kea/doc/guide/hooks.xml

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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 map structures, each structure 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": [
        {
            "library": "/opt/charging.so"
        },
        {
            "library": "/opt/local/notification.so",
            "parameters": {
                "mail": "spam@example.com",
                "floor": 13,
                "debug": false,
                "users": [ "alice", "bob", "charlie" ],
                "languages": {
                    "french": "bonjour",
                    "klingon": "yl'el"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
    :
}</userinput>
</screen>
      </para>

      <note><para>
        This is a change to the syntax used in Kea 0.9.2 and earlier, where
        hooks-libraries was a list of strings, each string being the name of
        a library.  The change has been made in Kea 1.0 to facilitate the
        specification of library-specific parameters, a feature that will be
        added to a future version of Kea.
      </para></note>

        <note>
          <para>
          The library reloading behavior has changed in Kea 1.1. Libraries are
          reloaded, even if their list hasn't changed. Kea does that, because
          the parameters specified for the library (or the files those
          parameters point to) may have changed.
          </para>
        </note>

      <para>
        Libraries may have additional parameters. Those are not mandatory in the
        sense that there may be libraries that don't require them. However, for
        specific library there is often specific requirement for specify certain
        set of parameters. Please consult the documentation for your library
        for details. In the example above, the first library has no parameters.
        The second library has five parameters, specifying mail (string
        parameter), floor (integer parameter), debug (boolean parameter) and
        even lists (list of strings) and maps (containing strings). Nested
        parameters could be used if the library supports it. This topic is
        explained in detail in the Hooks Developer's Guide in Configuring Hooks
        Libraries section.
      </para>

      <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>
          <note><para>
          There is one case where this is not true: if Kea
          is running with a configuration that contains a
          <command>hooks-libraries</command> item, and that item is
          removed and the configuration reloaded, the removal will be
          ignored and the libraries remain loaded.  As a workaround,
          instead of removing the <command>hooks-libraries</command>
          item, change it to an empty list.  This will be fixed in a
          future version of Kea.
          </para></note>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </para>
      <para>
      At the present time, only the kea-dhcp4 and kea-dhcp6 processes support
      hooks libraries.
      </para>
    </section>
   </chapter> <!-- hooks-libraries -->