I’d love to see more folks taking advantage of our APIs. So, while driving home last night I thought to myself that it would be cool to start up a little open source API community where together we can post and modify samples in an open source format. So in just a few minutes today at lunch I was able to easily set up a Blackbaud community on Microsoft’s CodePlex.

I also uploaded a sample that demonstrates how to write a simple plugin using the Raiser’s Edge 7.81 and Visual Basic .NET 2005.
You can view the project page here.
(Note this sample will only work with RE 7.81 or later, since 7.81 ships with the required .NET 2.0 support files)

Did you know that Plugins do not require an API license to create? That’s right, grab this sample, play with it, make your own plugins and contribute them to the project/community! The only restriction I am making is I am putting all code under a Creative Commons License.

I’ll be up front with you, I probably won’t have much time to field direct questions on any code I post. Also, this isn’t officially suported Blackbaud product. That said, if you are looking for a place to learn more about using our extensive APIs and plugins, I hope this community will serve as a launch pad. I’ll upload more stuff when I get free time and inspiration. What I’d most like to see is what you come up with.

Now go buy that .NET book and start coding! Be sure to let me know if you’d like to contribute code or projects, I’ll add you to the open source team. Make something really cool and we may ask you to join the Blackbaud Product Development team

Shaun