FxFactory Developer

External third-party products are managed through the existing product proxies architecture in FxFactory. The FxProxy project format has been extended to recognize external applications.

Proxies are the means by which FxFactory displays basic information about products that are not installed on the system. Proxies also specify product requirements and instruct our application on how to download or upgrade the product.

Developers are not responsible for the set-up and configuration of proxies. We build and provide a proxy for your product to help in testing all functionality before the product is distributed to the public. That same proxy, with further modifications, is then pushed to end-users through our servers when your product goes live.

Every product in FxFactory is assigned a unique ID (UUID). The UUID survives name-changes, upgrades, etc. The UUID is changed only if the product is to be treated as a different entity by all components of FxFactory’s ecosystem (application, runtime and online store). In the vast majority of cases, the UUID never changes for the entire lifetime of a product.

Another benefit of using UUIDs to identify each product is that a single codebase can be used to manage multiple products. This is particularly helpful if certain aspects of your implementation are shared among multiple products.

Once a proxy with the UUID of your product is installed in FxFactory, some basic additions need to be made to your code in order to do the following:

• Check if the product has been purchased by the user. This is how you can decide if the output of your effects should be watermarked.
• Interact with the FxFactory application, such as initiating a purchase transaction through the online store.
• Asking FxFactory to check for updates to your product and notify the user. FxFactory makes it easy for the user to apply an update to your product by starting the download automatically and applying the update when the download is complete.
• Display a contact form to better handle error conditions. Routing tech support requests through our application ensures that problems are solved in a more efficient manner, since users have the option of attaching a system profile that contains information that helps us identify and diagnose common problems.

All of the above functionality is available through the simple APIs exposed by the FxFactory Framework.