1. Plugins & Hooks (Basics) Introduction to Concepts and Basic Examples
Rob Taylor
Lead Developer · REDCap Development Team
Kyle McGuffin
Senior Application Developer · Vanderbilt Data Core Team

2. REDCap is… Data management platform Developer platform Collecting data
Administering surveys
And more
Developer platform
Plugins and Hooks are used to extend REDCap’s capabilities for customization purposes without modifying the REDCap base code
Documentation for Hooks and Plugins is found on left-hand menu of your Control Center in REDCap

3. Hooks vs. Plugins (vs. External Modules)
Are PHP scripts external to REDCap
Can appear as if part of REDCap (but are not)
Cannot affect behavior or look of existing REDCap pages
Hooks…
Are PHP scripts executed internally by REDCap in specific places in the application
Can affect behavior or look of REDCap pages
External Modules… (coming soon)
Are the next generation of REDCap plugins and hooks
Are kind of a hybrid of plugins and hooks
Will be able to be downloaded from the external modules “app store” and enabled by a REDCap administrator on a given project

4. Hooks vs. Plugins (vs. External Modules)
Plugin examples
Extra page in a REDCap project
Simple dashboards and reports
Entire web applications that sit on top of REDCap
Hook examples
Customize a survey page, data entry form, etc.
Perform additional back-end operations on data entry forms, survey pages, or during a “save record” event
External Module examples
@NONEOFTHEABOVE action tag hook
On Condition module (similar to Auto-Notify plugin)

5. SDK Developer methods for Plugins & Hooks
REDCap::allowProjects REDCap::allowUsers REDCap:: REDCap::escapeHtml REDCap::filterHtml REDCap::getCopyright REDCap::getData REDCap::getDataDictionary REDCap::getEventIdFromUniqueEvent REDCap::getEventNames REDCap::getExportFieldNames REDCap::getFieldNames REDCap::getFieldType REDCap::getGroupNames REDCap::getInstrumentNames REDCap::getPDF
REDCap::getParticipant
REDCap::getParticipantList
REDCap::getProjectTitle
REDCap::getProjectXML
REDCap::getRecordIdField
REDCap::getSurveyLink
REDCap::getSurveyQueueLink
REDCap::getSurveyReturnCode
REDCap::getUserRights
REDCap::getUsers
REDCap::isLongitudinal
REDCap::logEvent
REDCap::saveData
REDCap::versionCompare

6. Hook functions
redcap_add_edit_records_page redcap_control_center redcap_custom_verify_username redcap_data_entry_form redcap_data_entry_form_top redcap_every_page_before_render redcap_every_page_top redcap_project_home_page redcap_save_record redcap_survey_complete redcap_survey_page redcap_survey_page_top redcap_user_rights

7. Demos & Examples with Kyle