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  <chapter id="hooks-libraries">
    <title>Hooks Libraries</title>
    <section id="hooks-libraries-introduction">
      <title>Introduction</title>
      <para>
      Although Kea offers a lot of flexibility, there may be cases where
      its behavior needs customisation.  To accommodate this possibility,
      Kea includes the idea of "Hooks".  This feature lets Kea load one
      or more dynamically-linked libraries (known as "hooks libraries")
      and, at various points in its processing ("hook points"), call
      functions in them.  Those functions perform whatever custom
      processing is required.
      </para>
      <para>
      Hooks libraries are attached to individual Kea processes, not to
      Kea as a whole.  This means (for example) that it is possible
      to associate one set of libraries with the DHCP4 server and a
      different set to the DHCP6 server.
      </para>
      <para>
      Another point to note is that it is possible for a process to
      load multiple libraries.  When processing reaches a hook point,
      Kea calls the hooks library functions attached to it.  If multiple
      libraries have attached a function to a given hook point, Kea calls
      all of them, in the order in which the libraries are specified in
      the configuration file. The order may be important: consult the
      documentation of the libraries to see if this is the case.
      </para>
      <para>
      The next section describes how to configure hooks libraries. If you
      are interested in writing your own hooks library, information can be
      found in the <ulink url="http://git.kea.isc.org/~tester/kea/doxygen">Kea
      Developer's Guide</ulink>.
      </para>
    </section> <!-- end Introduction -->
    <section>
      <title>Configuring Hooks Libraries</title>
      <para>
      The hooks libraries for a given process are configured using the
      <command>hooks-libraries</command> keyword in the
      configuration for that process. (Note that
      the word "hooks" is plural).  The value of the keyword
      is an array of strings, each string corresponding to a hooks library.
      For example, to set up two hooks libraries for the DHCPv4 server, the
      configuration would be:
<screen>
<userinput>"Dhcp4": {
    :
    "hooks-libraries": [
       "/opt/charging.so",
       "/opt/local/notification.so"
    ]
    :
}</userinput>
</screen>
      </para>
      <note><para>
      At present, the libraries are specified as a simple list.  A future
      version of Kea will support the capability of specifying a set of
      parameters for each library. When that is added, it is likely
      that the syntax for specifying hooks libraries will change.
      </para></note>
      <para>
      Notes:
        <itemizedlist mark='bullet'>
          <listitem><para>
          The full path to each library should be given.
          </para></listitem>
          <listitem><para>
          As noted above, order may be important - consult the documentation for
          each library.
          </para></listitem>
          <listitem><para>
          An empty list has the same effect as omitting the
          <command>hooks-libraries</command> configuration element all together.
          </para></listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </para>
      <para>
      At the present time, only the kea-dhcp4 and kea-dhcp6 processes support
      hooks libraries.
      </para>
    </section>
   </chapter> <!-- hooks-libraries -->
