM from at least one core developer
Feature PRs:
- [ ] Commit messages are in the standard format
- [ ] Includes tests
- [ ] Includes documentation
- [ ] Is submitted against the correct branch
- [ ] Has LGTM from at least two core developers
Choosing a branch to submit to
The following table assumes the latest stable release is 2.1.

Type of change Branch to submit against
Security fix Don’t! Email security@elgg.org for guidance.
Bug fix 1.12 (or 2.1 if the 1.12 fix is too complex)
Performance 2.x
Deprecation 2.x
Minor feature 2.x
Major feature master
Has any breaking change master
If you’re not sure which branch to submit against, just ask!
The difference between minor and major feature is subjective and up to the core team.
Commit message format
We require a particular format to allow releasing more often, and with improved changelogs and source history. Just
follow these steps:
1. Start with the type by selecting the last category which applies from this list:
• docs - only docs are being updated
• chore - this include refactoring, code style changes, adding missing tests, Travis stuff, etc.
6.3. Writing Code 267

• perf - the primary purpose is to improve performance

• fix - this fixes a bug
• deprecate - the change deprecates any part of the API
• feature - this adds a new user-facing or developer feature
• security - the change affects a security issue in any way. Please do not push this commit to any public
repo. Instead contact security@elgg.org.
E.g. if your commit refactors to fix a bug, it’s still a “fix”. If that bug is security-related, however, the type must
be “security” and you should email security@elgg.org before proceeding. When in doubt, make your best guess
and a reviewer will provide guidance.
2. In parenthesis, add the component, a short string which describes the subsystem being changed.
Some examples: views, i18n, seo, a11y, cache, db, session, router, <plugin_name>.
3. Add a colon, a space, and a brief summary of the changes, which will appear in the changelog.
No line may exceed 100 characters in length, so keep your summary concise.
Good summary Bad summary (problem)
page owners see their own owner bug fix (vague)
blocks on pages
bar view no longer dies if ‘foo’ not updates views/default/bar.php so bar view no longer... (redundant
set info)
narrows river layout to fit iPhone alters the river layout (vague)
elgg_foo() handles arrays for $bar in elgg_foo() you can now pass an array for $bar and the function
will... (move detail to description)
removes link color from comments fixes db so that... (redundant info)
header in river
requires non-empty title when can save pages with no title (confusingly summarizes old behavior)
saving pages
4. (recommended) Skip a line and add a description of the changes. Include the motivation for making them,
any info about back or forward compatibility, and any rationale of why the change had to be done a certain way.
Example:
We speed up the Remember Me table migration by using a single INSERT INTO ... SELECT query
instead of row-by-row. This migration takes place during the upgrade to 1.9.
Unless your change is trivial/obvious, a description is required.
5. If the commit resolves a GitHub issue, skip a line and add Fixes # followed by the issue number. E.g. Fixes
#1234. You can include multiple issues by separating with commas.
GitHub will auto-close the issue when the commit is merged. If you just want to reference an issue, use Refs
# instead.
When done, your commit message will have the format:
type(component): summary
Optional body
Details about the solution.
Opportunity to call out as breaking change.
Closes/Fixes/Refs #123, #456, #789
Here is an example of a good commit message:

perf(upgrade): speeds up migrating remember me codes
We speed up the Remember Me table migration by using a single INSERT INTO ... SELECT query instead of
This migration takes place during the upgrade to 1.9.
Fixes #6204
To validate commit messages locally, make sure .scripts/validate_commit_msg.php is executable, and

make a copy or symlink to it in the directory .git/hooks/commit-msg.
chmod u+x .scripts/validate_commit_msg.php
ln -s .scripts/validate_commit_msg.php .git/hooks/commit-msg/validate_commit_msg.php
Rewriting commit messages
If your PR does not conform to the standard commit message format, we’ll ask you to rewrite it.
To edit just the last commit:
1. Amend the commit: git commit --amend (git opens the message in a text editor).
2. Change the message and save/exit the editor.
3. Force push your branch: git push -f your_remote your_branch (your PR with be updated).
4. Rename the PR title to match
Otherwise you may need to perform an interactive rebase:
1. Rebase the last N commits: git rebase -i HEAD~N where N is a number. (Git will open the
git-rebase-todo file for editing)
2. For the commits that need to change, change pick to r (for reword) and save/exit the editor.
3. Change the commit message(s), save/exit the editor (git will present a file for each commit that needs rewording).
4. git push -f your_remote your_branch to force push the branch (updating your PR).
5. Rename the PR title to match
6.3.3 Testing
Elgg has automated tests for both PHP and JavaScript functionality. All new contributions are required to come with
appropriate tests.
General guidelines
Break tests up by the behaviors you want to test and use names that describe the behavior. E.g.:
• Not so good: One big method testAdd().
• Better: Methods testAddingZeroChangesNothing and testAddingNegativeNumberSubtracts
Strive for componentized designs that allow testing in isolation, without large dependency graphs or DB access. In-
jecting dependencies is key here.

PHP Tests
PHPUnit
Located in engine/tests/phpunit, this is our preferred test suite. It uses no DB access, and has only superficial
access to the entities API.
• We encourage you to create components that are testable in this suite if possible.
• Consider separating storage from your component so at least business logic can be tested here.
• Depend on the Elgg\Filesystem\* classes rather than using PHP filesystem functions.
SimpleTest
The rest of the files in engine/tests form our integration suite, for anything that needs access to the DB or entity
APIs.
• Our long-term goals are to minimize these and convert them to PHPUnit
Testing interactions between services
Ideally your tests would construct your own isolated object graphs for direct manipulation, but this isn’t always possi-
ble.
If your test relies on Elgg’s Service Provider (_elgg_services() returns a Elgg\Di\ServiceProvider),
realize that it maintains a singleton instance for most services it hands out, and many services keep their own local
references to these services as well.
Due to these local references, replacing services on the SP within a test often will not have the desired effect. Instead,
you may need to use functionality baked into the services themselves:
• The events and hooks services have methods backup() and restore().
• The logger service has methods disable() and enable().
Jasmine Tests
Test files must be named *Test.js and should go in either js/tests/ or next to their source files in
views/default/**.js. Karma will automatically pick up on new *Test.js files and run those tests.
Test boilerplate
describe("This new test", function() {

it("fails automatically", function() {
expect(true).toBe(false);
});
});
});

Running the tests
Elgg uses Karma with Jasmine to run JS unit tests.

You will need to have nodejs and npm installed.
First install all the development dependencies:
npm install
Run through the tests just once and then quit:

npm test
You can also run tests continuously during development so they run on each save:
karma start js/tests/karma.conf.js
Debugging JS tests
You can run the test suite inside Chrome dev tools:
npm run chrome
This will output a URL like http://localhost:9876/.

1. Open the URL in Chrome, and click “Debug”.
2. Open Chrome dev tools and the Console tab.
3. Reload the page.
If you alter a test you’ll have to quit Karma with Ctrl-c and restart it.
6.3.4 Coding best practices
Make your code easier to read, easier to maintain, and easier to debug. Consistent use of these guidelines means less
guess work for developers, which means happier, more productive developers.
General coding
Don’t Repeat Yourself
If you are copy-pasting code a significant amount of code, consider whether there’s an opportunity to reduce duplica-
tion by introducing a function, an additional argument, a view, or a new component class.
E.g. If you find views that are identical except for a single value, refactor into a single view that takes an option.
Note: In a bugfix release, some duplication is preferrable to refactoring. Fix bugs in the simplest way possible and
refactor to reduce duplication in the next minor release branch.
Embrace SOLID and GRASP
Use these principles for OO design to solve problems using loosely coupled components, and try to make all compo-
nents and integration code testable.

Whitespace is free
Don’t be afraid to use it to separate blocks of code. Use a single space to separate function params and string concate-
nation.
Variable names
Use self-documenting variable names. $group_guids is better than $array.

Avoid double-negatives. Prefer $enable = true to $disable = false.
Interface names
Use the pattern Elgg\{Namespace}\{Name}.

Do not include an I prefix or an Interface suffix.
We do not include any prefix or suffix so that we’re encouraged to:
• name implementation classes more descriptively (the “default” name is taken).
• type-hint on interfaces, because that is the shortest, easiest thing to do.
Name implementations like Elgg\{Namespace}\{Interface}\{Implementation}.
Functions
Where possible, have functions/methods return a single type. Use empty values such as array(), "", or 0 to indicate
no results.
Be careful where valid return values (like "0") could be interpreted as empty.
Functions not throwing an exception on error should return false upon failure.
Functions returning only boolean should be prefaced with is_ or has_ (eg, elgg_is_logged_in(),
elgg_has_access_to_entity()).
Ternary syntax
Acceptable only for single-line, non-embedded statements.
Minimize complexity
Minimize nested blocks and distinct execution paths through code. Use Return Early to reduce nesting levels and
cognitive load when reading code.
Use comments effectively
Good comments describe the “why.” Good code describes the “how.” E.g.:
Bad:

// increment $i only when the entity is marked as active.

foreach ($entities as $entity) {
if ($entity->active) {
$i++;
}
}
Good:
// find the next index for inserting a new active entity.
foreach ($entities as $entity) {
if ($entity->active) {
$i++;
}
}
Always include a comment if it’s not obvious that something must be done in a certain way. Other developers looking
at the code should be discouraged from refactoring in a way that would break the code.
// Can't use empty()/boolean: "0" is a valid value
if ($str === '') {
register_error(elgg_echo('foo:string_cannot_be_empty'));
forward(REFERER);
}
Commit effectively
• Err on the side of atomic commits which are highly focused on changing one aspect of the system.
• Avoid mixing in unrelated changes or extensive whitespace changes. Commits with many changes are scary and
make pull requests difficult to review.
• Use visual git tools to craft highly precise and readable diffs.
Include tests When at all possible include unit tests for code you add or alter.
Keep bugfixes simple Avoid the temptation to refactor code for a bugfix release. Doing so tends to introduce
regressions, breaking functionality in what should be a stable release.
PHP guidelines
These are the required coding standards for Elgg core and all bundled plugins. Plugin developers are strongly encour-
aged to adopt these standards.
Developers should first read the PSR-2 Coding Standard Guide.
Elgg’s standards extend PSR-2, but differ in the following ways:
• Indent using one tab character, not spaces.
• Opening braces for classes, methods, and functions must go on the same line.
• If a line reaches over 100 characters, consider refactoring (e.g. introduce variables).
• Compliance with PSR-1 is encouraged, but not strictly required.

Documentation
• Include PHPDoc comments on functions and classes (all methods; declared properties when appropriate), in-
cluding types and descriptions of all parameters.
• In lists of @param declarations, the beginnings of variable names and descriptions must line up.
• Annotate classes, methods, properties, and functions with @access private unless they are intended for
public use, are already of limited visibility, or are within a class already marked as private.
• Use // or /* */ when commenting.
• Use only // comments inside function/method bodies.
Naming
• Use underscores to separate words in the names of functions, variables, and properties. Method names are
camelCase.
• Names of functions for public use must begin with elgg_.
• All other function names must begin with _elgg_.
• Name globals and constants in ALL_CAPS (ACCESS_FRIENDS, $CONFIG).
Miscellaneous
For PHP requirements, see composer.json.

Do not use PHP shortcut tags <? or <%. It is OK to use <?= since it is always enabled as of PHP 5.4.
When creating strings with variables:
• use double-quoted strings
• wrap variables with braces only when necessary.
Bad (hard to read, misuse of quotes and {}s):
echo 'Hello, '.$name."! How is your {$time_of_day}?";
Good:
echo "Hello, $name! How is your $time_of_day?";
Remove trailing whitespace at the end of lines. An easy way to do this before you commit is to run php
.scripts/fix_style.php from the installation root.
CSS guidelines
Use shorthand where possible
Bad:
background-color: #333333;
background-image: url(...);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: left 10px;
padding: 2px 9px 2px 9px;

Good:
background: #333 url(...) repeat-x left 10px;
padding: 2px 9px;
Use hyphens, not underscores
Bad:
.example_class {}
Good:
.example-class {}
One property per line
Bad:
color: white;font-size: smaller;
Good:
color: white;
font-size: smaller;
Property declarations
These should be spaced like so: property: value;

Bad:
color:value;
color :value;
color : value;
Good:
color: value;
Vendor prefixes
• Group vendor-prefixes for the same property together

• Longest vendor-prefixed version first
• Always include non-vendor-prefixed version
• Put an extra newline between vendor-prefixed groups and other properties
Bad:
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border: 1px solid #999999;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
width: auto;

Good:
border: 1px solid #999999;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;
width: auto;
Group subproperties
Bad:
background-color: white;
color: #0054A7;
background-position: 2px -257px;
Good:
background-color: white;
background-position: 2px -257px;
color: #0054A7;
Javascript guidelines
Same formatting standards as PHP apply.

All functions should be in the elgg namespace.
Function expressions should end with a semi-colon.
elgg.ui.toggles = function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
$(target).slideToggle('medium');
};
6.3.5 Deprecating APIs
Occasionally functions and classes must be deprecated in favor of newer replacements. Since 3rd party plugin authors
rely on a consistent API, backward compatibility must be maintained, but will not be maintained indefinitely as plugin
authors are expected to properly update their plugins. In order to maintain backward compatibility, deprecated APIs
will follow these guidelines:
• Minor version (1.x) that deprecates an API must include a wrapper function/class (or otherwise appropriate
means) to maintain backward compatibility, including any bugs in the original function/class. This compatibility
layer uses elgg_deprecated_notice(’...’, ’1.11’) to log that the function is deprecated.
• The next major revision (2.0) removes the compatibility layer. Any use of the deprecated API should be cor-
rected before this.
6.4 Adding a Service to Elgg
The services guide has general information about using Elgg services.

To add a new service object to Elgg:

1. Annotate your class as @access private.
2. Open the class Elgg\Di\ServiceProvider.
3. Add a @property-read annotation for your service at the top. This allows IDEs and static code analyzers
to understand the type of the property.
4. To the constructor, add code to tell the service provider what to return. See the class Elgg\Di\DiContainer
for more information on how Elgg’s DI container works.
At this point your service will be available from the service provider object, but will not yet be accessible to plugins.
6.4.1 Inject your dependencies
Design your class constructor to ask for the necessary dependencies rather than creating them or using
_elgg_services(). The service provider’s setFactory() method provides access to the service provider
instance in your factory method.
Here’s an example of a foo service factory, injecting the config and db services into the constructor:
// in Elgg\Di\ServiceProvider::__construct()
$this->setFactory('foo', function (ServiceProvider $c) {

return new Elgg\FooService($c->config, $c->db);
});
The full list of internal services can be seen in the @property-read declarations at the top of
Elgg\Di\ServiceProvider.
Warning: Avoid performing work in your service constructor, particularly if it requires database queries. Cur-
rently PHPUnit tests cannot perform them.
6.4.2 Making a service part of the public API
If your service is meant for use by plugin developers:

1. Make an interface Elgg\Services\<Name> that contains only those methods needed in the public API.
2. Have your service class implement that interface.
3. For methods that are in the interface, move the documentation to the interface. You can simply use
{@inheritdoc} in the PHPDocs of the concrete class methods.
4. Document your service in docs/guides/services.rst (this file).
5. Open the PHPUnit test Elgg\ApplicationTest and add your service key to the $names array in
testServices().
6. Open the class Elgg\Application.
7. Add @property-read declaration to document your service, but use your interface as the type, not your
service class name.
8. Add your service key to the array in the $public_services property, e.g. ’foo’ => true,
Now your service will be available via property access on the Elgg\Application instance:
6.4. Adding a Service to Elgg 277

// using the public foo service

$three = elgg()->foo->add(1, 2);
Note: For examples, see the config service, including the interface Elgg\Services\Config and the concrete
implementation Elgg\Config.
Service Life Cycle and Factories
By default, services registered on the service provider are “shared”, meaning the service provider will store the created
instance for the rest of the request, and serve that same instance to all who request the property.
If you need developers to be able to construct objects that are pre-wired to Elgg services, you may need to add a public
factory method to Elgg\Application. Here’s an example that returns a new instance using internal Elgg services:
public function createFoo($bar) {
$logger = $this->services->logger;
$db = $this->services->db;
return new Elgg\Foo($bar, $logger, $db);
}
6.5 Writing Documentation
New documentation should fit well with the rest of Elgg’s docs.
Contents
• Testing docs locally
• Follow the existing document organization
• Use “Elgg” in a grammatically correct way
• Avoid first person pronouns
• Eliminate fluff
• Prefer absolute dates over relative ones
• Do not remind the reader to contribute
6.5.1 Testing docs locally
Elgg has a grunt script that automatically builds the docs, opens them in a browser window, and automatically reloads
as you make changes (the reload takes just a few seconds). You need npm and sphinx installed to be able to use these
scripts.
cd path/to/elgg/
npm install
grunt
It’s that easy! Grunt will continue running, watching the docs for changes and automatically rebuilding.

6.5.2 Follow the existing document organization
The current breakdown is not necessarily the One True Way to organize docs, but consistency is better than random-
ness.
intro/*
This is everything that brand new users need to know (installation, features, license, etc.)
admin/*
Guides for administrators. Task-oriented.
guides/*
API guides for plugin developers. Cookbook-style. Example heavy. Code snippet heavy. Broken down by services
(actions, i18n, routing, db, etc.). This should only discuss the public API and its behavior, not implementation details
or reasoning.
design/*
Design docs for people who want to get a better understanding of how/why core is built the way it is. This should
discuss internal implementation details of the various services, what tradeoffs were made, and the reasoning behind
the final decision. Should be useful for people who want to contribute and for communication b/w core devs.
contribute/*
Contributors guides for the various ways people can participate in the project.
appendix/*
More detailed/meta/background information about the project (history, roadmap, etc.)
6.5.3 Use “Elgg” in a grammatically correct way
Elgg is not an acronym, so writing it in all caps (ELGG or E-LGG) is incorrect. Please don’t do this.
In English, Elgg does not take an article when used as a noun. Here are some examples to emulate:
• “I’m using Elgg to run my website”
• “Install Elgg to get your community online”
When used as an adjective, the article applies to the main noun, so you should use one. For example:
• “Go to the Elgg community website to get help.”
• “I built an Elgg-based network yesterday”
This advice may not apply in languages other than English.
6.5. Writing Documentation 279

6.5.4 Avoid first person pronouns
Refer to the reader as “you.” Do not include yourself in the normal narrative.
Before:
When we’re done installing Elgg, we’ll look for some plugins!
After:
When you’re done installing Elgg, look for some plugins!
To refer to yourself (avoid this if possible), use your name and write in the third person. This clarifies to future
readers/editors whose opinions are being expressed.
Before:
I think the best way to do X is to use Y.
After:
Evan thinks the best way to do X is to use Y.
6.5.5 Eliminate fluff
Before:
If you want to use a third-party javascript library within the Elgg framework, you should take care to call
the elgg_register_js function to register it.
After:
To use a third-party javascript library, call elgg_register_js to register it.
6.5.6 Prefer absolute dates over relative ones
It is not easy to tell when a particular sentence or paragraph was written, so relative dates quickly become meaningless.
Absolute dates also give the reader a good indication of whether a project has been abandoned, or whether some advice
might be out of date.
Before:
Recently the foo was barred. Soon, the baz will be barred too.
After:
Recently (as of September 2013), the foo was barred. The baz is expected to be barred by October 2013.
6.5.7 Do not remind the reader to contribute
Focus on addressing only the topic at hand. Constant solicitation for free work is annoying and makes the project look
needy. If people want to contribute to the project, they can visit the contributor guide.
6.6 Internationalizing documentation
When you change documentation, remember to update the documentation translation templates before you commit:

cd docs/
make gettext
For more information, see http://sphinx-doc.org/latest/intl.html#translating-with-sphinx-intl
6.7 Becoming a Financial Supporter
All funds raised via the Elgg supporters network go directly into:
• Elgg core development
• Infrastructure provision (elgg.org, github, etc.)
It is a great way to help with Elgg development!
6.7.1 Benefits
For only $50 per year for individuals or $150 per year for organizations, you can get listed as a supporter on our
supporters page. Elgg supporters are listed there unless they request not to be.
Supporters are able to put this official logo on their site if they wish:
6.7.2 Disclaimer
We operate a no refund policy on supporter subscriptions. If you would like to withdraw your support, go to PayPal
and cancel your subscription. You will not be billed the following year.
Being an Elgg Supporter does not give an individual or organization the right to impersonate, trade as or imply they
are connected to the Elgg project. They can, however, mention that they support the Elgg project.
If you have any questions about this disclaimer, email info@elgg.org.
We reserve the right to remove or refuse a listing without any prior warning at our complete discretion. There is no
refund policy.
If there is no obvious use of Elgg, your site will be linked to with “nofollow” set.
6.7.3 Sign up
If you would like to become an Elgg supporter:

• read the disclaimer above
6.7. Becoming a Financial Supporter 281

• on the supporters page, subscribe via PayPal

• send an email to info@elgg.org with:
– the date you subscribed
– your name (and organization name, if applicable)
– your website
– your Elgg community profile
Once all the details have been received, we will add you to the appropriate list. Thanks for your support!
6.8 Release Process Workflow
Release a new version of Elgg.

