How to develop a new module in Ignition

Module Development
1

Hi
I did university course for the version 8.0 of Ignition.
Could anybody please advise me what is the recommended route to follow if I need to develop a new module in Ignition? What skillset does it require - Java etc? What additional software do i need? Any recommended courses or documents to read?

Regards

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Hello!

I started developing modules this past October so I am fairly new. Ignition is an amazing tool for SCADA, and being able to develop our own modules is great.
To develop modules you will need Java (or any JVM language I think) and ignition knowledge. Also a little bit of Maven. As of software, you’ll just need Ignition and IDE (I personally recommend IntelIJ, there is a free version).

If you are new developing modules, these are the steps I took:

1- Reading this guide and follow the steps to set up your IDE: Introduction - Ignition SDK Programmer’s Guide - Ignition Documentation (inductiveautomation.com)
In the Introduction section you can find the different Javadocs (7.9,8.0,8.1), the newer, the easier to develop with. The documentation of the Ignition libraries could see some improvements, so I recommend looking or participanting in this forum if you get stuck. These libraries change from the different Ignition’s versions so be careful with that.

2-Study how these modules work: Ignition Module Development Community (github.com)
inductiveautomation/ignition-sdk-examples at ignition-8.0 (github.com)
You can clone the project, install them and maybe modify them.

3.-Start developing your own modules

I’d like to hear about what are you planning to develop.

Good luck!

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It’s also important to point out that developing a Perspective module is completely different than a vision based module. You have to know a lot more about web development for Perspective.

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This is excellent advice, though I would say that from 8.0 upward we're generally recommending Gradle over Maven; it's by no means a requirement (@pturmel uses Ant for his modules, I believe) but our new module build tools default to Gradle.

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Contrary opinion: use Maven unless you're building a Perspective module. Much simpler and we have a very simple plugin for building a module for Maven.

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I do. Not a fan of Maven. Gradle is a happy middle ground, and I will be reworking all my modules for Gradle when v7.9 is EOL.

Hah! No!

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what an extremely valuable answer!
thank you for your time and help!
best regards

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All the best!

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