Homebridge Platform Plugin Template
This is a template Homebridge platform plugin and can be used as a base to help you get started developing your own plugin.
This template should be used in conjunction with the developer documentation. A full list of all supported service types, and their characteristics is available on this site.
Clone As Template
Click the link below to create a new GitHub Repository using this template, or click the Use This Template button above.
Setup Development Environment
To develop Homebridge plugins you must have Node.js 12 or later installed, and a modern code editor such as VS Code. This plugin template uses TypeScript to make development easier and comes with pre-configured settings for VS Code and ESLint. If you are using VS Code install these extensions:
Install Development Dependencies
Using a terminal, navigate to the project folder and run this command to install the development dependencies:
npm install
Update package.json
Open the package.json
and change the following attributes:
name
- this should be prefixed with homebridge-
or @username/homebridge-
and contain no spaces or special characters apart from a dashesdisplayName
- this is the "nice" name displayed in the Homebridge UIrepository.url
- Link to your GitHub repobugs.url
- Link to your GitHub repo issues page
When you are ready to publish the plugin you should set private
to false, or remove the attribute entirely.
Update Plugin Defaults
Open the src/settings.ts
file and change the default values:
PLATFORM_NAME
- Set this to be the name of your platform. This is the name of the platform that users will use to register the plugin in the Homebridge config.json
.PLUGIN_NAME
- Set this to be the same name you set in the package.json
file.
Open the config.schema.json
file and change the following attribute:
pluginAlias
- set this to match the PLATFORM_NAME
you defined in the previous step.
Build Plugin
TypeScript needs to be compiled into JavaScript before it can run. The following command will compile the contents of your src
directory and put the resulting code into the dist
folder.
npm run build
Link To Homebridge
Run this command so your global install of Homebridge can discover the plugin in your development environment:
npm link
You can now start Homebridge, use the -D
flag so you can see debug log messages in your plugin:
homebridge -D
Watch For Changes and Build Automatically
If you want to have your code compile automatically as you make changes, and restart Homebridge automatically between changes, you first need to add your plugin as a platform in ~/.homebridge/config.json
:
{
...
"platforms": [
{
"name": "Config",
"port": 8581,
"platform": "config"
},
{
"name": "<PLUGIN_NAME>",
//... any other options, as listed in config.schema.json ...
"platform": "<PLATFORM_NAME>"
}
]
}
and then you can run:
npm run watch
This will launch an instance of Homebridge in debug mode which will restart every time you make a change to the source code. It will load the config stored in the default location under ~/.homebridge
. You may need to stop other running instances of Homebridge while using this command to prevent conflicts. You can adjust the Homebridge startup command in the nodemon.json
file.
Customise Plugin
You can now start customising the plugin template to suit your requirements.
Versioning Your Plugin
Given a version number MAJOR
.MINOR
.PATCH
, such as 1.4.3
, increment the:
- MAJOR version when you make breaking changes to your plugin,
- MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner, and
- PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.
You can use the npm version
command to help you with this:
npm version major
npm version update
npm version patch
Publish Package
When you are ready to publish your plugin to npm, make sure you have removed the private
attribute from the package.json
file then run:
npm publish
If you are publishing a scoped plugin, i.e. @username/homebridge-xxx
you will need to add --access=public
to command the first time you publish.
Publishing Beta Versions
You can publish beta versions of your plugin for other users to test before you release it to everyone.
npm version prepatch --preid beta
npm publish --tag=beta
Users can then install the beta version by appending @beta
to the install command, for example:
sudo npm install -g homebridge-example-plugin@beta