This is the process the core team follows for making a new Elgg release. We have published this information in the
spirit of openness, and to streamline onboarding of new team members.
Contents
• Requirements
• Update composer dependencies
• Merge commits up from lower branches
• First new stable minor/major release
• Prepare the release
• Tag the release
• Update the website
• Make the announcement
6.8.1 Requirements
• SSH access to elgg.org

• Commit access to http://github.com/Elgg/Elgg
• Admin access to https://elgg.org/
• Access to Twitter account
• Access to G+ page
• Node.js and NPM installed
• Sphinx installed (easy_install sphinx && easy_install sphinx-intl)
• Transifex client installed (easy_install transifex-client)
• Transifex account with access to Elgg project
6.8.2 Update composer dependencies
Since Elgg 2.3, composer.lock is committed to the repository. Therefore, if any of the composer dependencies
require an update, run composer update on the corresponding branch and make a pull request with an updated
composer.lock file. This will run the test suite and ensure that new dependencies do not break the build.

6.8.3 Merge commits up from lower branches
Determine the LTS branch (currently 1.12). We need to merge any new commits there up through the other branches.
For each branch
Check out the branch, make sure it’s up to date, and make a new work branch with the merge. E.g. here we’re merging
1.12 commits into 2.0:
git checkout 2.0
git pull
git checkout -b merge112
git merge 1.12
Note: If already up-to-date (no commits to merge), we can stop here for this branch.
If there are conflicts, resolve them, git add ., and git merge.
Make a PR for the branch and wait for automated tests and approval by other dev(s).
git push -u my_fork merge112
Once merged, we would repeat the process to merge 2.0 commits into 2.1.
6.8.4 First new stable minor/major release
Update the Support policy to include the new minor/major release date and fill in the blanks for the previous release.
6.8.5 Prepare the release
Bring your local git clone up to date.

Merge latest commits up from lowest supported branch.
Visit https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/compare/<new>...<old> and submit the PR if there is anything
that needs to be merged up.
Install the prerequisites:
npm install elgg-conventional-changelog
easy_install sphinx
easy_install sphinx-intl
easy_install transifex-client
Run the release.php script. For example, to release 1.12.5:

git checkout 1.12
php .scripts/release.php 1.12.5
This creates a release-1.12.5 branch in your local repo.

Next, manually browse to the /admin/settings/basic page and verify it loads. If it does not, a language file
from Transifex may have a PHP syntax error. Fix the error and amend your commit with the new file:
6.8. Release Process Workflow 283

# only necessary if you fixed a language file

git add .
git commit --amend
Next, submit a PR via GitHub for automated testing and approval by another developer:
git push your-remote-fork release-1.12.5
6.8.6 Tag the release
Once approved and merged, tag the release:

git checkout release-${version}
git tag -a ${version} -m'Elgg ${version}'
git push --tags origin release-${version}
• Mark GitHub release milestones as completed

• Move unresolved tickets in released milestones to later milestones
6.8.7 Update the website
• ssh to elgg.org
• Clone https://github.com/Elgg/elgg-scripts
Build zip package
Use elgg-scripts/build/elgg-starter-project.sh to generate the .zip file. Run without arguments

to see usage.
# regular release
./elgg-starter-project.sh master 2.0.4 /var/www/www.elgg.org/download/
# MIT release
./elgg-starter-project.sh master 2.0.4-mit /var/www/www.elgg.org/download/
• Verify that vendor/elgg/elgg/composer.json in the zip file has the expected version.
• If not, make sure GitHub has the release tag, and that the starter project has a compatible elgg/elgg item in
the composer requires list.
Building 1.x zip packages
Use elgg-scripts/build/build.sh to generate the .zip file. Run without arguments to see usage.
# regular release
./build.sh 1.12.5 1.12.5 /var/www/www.elgg.org/download/
# MIT release
./build.sh 1.12.5 1.12.5-mit /var/www/www.elgg.org/download/

Update elgg.org
• Clone https://github.com/Elgg/www.elgg.org
• Add the new versions to src/Elgg/Releases.php
• Update vendors
composer update
• Commit and push the changes

• Pull to live site
cd /var/www/www.elgg.org && sudo su deploy && git pull
• Update dependencies
composer install --no-dev --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader
• Go to community admin panel

– Flush APC cache
– Run upgrade
6.8.8 Make the announcement
This should be the very last thing you do.

1. Open https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/blob/<tag>/CHANGELOG.md and copy the contents for
that version
2. Sign in at https://elgg.org/blog and compose a new blog with a summary
3. Copy in the CHANGELOG contents, clear formatting, and manually remove the SVG anchors
4. Add tags release and elgg2.x where x is whatever branch is being released
5. Tweet from the elgg Twitter account
6. Post from the G+ page
6.8. Release Process Workflow 285


CHAPTER 7
Appendix
Miscellaneous information about the project.
7.1 FAQs and Other Troubleshooting
Below are some commonly asked questions about Elgg.
287
Contents
• General
– “Plugin cannot start and has been deactivated” or “This plugin is invalid”
– White Page (WSOD)
– Page not found
– Login token mismatch
– Form is missing __token or __ts fields
– Maintenance mode
– Missing email
– Server logs
– How does registration work?
– User validation
– Manually add user
– I’m making or just installed a new theme, but graphics or other elements aren’t working
– Changing profile fields
– Changing registration
– How do I change PHP settings using .htaccess?
– HTTPS login turned on accidently
– Using a test site
– 500 - Internal Server Error
– When I upload a photo or change my profile picture I get a white screen
– CSS is missing
– Should I edit the database manually?
– Internet Explorer (IE) login problem
– Emails don’t support non-Latin characters
– Session length
– File is missing an owner
– No images
– Deprecation warnings
– Javascript not working
• Security
– Is upgrade.php a security concern?
– Should I delete install.php?
– Filtering
• Development
– What should I use to edit php code?
– I don’t like the wording of something in Elgg. How do I change it?
– How do I find the code that does x?
– Debug mode
– What events are triggered on every page load?
– What variables are reserved by Elgg?
– Copy a plugin
7.1.1 General
See also:
Getting Help
288 Chapter 7. Appendix

“Plugin cannot start and has been deactivated” or “This plugin is invalid”
This error is usually accompanied by more details explaining why the plugin is invalid. This is usually caused by an
incorrectly installed plugin.
If you are installing a plugin called “test”, there will be a test directory under mod. In that test directory there needs to
be a manifest.xml file /mod/test/manifest.xml.
If this file does not exist, it could be caused by:
• installing a plugin to the wrong directory
• creating a directory under /mod that does not contain a plugin
• a bad ftp transfer
• unzipping a plugin into an extra directory (myplugin.zip unzips to myplugin/myplugin)
If you are on a Unix-based host and the files exist in the correct directory, check the permissions. Elgg must have read
access to the files and read + execute access on the directories.
White Page (WSOD)
A blank, white page (often called a “white screen of death”) means there is a PHP syntax error. There are a few possible causes o
• corrupted file - try transfering the code again to your server

• a call to a php module that was not loaded - this can happen after you install a plugin that requires a specific
module.
• bad plugin - not all plugins have been written to the same quality so you should be careful which ones you
install.
To find where the error is occurring, change the .htaccess file to display errors to the browser. Set display_errors to
1 and load the same page again. You should see a PHP error in your browser. Change the setting back once you’ve
resolved the problem.
Note: If you are using the Developer’s Tools plugin, go to its settings page and make sure you have “Display fatal
PHP errors” enabled.
If the white screen is due to a bad plugin, remove the latest plugins that you have installed by deleting their directories
and then reload the page.
Note: You can temporarily disable all plugins by creating an empty file at mod/disabled. You can then disable
the offending module via the administrator tools panel.
If you are getting a WSOD when performing an action, like logging in or posting a blog, but there are no error
messages, it’s most likely caused by non-printable characters in plugin code. Check the plugin for white spaces/new
lines characters after finishing php tag (?>) and remove them.
Page not found
If you have recently installed your Elgg site, the most likely cause for a page not found error is that mod_rewrite is
not setup correctly on your server. There is information in the Install Troubleshooting page on fixing this. The second
most likely cause is that your site url in your database is incorrect.
7.1. FAQs and Other Troubleshooting 289

If you’ve been running your site for a while and suddenly start getting page not found errors, you need to ask yourself
what has changed. Have you added any plugins? Did you change your server configuration?
To debug a page not found error:
• Confirm that the link leading to the missing page is correct. If not, how is that link being generated?
• Confirm that the .htaccess rewrite rules are being picked up.
Login token mismatch
If you have to log in twice to your site and the error message after the first attempt says there was a token mismatch
error, the URL in Elgg’s settings does not match the URL used to access it. The most common cause for this is adding
or removing the “www” when accessing the site. For example, www.elgg.org vs elgg.org. This causes a problem with
session handling because of the way that web browsers save cookies.
To fix this, you can add rewrite rules. To redirect from www.elgg.org to elgg.org in Apache, the rules might look like:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !êlgg\.org
RewriteRule (.*) http://elgg.org/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirecting from non-www to www could look like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} êlgg\.org
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.elgg.org/$1 [R=301,L]
If you don’t know how to configure rewrite rules, ask your host for more information.
Form is missing __token or __ts fields
All Elgg actions require a security token, and this error occurs when that token is missing. This is either a problem
with your server configuration or with a 3rd party plugin.
If you experience this on a new installation, make sure that your server is properly configured and your rewrite rules
are correct. If you experience this on an upgrade, make sure you have updated your rewrite rules either in .htaccess
(Apache) or in the server configuration.
If you are experiencing this, disable all 3rd party plugins and try again. Very old plugins for Elgg don’t use security
tokens. If the problem goes away when plugins are disabled, it’s due to a plugin that should be updated by its author.
Maintenance mode
To take your site temporarily offline, go to Administration -> Utilities -> Maintenance Mode. Complete the form and
hit save to disable your site for everyone except admin users.
Missing email
If your users are reporting that validation emails are not showing up, have them check their spam folder. It is possible
that the emails coming from your server are being marked as spam. This depends on many factors such as whether
your hosting provider has a problem with spammers, how your PHP mail configuration is set up, what mail transport
agent your server is using, or your host limiting the number of email that you can send in an hour.
If no one gets email at all, it is quite likely your server is not configured properly for email. Your server needs a
program to send email (called a Mail Transfer Agent - MTA) and PHP must be configured to use the MTA.
To quickly check if PHP and an MTA are correctly configured, create a file on your server with the following content:

<?php
$address = "your_email@your_host.com";
$subject = 'Test email.';
$body = 'If you can read this, your email is working.';
echo "Attempting to email $address...<br />";
if (mail($address, $subject, $body)) {

echo 'SUCCESS! PHP successfully delivered email to your MTA. If you don\'t see the email in
} else {
echo 'ERROR! PHP could not deliver email to your MTA. Check that your PHP settings are corr
}
Be sure to replace “your_email@your_host.com” with your actual email address. Take care to keep quotes around it!
When you access this page through your web browser, it will attempt to send a test email. This test will let you know
that PHP and your MTA are correctly configured. If it fails–either you get an error or you never receive the email–you
will need to do more investigating and possibly contact your service provider.
Fully configuring an MTA and PHP’s email functionality is beyond the scope of this FAQ and you should search the
Internet for more resources on this. Some basic information on php parameters can be found on PHP’s site
Server logs
Most likely you are using Apache as your web server. Warnings and errors are written to a log by the web server
and can be useful for debugging problems. You will commonly see two types of log files: access logs and error logs.
Information from PHP and Elgg is written to the server error log.
• Linux – The error log is probably in /var/log/httpd or /var/log/apache2.
• Windows - It is probably inside your Apache directory.
• Mac OS - The error log is probably in /var/log/apache2/error_log
If you are using shared hosting without ssh access, your hosting provider may provide a mechanism for obtaining
access to your server logs. You will need to ask them about this.
How does registration work?
With a default setup, this is how registration works:

1. User fills out registration form and submits it
2. User account is created and disabled until validated
3. Email is sent to user with a link to validate the account
4. When a user clicks on the link, the account is validated
5. The user can now log in
Failures during this process include the user entering an incorrect email address, the validation email being marked as
spam, or a user never bothering to validate the account.

User validation
By default, all users who self-register must validate their accounts through email. If a user has problems validating an
account, you can validate users manually by going to Administration -> Users -> Unvalidated.
You can remove this requirement by deactivating the User Validation by Email plugin.
Note: Removing validation has some consequences: There is no way to know that a user registered with a working
email address, and it may leave you system open to spammers.
Manually add user
To manually add a user, under the Administer controls go to Users. There you will see a link title “Add new User”.
After you fill out the information and submit the form, the new user will receive an email with username and password
and a reminder to change the password.
Note: Elgg does not force the user to change the password.
I’m making or just installed a new theme, but graphics or other elements aren’t working
Make sure the theme is at the bottom of the plugin list.

Clear your browser cache and reload the page. To lighten the load on the server, Elgg instructs the browser to rarely
load the CSS file. A new theme will completely change the CSS file and a refresh should cause the browser to request
the CSS file again.
If you’re building or modifying a theme, make sure you have disabled the simple and system caches. This can be
done by enabling the Developer Tools plugin, then browsing to Administration -> Develop -> Settings. Once you’re
satisfied with the changes, enable the caches or performance will suffer.
Changing profile fields
Within the Administration settings of Elgg is a page for replacing the default profile fields. Elgg by default gives the
administrator two choices:
• Use the default profile fields
• Replace the default with a set of custom profile fields
You cannot add new profile fields to the default ones. Adding a new profile field through the replace profile fields
option clears the default ones. Before letting in users, it is best to determine what profile fields you want, what field
types they should be, and the order they should appear. You cannot change the field type or order or delete fields after
they have been created without wiping the entire profile blank.
More flexibility can be gained through plugins. There is at least two plugins on the community site that enable you to
have more control over profile fields. The Profile Manager plugin has become quite popular in the Elgg community. It
lets you add new profile fields whenever you want, change the order, group profile fields, and add them to registration.

Changing registration
The registration process can be changed through a plugin. Everything about registration can be changed: the look and
feel, different registration fields, additional validation of the fields, additional steps and so on. These types of changes
require some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP.
Another option is to use the Profile Manager plugin that lets you add fields to both user profiles and the registration
form.
Create the plugin skeleton Plugin skeleton
Changing registration display Override the account/forms/register view
Changing the registration action handler You can write your own action to create the user’s account
How do I change PHP settings using .htaccess?
You may want to change php settings in your .htaccess file. This is especially true if your hosting provider does
not give you access to the server’s php.ini file. The variables could be related to file upload size limits, security,
session length, or any number of other php attributes. For examples of how to do this, see the PHP documentation on
this.
HTTPS login turned on accidently
If you have turned on HTTPS login but do not have SSL configured, you are now locked out of your Elgg install. To
turn off this configuration parameter, you will need to edit your database. Use a tool like phpMyAdmin to view your
database. Select the config table and delete the row that has the name https_login.
Using a test site
It is recommended to always try out new releases or new plugins on a test site before running them on a production
site (a site with actual users). The easiest way to do this is to maintain a separate install of Elgg with dummy accounts.
When testing changes it is important to use dummy accounts that are not admins to test what your users will see.
A more realistic test is to mirror the content from your production site to your test site. Following the instructions for
duplicating a site. Then make sure you prevent emails from being sent to your users. You could write a small plugin
that redirects all email to your own account (be aware of plugins that include their own custom email sending code so
you’ll have to modify those plugins). After this is done you can view all of the content to make sure the upgrade or
new plugin is functioning as desired and is not breaking anything. If this process sounds overwhelming, please stick
with running a simple test site.
500 - Internal Server Error
What is it?
A 500 - Internal Server Error means the web server experienced a problem serving a request.
See also:
The Wikipedia page on HTTP status codes

Possible causes
Web server configuration The most common cause for this is an incorrectly configured server. If you edited the
.htaccess file and added something incorrect, Apache will send a 500 error.
Permissions on files It could also be a permissions problem on a file. Apache needs to be able to read Elgg’s files.
Using permissions 755 on directories and 644 on files will allow Apache to read the files.
When I upload a photo or change my profile picture I get a white screen
Most likely you don’t have the PHP GD library installed or configured properly. You may need assistance from the
administrator of your server.
CSS is missing
Wrong URL
Sometimes people install Elgg so that the base URL is localhost and then try to view the site using a hostname. In
this case, the browser won’t be able to load the CSS file. Try viewing the source of the web page and copying the link
for the CSS file. Paste that into your browser. If you get a 404 error, it is likely this is your problem. You will need to
change the base URL of your site.
Syntax error
Elgg stores its CSS as PHP code to provide flexibility and power. If there is a syntax error, the CSS file served to the
browser may be blank. Disabling non-bundled plugins is the recommended first step.
Rewrite rules errors
A bad .htaccess file could also result in a 404 error when requesting the CSS file. This could happen when doing
an upgrade and forgetting to also upgrade .htaccess.
Should I edit the database manually?
Warning: No, you should never manually edit the database!
Will editing the database manually break my site?
Yes.
Can I add extra fields to tables in the database?
(AKA: I don’t understand the Elgg data model so I’m going to add columns. Will you help?)
No, this is a bad idea. Learn the data model and you will see that unless it’s a very specific and highly customized
installation, you can do everything you need within Elgg’s current data model.

I want to remove users. Can’t I just delete them from the elgg_users_entity table?
No, it will corrupt your database. Delete them through the site.
I want to remove spam. Can’t I just search and delete it from the elgg_objects_entity table?
No, it will corrupt your database. Delete it through the site.
Someone on the community site told me to edit the database manually. Should I?
Who was it? Is it someone experienced with Elgg, like one of the core developers or a well-known plugin author?
Did he or she give you clear and specific instructions on what to edit? If you don’t know who it is, or if you can’t
understand or aren’t comfortable following the instructions, do not edit the database manually.
I know PHP and MySQL and have a legitimate reason to edit the database. Is it okay to manually edit the
database?
Make sure you understand Elgg’s data model and schema first. Make a backup, edit carefully, then test copiously.
Internet Explorer (IE) login problem
Canonical URL
IE does not like working with sites that use both http://example.org and http://www.example.org. It stores multiple
cookies and this causes problems. Best to only use one base URL. For details on how to do this see Login token
mismatch error.
Chrome Frame
Using the chrome frame within IE can break the login process.
Emails don’t support non-Latin characters
In order to support non-Latin characters, (such as Cyrillic or Chinese) Elgg requires multibyte string support to be
compiled into PHP.
On many installs (e.g. Debian & Ubuntu) this is turned on by default. If it is not, you need to turn it on (or recompile
PHP to include it). To check whether your server supports multibyte strings, check phpinfo.
Session length
Session length is controlled by your php configuration. You will first need to locate your php.ini file. In that file
will be several session variables. A complete list and what they do can be found in the php manual.

File is missing an owner
There are three causes for this error. You could have an entity in your database that has an owner_guid of 0. This
should be extremely rare and may only occur if your database/server crashes during a write operation.
The second cause would be an entity where the owner no longer exists. This could occur if a plugin is turned off
that was involved in the creation of the entity and then the owner is deleted but the delete operation failed (because
the plugin is turned off). If you can figure out entity is causing this, look in your entities table and change the
owner_guid to your own and then you can delete the entity through Elgg.
Warning: Reed the section “Should I edit the database manually?”. Be very carefull when editing the database
directly. It can break your site. Always make a backup before doing this.
The third cause is a user not having a username. This also indicates a database problem as this should not be possible.
If it does occur, you could see this error when viewing a list of users (such as with the Members plugin). To fix, check
your users_entity table for users without a username and if so, create a fake a username for that person. You
should probably then delete the user through Elgg.
Fixes
Database Validator plugin will check your database for these causes and provide an option to fix them. Be sure to
backup the database before you try the fix option.
No images
If profile images, group images, or other files have stopped working on your site it is likely due to a misconfiguration,
especially if you have migrated to a new server.
These are the most common misconfigurations that cause images and other files to stop working.
Wrong path for data directory
Make sure the data directory’s path is correct in the Site Administration admin area. It should have a trailing slash.
Wrong permissions on the data directory
Check the permissions for the data directory. The data directory should be readable and writeable by the web server
user.
Different timezone
Note: This only applies to Elgg versions before 1.9
If you migrated servers or upgraded PHP, check that PHP’s timezone settings are the same between the old and the
new. If you cannot or don’t want to change the system-wide php.ini file, you can put the following at the top of
settings.php:
date_default_timezone_set('MY_TIME_ZONE');
Where MY_TIME_ZONE is a valid PHP timezone.

Migrated installation with new data directory location
If you migrated an installation and need to change your data directory path, be sure to update the SQL for the filestore
location as documented in the Duplicate Installation instructions.
Deprecation warnings
If you are seeing many deprecation warnings that say things like
Deprecated in 1.7: extend_view() was deprecated by elgg_extend_view()!
then you are using a plugin that was written for an older version of Elgg. This means the plugin is using functions
that are scheduled to be removed in a future version of Elgg. You can ask the plugin developer if the plugin will be
updated or you can update the plugin yourself. If neither of those are likely to happen, you should not use that plugin.
Javascript not working
If the user hover menu stops working or you cannot dismiss system messages, that means JavaScript is broken on
your site. This usually due to a plugin having bad JavaScript code. You should find the plugin causing the problem
and disable it. You can do this be disabling non-bundled plugins one at a time until the problem goes away. Another
approach is disabling all non-bundled plugins and then enabling them one by one until the problem occurs again.
Most web browsers will give you a hint as to what is breaking the JavaScript code. They often have a console for
JavaScript errors or an advanced mode for displaying errors. Once you see the error message, you may have an easier
time locating the problem.
7.1.2 Security
Is upgrade.php a security concern?
Upgrade.php is a file used to run code and database upgrades. It is in the root of the directory and doesn’t require a
logged in account to access. On a fully upgraded site, running the file will only reset the caches and exit, so this is not
a security concern.
If you are still concerned, you can either delete, move, or change permissions on the file until you need to upgrade.
Should I delete install.php?
This file is used to install Elgg and doesn’t need to be deleted. The file checks if Elgg is already installed and forwards
the user to the front page if it is.
Filtering
string. It triggers a validate, input plugin hook. By default Elgg comes with the htmLawed filtering code as a plugin.
Developers can drop in any additional or replacement filtering code as a plugin.

7.1.3 Development
What should I use to edit php code?
There are two main options: text editor or integrated development environment (IDE).
Text Editor
If you are new to software development or do not have much experience with IDEs, using a text editor will get you up
and running the quickest. At a minimum, you will want one that does syntax highlighting to make the code easier to
read. If you think you might submit patches to the bug tracker, you will want to make sure that your text editor does
not change line endings. If you are using Windows, Notepad++ is a good choice. If you are on a Mac, TextWrangler
is a popular choice. You could also give TextMate a try.
Integrated Development Environment
An IDE does just what its name implies: it includes a set of tools that you would normally use separately. Most
IDEs will include source code control which will allow you to directly commit and update your code from your cvs
repository. It may have an FTP client built into it to make the transfer of files to a remote server easier. It will have
syntax checking to catch errors before you try to execute the code on a server.
The two most popular free IDEs for PHP developers are Eclipse and NetBeans. Eclipse has two different plugins for
working with PHP code: PDT and PHPEclipse.
I don’t like the wording of something in Elgg. How do I change it?
The best way to do this is with a plugin.
Create the plugin skeleton
Plugin skeleton
Locate the string that you want to change
All the strings that a user sees should be in the /languages directory or in a plugin’s languages directory
(/mod/<plugin name>/languages). This is done so that it is easy to change what language Elgg uses. For
more information on this see the developer documentation on Internationalization .
To find the string use grep or a text editor that provides searching through files to locate the string. (A good text editor
for Windows is Notepad++ ) Let’s say we want to change the string “Add friend” to “Make a new friend”. The grep
command to find this string would be grep -r "Add friend" *. Using Notepad++ , you would use the “Find
in files” command. You would search for the string, set the filter to *.php, set the directory to the base directory of
Elgg, and make sure it searches all subdirectories. You might want to set it to be case sensitive also.
You should locate the string “Add friend” in /languages/en.php. You should see something like this in the file:
'friend:add' => "Add friend",
This means every time Elgg sees friend:add it replaces it with “Add friend”. We want to change the definition of
friend:add.

Override the string
To override this definition, we will add a languages file to the plugin that we built in the first step.
1. Create a new directory: /mod/<your plugin name>/languages
2. Create a file in that directory called en.php
3. Add these lines to that file
<?php
return array(
'friend:add' => 'Make a new friend',
);
Make sure that you do not have any spaces or newlines before the <?php.
You’re done now and should be able to enable the plugin and see the change. If you are override the language of a
plugin, make sure your plugin is loaded after the one you are trying to modify. The loading order is determined in
the Tools Administration page of the admin section. As you find more things that you’d like to change, you can keep
adding them to this plugin.
How do I find the code that does x?
The best way to find the code that does something that you would like to change is to use grep or a similar search tool.
If you do not have grep as a part of your operating system, you will want to install a grep tool or use a text-editor/IDE
that has good searching in files. Notepad++ is a good choice for Windows users. Eclipse with PHP and NetBeans are
good choices for any platform.
String Example
Let’s say that you want to find where the Log In box code is located. A string from the Log In box that
should be fairly unique is Remember me. Grep for that string. You will find that it is only used in
the en.php file in the /languages directory. There it is used to define the Internationalization string
user:persistent. Grep for that string now. You will find it in two places: the same en.php language file
and in /views/default/forms/login.php. The latter defines the html code that makes up the Log In box.
Action Example
Let’s say that you want to find the code that is run when a user clicks on the Save button when arranging widgets on
a profile page. View the Profile page for a test user. Use Firebug to drill down through the html of the page until you
come to the action of the edit widgets form. You’ll see the url from the base is action/widgets/move.
Grep on widgets/move and two files are returned. One is the JavaScript code for the widgets :
/js/lib/ui.widgets.js. The other one, /engine/lib/widgets.php, is where the action is registered
using elgg_register_action(’widgets/reorder’). You may not be familiar with that function in which
case, you should look it up at the API reference. Do a search on the function and it returns the documentation on the
function. This tells you that the action is in the default location since a file location was not specified. The default
location for actions is /actions so you will find the file at /actions/widgets/move.php.

Debug mode
During the installation process you might have noticed a checkbox that controlled whether debug mode was turned
on or off. This setting can also be changed on the Site Administration page. Debug mode writes a lot of extra data to
your php log. For example, when running in this mode every query to the database is written to your logs. It may be
useful for debugging a problem though it can produce an overwhelming amount of data that may not be related to the
problem at all. You may want to experiment with this mode to understand what it does, but make sure you run Elgg in
normal mode on a production server.
Warning: Because of the amount of data being logged, don’t enable this on a production server as it can fill up
the log files really quick.
What goes into the log in debug mode?
• All database queries

• Database query profiling
• Page generation time
• Number of queries per page
• List of plugin language files
• Additional errors/warnings compared to normal mode (it’s very rare for these types of errors to be related to any
problem that you might be having)
What does the data look like?
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] Query cache invalidated

[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ** GUID:1 loaded from DB
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] SELECT * from elggentities where guid=1 and ( (1 = 1) and enabled='yes') resu
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] SELECT guid from elggsites_entity where guid = 1 results cached
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ** Sub part of GUID:1 loaded from DB
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] SELECT * from elggsites_entity where guid=1 results cached
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DEBUG: 2009-03-07 14:27:20 (MST): "Undefined index: user" in file /var/www/el
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DEBUG: 2009-03-07 14:27:20 (MST): "Undefined index: pass" in file /var/www/el
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ***************** DB PROFILING ********************
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'SELECT * from elggentities where guid=1 and ( (access_id in (2) or
...
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 2 times: 'update elggmetadata set access_id = 2 where entity_guid = 1'
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggentities set owner_guid='0', access_id='2', container_gui
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'SELECT guid from elggsites_entity where guid = 1'
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggsites_entity set name='3124/944', description='', url='ht
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggusers_entity set prev_last_action = last_action, last_act
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DB Queries for this page: 56
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ***************************************************
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] Page /action/admin/site/update_basic generated in 0.36997294426 seconds

What events are triggered on every page load?
There are 5 Elgg events that are triggered on every page load:
1. boot, system
2. plugins_boot, system
3. init, system
4. ready, system
5. shutdown, system
The boot, system event is triggered before the plugins get loaded. There does not appear to be any difference between
the timing of the next two events: plugins_boot, system and init, system so plugins tend to use init, system. This event
is triggered in Elgg\Application::bootCore. The ready, system event is triggered after all plugins are fully
loaded and the engine is ready to serve pages. The shutdown, system event is triggered after the page has been sent to
the requester and is handled through the PHP function register_shutdown_function().
There are other events that are triggered by the Elgg core but they happen occasionally (such as when a user logs in).
What variables are reserved by Elgg?
• $CONFIG
• $vars
• $autofeed
• $_GET[’action’] / $_POST[’action’]
• $viewtype
Copy a plugin
There are many questions asked about how to copy a plugin. Let’s say you want to copy the blog plugin in order to
run one plugin called blog and another called poetry. This is not difficult but it does require a lot of work. You
would need to
• change the directory name
• change the names of every function (having two functions causes PHP to crash)
• change the name of every view (so as not to override the views on the original plugin)
• change any data model subtypes
• change the language file
• change anything else that was specific to the original plugin
Note: If you are trying to clone the groups plugin, you will have the additional difficulty that the group plugin does
not set a subtype.

