Instantiating the Plug-in

A translation provider plug-in has to be properly instantiated, so that it can be used in and displayed in SDL Trados Studio. Instantiation is done by a component that is also provided in the plug-in template, and which is called MyTranslationProviderFactory. In our implementation we will rename this component to ListTranslationProviderFactory.

The Translation Provider Factory Interface

The factory component implements the interface ITranslationProviderFactory. This interface, in turn, consists of three methods. The following sections outline how we implement these methods for our sample plug-in.

The class is preceded by the following declaration, which defines it as an extension class, which will be referenced and declared to the SDL Trados Studio application through the plug-in manifest *.xml file (see also Building the Plug-in).

[TranslationProviderFactory(
    Id = "ListTranslationProviderFactory",
    Name = "ListTranslationProviderFactory",
    Description = "Searches in delimited text files.")]

Create the Translation Provider

The CreateTranslationProvider: method is used to create the translation provider, which is specified in the translation provider URI. In our implementation we use the string listprovider. As this value is used for identification, it needs to be unique. The URI is also used to store any plug-in settings information, which are loaded through the below method. In our implementation this would be the delimiting character and the delimited text file name and path.

public ITranslationProvider CreateTranslationProvider(Uri translationProviderUri, string translationProviderState, ITranslationProviderCredentialStore credentialStore)
{
    if (!SupportsTranslationProviderUri(translationProviderUri))
    {
        throw new Exception("Cannot handle URI.");
    }

    ListTranslationProvider tp = new ListTranslationProvider(new ListTranslationOptions(translationProviderUri));

    return tp;
}

The plug-in URI is stored in an *.sdlproj or an *.sdltlp file. These are the file types that contain, among other things, the translation providers used for a translation project and the corresponding settings. Below you see an example of what a plug-in URI looks like for this sample implementation. The URI is prefixed with listprovider/// and followed by the plug-in settings parameters, i.e. delimiter and listfile.

listprovider:///?delimiter=;&listfile=C:\temp\sample_list.txt" Enabled="true"

Determine Whether the URI is Supported by the Plug-in

SupportsTranslationProviderUri method you should determine whether the provided URI is actually valid and supported by the plug-in as shown in the sample code below:

public bool SupportsTranslationProviderUri(Uri translationProviderUri)
{
    if (translationProviderUri == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("Translation provider URI not supported.");
    }
    return String.Equals(translationProviderUri.Scheme, ListTranslationProvider.ListTranslationProviderScheme, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
}

Setting the Plug-in Info

This component is also responsible for setting the plug-in GUI elements, i.e. the name and the plug-in icon. Through the GetTranslationProviderInfo: method you set the plug-in name, which should be shown in the user interface of SDL Trados Studio as well as the translation method.

First, create a TranslationProviderInfo object to hold and set the plug-in properties. The string fro the (nice) plug-in name is accessed from the resources file:

info.Name = PluginResources.Plugin_NiceName;

The TranslationMethod is retrieved from a separate ListTranslationOptions class, which we will implement in a later step (see Storing and Retrieving the Plug-in Settings). The translation method is used to specify what kind of translations a given plug-in provides, e.g. translation solutions from a translation memory, a machine translation system, etc.

info.TranslationMethod = ListTranslationOptions.ProviderTranslationMethod;

After the specifying these plug-in properties, the info object is returned as shown below:

public TranslationProviderInfo GetTranslationProviderInfo(Uri translationProviderUri, string translationProviderState)
{
    TranslationProviderInfo info = new TranslationProviderInfo();

    #region "TranslationMethod"
    info.TranslationMethod = ListTranslationOptions.ProviderTranslationMethod;
    #endregion

    #region "Name"
    info.Name = PluginResources.Plugin_NiceName;
    #endregion

    return info;
}

Putting it All Together

The complete factory class should look as shown below:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Sdl.LanguagePlatform.Core;
using Sdl.LanguagePlatform.TranslationMemory;
using Sdl.LanguagePlatform.TranslationMemoryApi;
using Sdl.Sdk.LanguagePlatform.Samples.ListProvider;

namespace Sdk.LanguagePlatform.Samples.ListProvider
{
    #region "Declaration"
    [TranslationProviderFactory(
        Id = "ListTranslationProviderFactory",
        Name = "ListTranslationProviderFactory",
        Description = "Searches in delimited text files.")]
    #endregion

    public class ListTranslationProviderFactory : ITranslationProviderFactory
    {
        #region ITranslationProviderFactory Members

        #region "CreateTranslationProvider"
        public ITranslationProvider CreateTranslationProvider(Uri translationProviderUri, string translationProviderState, ITranslationProviderCredentialStore credentialStore)
        {
            if (!SupportsTranslationProviderUri(translationProviderUri))
            {
                throw new Exception("Cannot handle URI.");
            }

            ListTranslationProvider tp = new ListTranslationProvider(new ListTranslationOptions(translationProviderUri));

            return tp;
        }
        #endregion

        #region "SupportsTranslationProviderUri"
        public bool SupportsTranslationProviderUri(Uri translationProviderUri)
        {
            if (translationProviderUri == null)
            {
                throw new ArgumentNullException("Translation provider URI not supported.");
            }
            return String.Equals(translationProviderUri.Scheme, ListTranslationProvider.ListTranslationProviderScheme, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
        }
        #endregion

        #region "GetTranslationProviderInfo"
        public TranslationProviderInfo GetTranslationProviderInfo(Uri translationProviderUri, string translationProviderState)
        {
            TranslationProviderInfo info = new TranslationProviderInfo();

            #region "TranslationMethod"
            info.TranslationMethod = ListTranslationOptions.ProviderTranslationMethod;
            #endregion

            #region "Name"
            info.Name = PluginResources.Plugin_NiceName;
            #endregion

            return info;
        }
        #endregion

        #endregion
    }
}