RadDock as plugin

[Eddie Conner]

Does RadDock contain any functionality to dynamically load assembilies such as a plugin architecture?

[Eddie Conner]

Or, are there any examples of using RadDock with MEF?

[Deyan]

Hi Eddie,

Thanks for contacting us and for your questions.

I am not quite sure that I correctly understand your scenario. Could you please share some further details on what exactly do you mean by dynamically loading assemblies with the RadDock control?

In general, the purpose of this control is to present multiple windows with different content by enabling the user to rearrange them according to their requirements. By design this control does not provide ability to dynamically load assemblies. Also, there are not any integration examples of how to use RadDock with MEF.

However, I look forward to receiving further details on your case so that I can further assist you.

Greetings,
Deyan
the Telerik team

[Richard Slade]

Hi, 

I think I know what you mean. I have toyed with this myself as I want to be able to enable a plugin framework in our system. The issue that you will have however is that forms contained in the RadDock control are shown as MDI Children and when dynamically loading forms from a plugin you cannot make them MDI Children. There is no plugin functionality in the RadDock and it would be up to you to implement a plugin system. 

[Julian Benkov]

Hi Eddie,

Currently, our suite supports Composite UI Application Block (CAB). Additional information you can find in Codeplex. You can write plugins for CAB, but your whole application must be built upon this Winforms framework. An other solution is to manually write your plugin system based on interfaces like Richard said.

In the future we will make research for the possibilities concerning the integration with the new MEF framework or Prism. 

Thank you for the comments and the suggestions Richard.

Sincerely yours,
Julian Benkov
the Telerik team