Where Plugins Fit In

Before writing a plugin, it helps to understand where the plugin "fits in" in the Cloudify architecture.

Cloudify has a lot of components that contribute to its huge functionality.

However, its basic user interface is composed of the following areas:

• Blueprints, written in YAML. These describe your Cloud Architecture.
• Deployments: copies of blueprints. They include all of the essential files and node properties that will be used during execution.
• Workflow execution, when nodes are created and plugin code is run.

Though executed during the workflow phase, data and properties from the blueprint, deployment, and runtime properties can all be accessed to the plugin through the Cloudify context object, ctx.

So you have a lot of power in using Cloudify's various stages to build really cool plugins.