creating-project-plugins.md

Creating Project Plugins

First read the creating plugins guide. It covers the structure of plugins.

Project-based plugins are plugins which stay within your repo. They're a great way to add some features to Ignite CLI without going through the hassle or commitment of publishing to NPM.

Some examples of this might be:

• generators that make little sense outside your project
• scripts that are a bit more complex than a one liner inside your package.json
• a playground for exploring ignite
• a proving arena for plugins you intend to build & release, but aren't quite ready yet

The ignite/plugins Directory

You place your plugins in the ignite/plugins directory. Plugins are directories themselves, so begin by creating a sample directory there.

In this directory, create a file called ignite.json and put this empty object inside:

{}

Next create a new text file in that directory, naming it ignite.toml. Inside, place this:

description = "🔥🔥🔥 It's plugin time!🔥🔥🔥"

Note! This will be replaced shortly with ignite.json. I just need to patch up gluegun to provide a post-load hook so ignite can do this.

Running Your Plugin

Back in the project root, type:

ignite

You should see your plugin appear. Now, let's list the commands that you've made:

ignite sample

Empty. Let's make one by creating a new directory: ignite/plugins/sample/commands. In that directory place this online.js.

// @cliDescription Let's gather some useful data on this mission!

module.exports = context => {
  const { filesystem, print } = context
  const { colors } = print

  const pkg = filesystem.read('package.json', 'json')
  const depsCount = Object.keys(pkg.dependencies || {}).length
  print.info(`You have ${colors.bold(depsCount)} direct dependencies. And they are awesome.`)
}

ignite sample

Now you have one. Let's run it.

ignite sample online

For more details on creating commands (including generators), check out the guide to plugins and the context API guide.