7.1.4 General
See also:
Getting Help
“Plugin cannot start and has been deactivated” or “This plugin is invalid”
This error is usually accompanied by more details explaining why the plugin is invalid. This is usually caused by an
incorrectly installed plugin.
If you are installing a plugin called “test”, there will be a test directory under mod. In that test directory there needs to
be a manifest.xml file /mod/test/manifest.xml.
If this file does not exist, it could be caused by:
• installing a plugin to the wrong directory
• creating a directory under /mod that does not contain a plugin
• a bad ftp transfer
• unzipping a plugin into an extra directory (myplugin.zip unzips to myplugin/myplugin)
If you are on a Unix-based host and the files exist in the correct directory, check the permissions. Elgg must have read
access to the files and read + execute access on the directories.
White Page (WSOD)
A blank, white page (often called a “white screen of death”) means there is a PHP syntax error. There are a few possible causes o
• corrupted file - try transfering the code again to your server

• a call to a php module that was not loaded - this can happen after you install a plugin that requires a specific
module.
• bad plugin - not all plugins have been written to the same quality so you should be careful which ones you
install.
To find where the error is occurring, change the .htaccess file to display errors to the browser. Set display_errors to
1 and load the same page again. You should see a PHP error in your browser. Change the setting back once you’ve
resolved the problem.
Note: If you are using the Developer’s Tools plugin, go to its settings page and make sure you have “Display fatal
PHP errors” enabled.
If the white screen is due to a bad plugin, remove the latest plugins that you have installed by deleting their directories
and then reload the page.
Note: You can temporarily disable all plugins by creating an empty file at mod/disabled. You can then disable
the offending module via the administrator tools panel.
If you are getting a WSOD when performing an action, like logging in or posting a blog, but there are no error
messages, it’s most likely caused by non-printable characters in plugin code. Check the plugin for white spaces/new
lines characters after finishing php tag (?>) and remove them.

Page not found
If you have recently installed your Elgg site, the most likely cause for a page not found error is that mod_rewrite is
not setup correctly on your server. There is information in the Install Troubleshooting page on fixing this. The second
most likely cause is that your site url in your database is incorrect.
If you’ve been running your site for a while and suddenly start getting page not found errors, you need to ask yourself
what has changed. Have you added any plugins? Did you change your server configuration?
To debug a page not found error:
• Confirm that the link leading to the missing page is correct. If not, how is that link being generated?
• Confirm that the .htaccess rewrite rules are being picked up.
Login token mismatch
If you have to log in twice to your site and the error message after the first attempt says there was a token mismatch
error, the URL in Elgg’s settings does not match the URL used to access it. The most common cause for this is adding
or removing the “www” when accessing the site. For example, www.elgg.org vs elgg.org. This causes a problem with
session handling because of the way that web browsers save cookies.
To fix this, you can add rewrite rules. To redirect from www.elgg.org to elgg.org in Apache, the rules might look like:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !êlgg\.org
RewriteRule (.*) http://elgg.org/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirecting from non-www to www could look like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} êlgg\.org
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.elgg.org/$1 [R=301,L]
If you don’t know how to configure rewrite rules, ask your host for more information.
Form is missing __token or __ts fields
All Elgg actions require a security token, and this error occurs when that token is missing. This is either a problem
with your server configuration or with a 3rd party plugin.
If you experience this on a new installation, make sure that your server is properly configured and your rewrite rules
are correct. If you experience this on an upgrade, make sure you have updated your rewrite rules either in .htaccess
(Apache) or in the server configuration.
If you are experiencing this, disable all 3rd party plugins and try again. Very old plugins for Elgg don’t use security
tokens. If the problem goes away when plugins are disabled, it’s due to a plugin that should be updated by its author.
Maintenance mode
To take your site temporarily offline, go to Administration -> Utilities -> Maintenance Mode. Complete the form and
hit save to disable your site for everyone except admin users.
Missing email
If your users are reporting that validation emails are not showing up, have them check their spam folder. It is possible
that the emails coming from your server are being marked as spam. This depends on many factors such as whether

your hosting provider has a problem with spammers, how your PHP mail configuration is set up, what mail transport
agent your server is using, or your host limiting the number of email that you can send in an hour.
If no one gets email at all, it is quite likely your server is not configured properly for email. Your server needs a
program to send email (called a Mail Transfer Agent - MTA) and PHP must be configured to use the MTA.
To quickly check if PHP and an MTA are correctly configured, create a file on your server with the following content:
<?php
$address = "your_email@your_host.com";
$subject = 'Test email.';
$body = 'If you can read this, your email is working.';
echo "Attempting to email $address...<br />";
if (mail($address, $subject, $body)) {

echo 'SUCCESS! PHP successfully delivered email to your MTA. If you don\'t see the email in
} else {
echo 'ERROR! PHP could not deliver email to your MTA. Check that your PHP settings are corr
}
Be sure to replace “your_email@your_host.com” with your actual email address. Take care to keep quotes around it!
When you access this page through your web browser, it will attempt to send a test email. This test will let you know
that PHP and your MTA are correctly configured. If it fails–either you get an error or you never receive the email–you
will need to do more investigating and possibly contact your service provider.
Fully configuring an MTA and PHP’s email functionality is beyond the scope of this FAQ and you should search the
Internet for more resources on this. Some basic information on php parameters can be found on PHP’s site
Server logs
Most likely you are using Apache as your web server. Warnings and errors are written to a log by the web server
and can be useful for debugging problems. You will commonly see two types of log files: access logs and error logs.
Information from PHP and Elgg is written to the server error log.
• Linux – The error log is probably in /var/log/httpd or /var/log/apache2.
• Windows - It is probably inside your Apache directory.
• Mac OS - The error log is probably in /var/log/apache2/error_log
If you are using shared hosting without ssh access, your hosting provider may provide a mechanism for obtaining
access to your server logs. You will need to ask them about this.
How does registration work?
With a default setup, this is how registration works:

1. User fills out registration form and submits it
2. User account is created and disabled until validated
3. Email is sent to user with a link to validate the account
4. When a user clicks on the link, the account is validated
5. The user can now log in

Failures during this process include the user entering an incorrect email address, the validation email being marked as
spam, or a user never bothering to validate the account.
User validation
By default, all users who self-register must validate their accounts through email. If a user has problems validating an
account, you can validate users manually by going to Administration -> Users -> Unvalidated.
You can remove this requirement by deactivating the User Validation by Email plugin.
Note: Removing validation has some consequences: There is no way to know that a user registered with a working
email address, and it may leave you system open to spammers.
Manually add user
To manually add a user, under the Administer controls go to Users. There you will see a link title “Add new User”.
After you fill out the information and submit the form, the new user will receive an email with username and password
and a reminder to change the password.
Note: Elgg does not force the user to change the password.
I’m making or just installed a new theme, but graphics or other elements aren’t working
Make sure the theme is at the bottom of the plugin list.

Clear your browser cache and reload the page. To lighten the load on the server, Elgg instructs the browser to rarely
load the CSS file. A new theme will completely change the CSS file and a refresh should cause the browser to request
the CSS file again.
If you’re building or modifying a theme, make sure you have disabled the simple and system caches. This can be
done by enabling the Developer Tools plugin, then browsing to Administration -> Develop -> Settings. Once you’re
satisfied with the changes, enable the caches or performance will suffer.
Changing profile fields
Within the Administration settings of Elgg is a page for replacing the default profile fields. Elgg by default gives the
administrator two choices:
• Use the default profile fields
• Replace the default with a set of custom profile fields
You cannot add new profile fields to the default ones. Adding a new profile field through the replace profile fields
option clears the default ones. Before letting in users, it is best to determine what profile fields you want, what field
types they should be, and the order they should appear. You cannot change the field type or order or delete fields after
they have been created without wiping the entire profile blank.
More flexibility can be gained through plugins. There is at least two plugins on the community site that enable you to
have more control over profile fields. The Profile Manager plugin has become quite popular in the Elgg community. It
lets you add new profile fields whenever you want, change the order, group profile fields, and add them to registration.

Changing registration
The registration process can be changed through a plugin. Everything about registration can be changed: the look and
feel, different registration fields, additional validation of the fields, additional steps and so on. These types of changes
require some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP.
Another option is to use the Profile Manager plugin that lets you add fields to both user profiles and the registration
form.
Create the plugin skeleton Plugin skeleton
Changing registration display Override the account/forms/register view
Changing the registration action handler You can write your own action to create the user’s account
How do I change PHP settings using .htaccess?
You may want to change php settings in your .htaccess file. This is especially true if your hosting provider does
not give you access to the server’s php.ini file. The variables could be related to file upload size limits, security,
session length, or any number of other php attributes. For examples of how to do this, see the PHP documentation on
this.
HTTPS login turned on accidently
If you have turned on HTTPS login but do not have SSL configured, you are now locked out of your Elgg install. To
turn off this configuration parameter, you will need to edit your database. Use a tool like phpMyAdmin to view your
database. Select the config table and delete the row that has the name https_login.
Using a test site
It is recommended to always try out new releases or new plugins on a test site before running them on a production
site (a site with actual users). The easiest way to do this is to maintain a separate install of Elgg with dummy accounts.
When testing changes it is important to use dummy accounts that are not admins to test what your users will see.
A more realistic test is to mirror the content from your production site to your test site. Following the instructions for
duplicating a site. Then make sure you prevent emails from being sent to your users. You could write a small plugin
that redirects all email to your own account (be aware of plugins that include their own custom email sending code so
you’ll have to modify those plugins). After this is done you can view all of the content to make sure the upgrade or
new plugin is functioning as desired and is not breaking anything. If this process sounds overwhelming, please stick
with running a simple test site.
500 - Internal Server Error
What is it?
A 500 - Internal Server Error means the web server experienced a problem serving a request.
See also:
The Wikipedia page on HTTP status codes

Possible causes
Web server configuration The most common cause for this is an incorrectly configured server. If you edited the
.htaccess file and added something incorrect, Apache will send a 500 error.
Permissions on files It could also be a permissions problem on a file. Apache needs to be able to read Elgg’s files.
Using permissions 755 on directories and 644 on files will allow Apache to read the files.
When I upload a photo or change my profile picture I get a white screen
Most likely you don’t have the PHP GD library installed or configured properly. You may need assistance from the
administrator of your server.
CSS is missing
Wrong URL
Sometimes people install Elgg so that the base URL is localhost and then try to view the site using a hostname. In
this case, the browser won’t be able to load the CSS file. Try viewing the source of the web page and copying the link
for the CSS file. Paste that into your browser. If you get a 404 error, it is likely this is your problem. You will need to
change the base URL of your site.
Syntax error
Elgg stores its CSS as PHP code to provide flexibility and power. If there is a syntax error, the CSS file served to the
browser may be blank. Disabling non-bundled plugins is the recommended first step.
Rewrite rules errors
A bad .htaccess file could also result in a 404 error when requesting the CSS file. This could happen when doing
an upgrade and forgetting to also upgrade .htaccess.
Should I edit the database manually?
Warning: No, you should never manually edit the database!
Will editing the database manually break my site?
Yes.
Can I add extra fields to tables in the database?
(AKA: I don’t understand the Elgg data model so I’m going to add columns. Will you help?)
No, this is a bad idea. Learn the data model and you will see that unless it’s a very specific and highly customized
installation, you can do everything you need within Elgg’s current data model.

