Publish post process plugins

When Content Manager publishes to Dynamic Delivery, it uses dedicated post process plugins of the type IPublishPostProcess.

Introduction

Publishing to Dynamic Delivery makes use of IPublishPostProcess plugins, but these plugins have a general purpose and can be used by any type of publishing. The IPublishPostProcess plugins are executed after the content files (topics, images, etc.) and their metadata are saved to the file system by the publish export process. The plugins can be configured in Settings > XML Publish Plug-in Settings and are executed by the Publish background task.

Context

Publish post process plugins are designed to replace Content Manager traditional way of publishing through scripts. Scripts are used when publishing to CHM, PDF or to Content Delivery output format (used by Collaborative Review), and post process plugins are used to publish to DITA Delivery output format (used by the Dynamic Delivery).

The benefits of using plugins instead of scripts are:
  1. Native C#, no scripting language.
  2. Modular approach - Every plugin is responsible for one thing.
  3. Easier to add custom plugins.
  4. Out-of-the-box plugins are documented.
  5. Can use multiple threads inside one plugin.