plug-and-play

Node.js Plug-And-Play package

Easily create hooks and let users plug their own logic across your code to make it extensible by everyone with new features.

Main features

• Extention points definition Simple to declare new extention points, yet a lot of flexibility to the plugin authors.
• Hook definition Plugin writer can intercept calls to a function by placing their own logicl before, after and even switching the default implementation.
• Dependency management Plugins can require other plugins as required dependencies as well as choose the order of execution of each hook.
• Promise support Hook can be synchronous and asynchronous when returning a promise.
• Nested/hierachical Instanciate plugin instances with a parent reference and parent hooks will also be available inside the children.

Learning

We encourage your to read the detailed tutorial on how to create a plugin architected with Plug and Play published by Adaltas.

Here is the documentation:

• Introduction
• Initialize a new instance
• Plugins registration
• Hook declaration
• Hook handler definition and usage
• API usage
• Developers instructions

Quick example

Library and application authors define hooks, see ./samples/simple-js/lib.js:

const plugandplay = require("plug-and-play");

const plugins = plugandplay();

module.exports = {
  // Create and export a new Plug and Play instance
  plugins: plugins,
  // Our core library function
  print: function () {
    // Wrap-up code
    plugins.call({
      // Identify this hook with a name
      name: "hooks:print",
      // Expose arguments to plugins authors
      args: {
        data: { message: "hello" },
      },
      // Default implementation
      handler: ({ data }) => {
        // Original library
        console.log(data.message);
      },
    });
  },
};

Users and pluging authors can now register their own hooks, see ./samples/simple-js/index.js:

const mysuperlibrary = require("./lib");

mysuperlibrary.plugins.register({
  hooks: {
    "hooks:print": ({ data }, handler) => {
      // Alter the argument
      data.message = "Hello World";
      // Print a message before the library code
      console.log(">>>>>>>>>>>");
      // Call the original handler
      const result = handler.call(null, { data: data });
      // Print a message after the library code
      console.log("<<<<<<<<<<<");
      return result;
    },
  },
});
mysuperlibrary.print();

While the original print function was only printing Hello to stdout, the introduction of this new plugin prints:

>>>>>>>>>>>
Hello world
<<<<<<<<<<<

Available examples

• simple-js JavaScript basic example.

  ./samples/simple-js/index.js
  

• simple-ts TypeScript basic example.

  ./samples/simple-ts/index.ts ping
  

• advanced-ts TypeScript advanced examples with plugin type registration.

  ./samples/advanced-ts/index.ts ping pong