I want to remove users. Can’t I just delete them from the elgg_users_entity table?
No, it will corrupt your database. Delete them through the site.
I want to remove spam. Can’t I just search and delete it from the elgg_objects_entity table?
No, it will corrupt your database. Delete it through the site.
Someone on the community site told me to edit the database manually. Should I?
Who was it? Is it someone experienced with Elgg, like one of the core developers or a well-known plugin author?
Did he or she give you clear and specific instructions on what to edit? If you don’t know who it is, or if you can’t
understand or aren’t comfortable following the instructions, do not edit the database manually.
I know PHP and MySQL and have a legitimate reason to edit the database. Is it okay to manually edit the
database?
Make sure you understand Elgg’s data model and schema first. Make a backup, edit carefully, then test copiously.
Internet Explorer (IE) login problem
Canonical URL
IE does not like working with sites that use both http://example.org and http://www.example.org. It stores multiple
cookies and this causes problems. Best to only use one base URL. For details on how to do this see Login token
mismatch error.
Chrome Frame
Using the chrome frame within IE can break the login process.
Emails don’t support non-Latin characters
In order to support non-Latin characters, (such as Cyrillic or Chinese) Elgg requires multibyte string support to be
compiled into PHP.
On many installs (e.g. Debian & Ubuntu) this is turned on by default. If it is not, you need to turn it on (or recompile
PHP to include it). To check whether your server supports multibyte strings, check phpinfo.
Session length
Session length is controlled by your php configuration. You will first need to locate your php.ini file. In that file
will be several session variables. A complete list and what they do can be found in the php manual.

File is missing an owner
There are three causes for this error. You could have an entity in your database that has an owner_guid of 0. This
should be extremely rare and may only occur if your database/server crashes during a write operation.
The second cause would be an entity where the owner no longer exists. This could occur if a plugin is turned off
that was involved in the creation of the entity and then the owner is deleted but the delete operation failed (because
the plugin is turned off). If you can figure out entity is causing this, look in your entities table and change the
owner_guid to your own and then you can delete the entity through Elgg.
Warning: Reed the section “Should I edit the database manually?”. Be very carefull when editing the database
directly. It can break your site. Always make a backup before doing this.
The third cause is a user not having a username. This also indicates a database problem as this should not be possible.
If it does occur, you could see this error when viewing a list of users (such as with the Members plugin). To fix, check
your users_entity table for users without a username and if so, create a fake a username for that person. You
should probably then delete the user through Elgg.
Fixes
Database Validator plugin will check your database for these causes and provide an option to fix them. Be sure to
backup the database before you try the fix option.
No images
If profile images, group images, or other files have stopped working on your site it is likely due to a misconfiguration,
especially if you have migrated to a new server.
These are the most common misconfigurations that cause images and other files to stop working.
Wrong path for data directory
Make sure the data directory’s path is correct in the Site Administration admin area. It should have a trailing slash.
Wrong permissions on the data directory
Check the permissions for the data directory. The data directory should be readable and writeable by the web server
user.
Different timezone
Note: This only applies to Elgg versions before 1.9
If you migrated servers or upgraded PHP, check that PHP’s timezone settings are the same between the old and the
new. If you cannot or don’t want to change the system-wide php.ini file, you can put the following at the top of
settings.php:
date_default_timezone_set('MY_TIME_ZONE');
Where MY_TIME_ZONE is a valid PHP timezone.

Migrated installation with new data directory location
If you migrated an installation and need to change your data directory path, be sure to update the SQL for the filestore
location as documented in the Duplicate Installation instructions.
Deprecation warnings
If you are seeing many deprecation warnings that say things like
Deprecated in 1.7: extend_view() was deprecated by elgg_extend_view()!
then you are using a plugin that was written for an older version of Elgg. This means the plugin is using functions
that are scheduled to be removed in a future version of Elgg. You can ask the plugin developer if the plugin will be
updated or you can update the plugin yourself. If neither of those are likely to happen, you should not use that plugin.
Javascript not working
If the user hover menu stops working or you cannot dismiss system messages, that means JavaScript is broken on
your site. This usually due to a plugin having bad JavaScript code. You should find the plugin causing the problem
and disable it. You can do this be disabling non-bundled plugins one at a time until the problem goes away. Another
approach is disabling all non-bundled plugins and then enabling them one by one until the problem occurs again.
Most web browsers will give you a hint as to what is breaking the JavaScript code. They often have a console for
JavaScript errors or an advanced mode for displaying errors. Once you see the error message, you may have an easier
time locating the problem.
7.1.5 Security
Is upgrade.php a security concern?
Upgrade.php is a file used to run code and database upgrades. It is in the root of the directory and doesn’t require a
logged in account to access. On a fully upgraded site, running the file will only reset the caches and exit, so this is not
a security concern.
If you are still concerned, you can either delete, move, or change permissions on the file until you need to upgrade.
Should I delete install.php?
This file is used to install Elgg and doesn’t need to be deleted. The file checks if Elgg is already installed and forwards
the user to the front page if it is.
Filtering
string. It triggers a validate, input plugin hook. By default Elgg comes with the htmLawed filtering code as a plugin.
Developers can drop in any additional or replacement filtering code as a plugin.

7.1.6 Development
What should I use to edit php code?
There are two main options: text editor or integrated development environment (IDE).
Text Editor
If you are new to software development or do not have much experience with IDEs, using a text editor will get you up
and running the quickest. At a minimum, you will want one that does syntax highlighting to make the code easier to
read. If you think you might submit patches to the bug tracker, you will want to make sure that your text editor does
not change line endings. If you are using Windows, Notepad++ is a good choice. If you are on a Mac, TextWrangler
is a popular choice. You could also give TextMate a try.
Integrated Development Environment
An IDE does just what its name implies: it includes a set of tools that you would normally use separately. Most
IDEs will include source code control which will allow you to directly commit and update your code from your cvs
repository. It may have an FTP client built into it to make the transfer of files to a remote server easier. It will have
syntax checking to catch errors before you try to execute the code on a server.
The two most popular free IDEs for PHP developers are Eclipse and NetBeans. Eclipse has two different plugins for
working with PHP code: PDT and PHPEclipse.
I don’t like the wording of something in Elgg. How do I change it?
The best way to do this is with a plugin.
Create the plugin skeleton
Plugin skeleton
Locate the string that you want to change
All the strings that a user sees should be in the /languages directory or in a plugin’s languages directory
(/mod/<plugin name>/languages). This is done so that it is easy to change what language Elgg uses. For
more information on this see the developer documentation on Internationalization .
To find the string use grep or a text editor that provides searching through files to locate the string. (A good text editor
for Windows is Notepad++ ) Let’s say we want to change the string “Add friend” to “Make a new friend”. The grep
command to find this string would be grep -r "Add friend" *. Using Notepad++ , you would use the “Find
in files” command. You would search for the string, set the filter to *.php, set the directory to the base directory of
Elgg, and make sure it searches all subdirectories. You might want to set it to be case sensitive also.
You should locate the string “Add friend” in /languages/en.php. You should see something like this in the file:
'friend:add' => "Add friend",
This means every time Elgg sees friend:add it replaces it with “Add friend”. We want to change the definition of
friend:add.

Override the string
To override this definition, we will add a languages file to the plugin that we built in the first step.
1. Create a new directory: /mod/<your plugin name>/languages
2. Create a file in that directory called en.php
3. Add these lines to that file
<?php
return array(
'friend:add' => 'Make a new friend',
);
Make sure that you do not have any spaces or newlines before the <?php.
You’re done now and should be able to enable the plugin and see the change. If you are override the language of a
plugin, make sure your plugin is loaded after the one you are trying to modify. The loading order is determined in
the Tools Administration page of the admin section. As you find more things that you’d like to change, you can keep
adding them to this plugin.
How do I find the code that does x?
The best way to find the code that does something that you would like to change is to use grep or a similar search tool.
If you do not have grep as a part of your operating system, you will want to install a grep tool or use a text-editor/IDE
that has good searching in files. Notepad++ is a good choice for Windows users. Eclipse with PHP and NetBeans are
good choices for any platform.
String Example
Let’s say that you want to find where the Log In box code is located. A string from the Log In box that
should be fairly unique is Remember me. Grep for that string. You will find that it is only used in
the en.php file in the /languages directory. There it is used to define the Internationalization string
user:persistent. Grep for that string now. You will find it in two places: the same en.php language file
and in /views/default/forms/login.php. The latter defines the html code that makes up the Log In box.
Action Example
Let’s say that you want to find the code that is run when a user clicks on the Save button when arranging widgets on
a profile page. View the Profile page for a test user. Use Firebug to drill down through the html of the page until you
come to the action of the edit widgets form. You’ll see the url from the base is action/widgets/move.
Grep on widgets/move and two files are returned. One is the JavaScript code for the widgets :
/js/lib/ui.widgets.js. The other one, /engine/lib/widgets.php, is where the action is registered
using elgg_register_action(’widgets/reorder’). You may not be familiar with that function in which
case, you should look it up at the API reference. Do a search on the function and it returns the documentation on the
function. This tells you that the action is in the default location since a file location was not specified. The default
location for actions is /actions so you will find the file at /actions/widgets/move.php.

Debug mode
During the installation process you might have noticed a checkbox that controlled whether debug mode was turned
on or off. This setting can also be changed on the Site Administration page. Debug mode writes a lot of extra data to
your php log. For example, when running in this mode every query to the database is written to your logs. It may be
useful for debugging a problem though it can produce an overwhelming amount of data that may not be related to the
problem at all. You may want to experiment with this mode to understand what it does, but make sure you run Elgg in
normal mode on a production server.
Warning: Because of the amount of data being logged, don’t enable this on a production server as it can fill up
the log files really quick.
What goes into the log in debug mode?
• All database queries

• Database query profiling
• Page generation time
• Number of queries per page
• List of plugin language files
• Additional errors/warnings compared to normal mode (it’s very rare for these types of errors to be related to any
problem that you might be having)
What does the data look like?

