About Client Plug-Ins

A client plug-in is a third-party component added to ActivID CMS to support functionality on the client side (browser). A client plug-in is a JavaScript function that is called by an HTML page generated by ActivID CMS. This function takes as parameters a set of user attributes. The result is also a set of attributes.

The plug-in function, in turn, invokes other third-party components. Client plug-ins are called immediately after the page is loaded. To develop a generic client plug-in, you must implement all methods of a generic client plug-in interface.

Plug-ins are configured to be called at different logical steps of the ActivID CMS device issuance and user management workflows. You can define multiple client and server plug-ins for each logical step.

Client plug-ins are called on the client side when the screen or operation generated for that logical step is loaded. Server plug-ins are called on the server side when the screen or operation for that logical step is submitted back to the ActivID CMS. For example, if there is a client plug-in and a server plug-in for the logical step USER_INFO (the logical step activated when selecting a user in the device issuance workflow) then the following sequence occurs.

  1. When the page showing user information is loaded from the ActivID CMS by the browser, it incorporates custom JavaScript methods defined by the plug-in. These JavaScript methods are invoked by the browser.

  2. The JavaScript methods can download custom components and execute them.

  3. For example, the custom component performs a biometric check or a biometric enrollment and returns the result as either output attributes or as an exception to ActivID CMS.

  4. ActivID CMS updates the value of the attributes returned by the client plug-in.

To develop a generic client plug-in, implement all the methods of the generic client plug-in interface.

Topics in this section: