You need to perform some extra steps if your plugin needs settings to be saved and controlled via the administration panel:

• Create a file in your plugin’s default view folder called `settings/your_plugin/edit.php`, where `your_plugin` is the name of your plugin’s directory in the `mod` hierarchy.
• Fill this file with the form elements you want to display together with internationalised text labels. Note: you don’t need to add a save button or the form, this will be handled by the framework.
• Set the name attribute in your form components to param[`varname`] where `varname` is the name of the variable. These will be saved as metadata attached to a plugin entity. So, if your variable is called `param[myparameter]` your entity (which is also passed to this view as `$vars['entity']`) will be called `$vars['entity']->myparameter`.
• Note that you cannot use form components that send no value when "off." These include radio inputs and check boxes.

An example `edit.php` would look like:

<p>
    <?php echo elgg_echo('myplugin:settings:limit'); ?>
 
    <select name="params[limit]">
    <option value="5" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 5) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>5</option>
    <option value="8" <?php if ((!$vars['entity']->limit) || ($vars['entity']->limit == 8)) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>8</option>
    <option value="12" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 12) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>12</option>
    <option value="15" <?php if ($vars['entity']->limit == 15) echo " selected=\"yes\" "; ?>>15</option>
    </select>
</p>

User settings

Your plugin might need to store per user settings too, and you would like to have your plugin's options to appear in the user's settings page. This is also easy to do and follows the same pattern as setting up the global plugin configuration explained earlier. The only difference is is that instead of using a `settings` folder you will use `usersettings`. So, the path to the user edit view for your plugin would be `usersettings/your_plugin/edit.php`.

Retrieving settings in your code

To retrieve settings from your code use:

get_plugin_setting($name, $plugin_name = "");

or

get_plugin_usersetting($name, $user_guid = 0, $plugin_name = "");

where:

• $name Is the value you want to retrieve
• $user_guid Is the user you want to retrieve these for (defaults to the currently logged in user)
• $plugin_name Is the name of the plugin (detected if run from within a plugin)

Setting values while in code

Values may also be set from within your plugin code, to do this use one of the following functions:

set_plugin_setting($name, $value, $plugin_name = "");

or

set_plugin_usersetting($name, $value, $user_guid = 0, $plugin_name = "");