[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] SELECT guid from elggsites_entity where guid = 1 results cached
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ** Sub part of GUID:1 loaded from DB
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] SELECT * from elggsites_entity where guid=1 results cached
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DEBUG: 2009-03-07 14:27:20 (MST): "Undefined index: user" in file /var/www/el
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DEBUG: 2009-03-07 14:27:20 (MST): "Undefined index: pass" in file /var/www/el
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ***************** DB PROFILING ********************
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'SELECT * from elggentities where guid=1 and ( (access_id in (2) or
...
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 2 times: 'update elggmetadata set access_id = 2 where entity_guid = 1'
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggentities set owner_guid='0', access_id='2', container_gui
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'SELECT guid from elggsites_entity where guid = 1'
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggsites_entity set name='3124/944', description='', url='ht
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] 1 times: 'UPDATE elggusers_entity set prev_last_action = last_action, last_act
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] DB Queries for this page: 56
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] ***************************************************
[07-Mar-2009 14:27:20] Page /action/admin/site/update_basic generated in 0.36997294426 seconds

What events are triggered on every page load?
There are 5 Elgg events that are triggered on every page load:
1. boot, system
2. plugins_boot, system
3. init, system
4. ready, system
5. shutdown, system
The boot, system event is triggered before the plugins get loaded. There does not appear to be any difference between
the timing of the next two events: plugins_boot, system and init, system so plugins tend to use init, system. This event
is triggered in Elgg\Application::bootCore. The ready, system event is triggered after all plugins are fully
loaded and the engine is ready to serve pages. The shutdown, system event is triggered after the page has been sent to
the requester and is handled through the PHP function register_shutdown_function().
There are other events that are triggered by the Elgg core but they happen occasionally (such as when a user logs in).
What variables are reserved by Elgg?
• $CONFIG
• $vars
• $autofeed
• $_GET[’action’] / $_POST[’action’]
• $viewtype
Copy a plugin
There are many questions asked about how to copy a plugin. Let’s say you want to copy the blog plugin in order to
run one plugin called blog and another called poetry. This is not difficult but it does require a lot of work. You
would need to
• change the directory name
• change the names of every function (having two functions causes PHP to crash)
• change the name of every view (so as not to override the views on the original plugin)
• change any data model subtypes
• change the language file
• change anything else that was specific to the original plugin
Note: If you are trying to clone the groups plugin, you will have the additional difficulty that the group plugin does
not set a subtype.

7.2 Roadmap
What direction is the project going? What exciting new features are coming soon?
We do not publish detailed roadmaps, but it’s possible to get a sense for our general direction by utilizing the following
resources:
• Our feedback and planning group is used to host early discussion about what will be worked on next.
• Our Github milestones represent a general direction for the future releases of Elgg. This is the closest thing to a
traditional roadmap that we have.
• Github pull requests will give you a good idea of what’s currently being developed, but nothing is sure until the
PR is actually checked in.
• We use the developer blog to post announcements of features that have recently been checked in to our develop-
ment branch, which gives the surest indication of what features will be available in the next release.
7.2.1 Values
We have several overarching goals/values that affect the direction of Elgg. Enhancements generally must promote
these values in order to be accepted.
Accessibility
Elgg-based sites should be usable by anyone anywhere. That means we’ll always strive to make Elgg:
• Device-agnostic – mobile, tablet, desktop, etc. friendly
• Language-agnostic – i18n, RTL, etc.
• Capability-agnostic – touch, keyboard, screen-reader friendly
Testability
We want to make manual testing unnecessary for core developers, plugin authors, and site administrators by pro-
moting and enabling fast, automated testing at every level of the Elgg stack.
We think APIs are broken if they require plugin authors to write untestable code. We know there are a lot of violations
of this principle in core currently and are working to fix it.
We look forward to a world where the core developers do not need to do any manual testing to verify the correctness
of code contributed to Elgg. Similarly, we envision a world where site administrators can upgrade and install new
plugins with confidence that everything works well together.
TODO: other goals/values?
7.2.2 FAQ
When will feature X be implemented?
We cannot promise when features will get implemented because new features are checked into Elgg only when some-
one is motivated enough to implement the feature and submit a pull request. The best we can do is tell you to look out
for what features existing developers have expressed interest in working on.
7.2. Roadmap 315

The best way to ensure a feature gets implemented is to discuss it with the core team and implement it yourself. See
our Contributor Guides guide if you’re interested. We love new contributors!
Do not rely on future enhancements if you’re on the fence as to whether to use Elgg. Evaluate it given the current
feature set. Upcoming features will almost certainly not materialize within your timeline.
When is version X.Y.Z going to be released?
The next version will be released when the core team feels it’s ready and has time to cut the release.
http://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/issues/milestones will give you some rough ideas of timeline.
7.3 Release Policy
What to expect when upgrading Elgg.

We adhere to semantic versioning.
Follow the blog to stay up to date on the latest releases.
7.3.1 Patch/Bugfix Releases (2.1.x)
Every two weeks.

Bugfix releases are made regularly to make sure Elgg stays stable, secure, and bug-free. The higher the third digit, the
more tested and stable the release is.
Since bugfix release focus on fixing bugs and not making major changes, themes and plugins should work from bugfix
release to bugfix release.
7.3.2 Minor/Feature Releases (2.x.0)
Every three months.

Whenever we introduce new features, we’ll bump the middle version number. These releases aren’t as mature as
bugfix release, but are considered stable and useable.
We make every effort to be backward compatible in these releases, so plugins should work from minor release to minor
release.
However, plugins might need to be updated to make use of the new features.
7.3.3 Major/Breaking Releases (x.0.0)
Every year.
Inevitably, improving Elgg requires breaking changes and a new major release is made. These releases are opportuni-
ties for the core team to make strategic, breaking changes to the underlying platform. Themes and plugins from older
versions are not expected to work without modification on different major releases.
We may remove deprecated APIs, but we will not remove APIs without first deprecating them.
Elgg’s dependencies may be upgraded by their major version or removed entirely. We will not remove any dependences
before a major release, but we do not “deprecate” dependencies or issue any warnings before removing them.
Your package, plugin, or app should declare its own dependencies directly so that this does not cause a problem.

7.3.4 Alphas, Betas, and Release Candidates
Before major releases (and sometimes before feature releases), the core team will offer a pre-release version of Elgg
to get some real-world testing and feedback on the release. These are meant for testing only and should not be used
on a live site.
SemVer 2.0 does not define a particular meaning for pre-releases, but we approach alpha, beta, and rc releases with
these general guidelines:
An -alpha.X pre-release means that there are still breaking changes planned, but the feature set of the release is
frozen. No new features or breaking changes can be proposed for that release.
A -beta.X pre-release means that there are no known breaking changes left to be included, but there are known
regressions or critical bugs left to fix.
An -rc.X pre-release means that there are no known regressions or critical bugs left to be fixed. This version could
become the final stable version of Elgg if no new blockers are reported.
7.4 Support policy
As of Elgg 2.0, each minor release receives bug and security fixes only until the next minor release.
7.4.1 Long Term Support Releases
Within each major version, the last minor release is designated for long term support (“LTS”) and will receive bug
fixes until the 2nd following major version release, and security fixes until the 3rd following major version release.
E.g. 1.12 is the last minor release within 1.x. It will receive bug fixes until 3.0 is released and security fixes until 4.0
is released.
When bugs are found, a good faith effort will be made to patch the LTS release, but not all fixes will be back-ported.
E.g. some fixes may depend on new APIs, break backwards compatibility, or require significant refactoring. If a fix
risks stability of the LTS branch, it will not be included.
See also:
Release Policy
Below is a table outlining the specifics for each release (future dates are tentative):
Version First stable release Bug fixes through Security fixes through
1.12 LTS July 2015 Until 3.0 Until 4.0
2.0 December 2015 March 2016
2.1 March 2016 June 2016
2.2 June 2016 November 2016
2.3 LTS November 2016 Until 4.0 Until 5.0
3.0 December 2016
4.0 December 2017
7.5 History
The name comes from a town in Switzerland. It also means “elk” or “moose” in Danish.
Elgg’s initial funding was by a company called Curverider Ltd, which was started by David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller.
In 2010, Curverider was acquired by Thematic Networks and control of the open-source project was turned over to
7.4. Support policy 317

The Elgg Foundation. Today, Elgg is a community-driven open source project and has a variety of contributors and
supporters.

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Elgg Documentation

January 26, 2017

5 Design Docs 239

6 Contributor Guides 265

Discover if Elgg is right for your community.

1.1.1 For developers

1.1.2 For admins

• User profiles and avatars

1.2 Bundled plugins

4 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Fig. 1.1: A typical Elgg dashboard

• List of all the plugins

1.2.4 File repository

1.2. Bundled plugins 5

Fig. 1.2: A file in an Elgg file repository

Note for developers

Using this, it should be possible to develop most types of embeddable viewers.

6 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Fig. 1.3: A typical group profile

1.2. Bundled plugins 7

The messageboard - similar to ‘The Wall’ in Facebook or a comment

Private messaging can be sent to users by clicking on their avatar or

Fig. 1.4: A sample messageboard placed on

Fig. 1.6: An Elgg Page

The pages plugin allows you to save and store hierarchically-organized

8 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Fig. 1.7: An Elgg profile

1.2. Bundled plugins 9

This provides information about a user, which is configurable from

Notes for developers

1.2.10 The Wire

Elgg wire plugin “The Wire” is Twitter-style microblogging plugin

10 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Fig. 1.8: The Elgg context menu

1.2. Bundled plugins 11

1.3.1 MIT or GPLv2

The following answers are provided as a convenience to you; they are

How much does Elgg cost?

Elgg is free to download, install, and use. If you’d like to donate, we

Can I remove the Elgg branding/links?

Can I modify the source code?

Yes, but in general we recommend you make your modifications as

12 Chapter 1. Getting Started

Can I charge my users membership fees?

If I modify Elgg, do I have to make the changes available?

If I use Elgg to host a network, does The Elgg Foundation

What’s the difference between the MIT and GPL versions?

Plugins are not included with the MIT version.

Why are plugins missing from the MIT version?

May I distribute a plugin for Elgg under a commercial li-

Get your own instance of Elgg running in no time.

Browser support policy

Feature branches support the latest 2 versions of all major browsers as

14 Chapter 1. Getting Started

With Composer (recommended if comfortable with CLI):

From pre-packaged zip (recommended if not comfortable with CLI):

Create a data folder