plugin-powered 🚀💫

Your app powered by plugins · Universal Plugin Loader

Plugins are great to build modular, extensible apps. Many frameworks have a use or similar method to install plugins or middleware, but then the configuration is hardcoded, buried in code.

We can do better.

Features

• Add, remove and configure plugins without changing code ✓
• Install community plugins using npm or yarn ✓
• Use a local directory for project-specific plugins ✓
• Define the load order of plugins ✓
• Compatible with popular frameworks like Express, Micro, Koa, etc ✓
• 100% code coverage ✓

Benefits

• Use different configurations for development, test and production
• Load configurations from files, databases, URLs, etc

Example: Loading Express middleware

./plugins.json

{
  "cors": {
    "origin": "http://example.com",
    "optionsSuccessStatus": 200
  },
  "express-session": {
    "secret": "keyboard cat",
    "resave": false,
    "saveUninitialized": true,
    "cookie": {
      "secure": true
    }
  }
}

index.js

const loadPlugins = require('plugin-powered')
const plugins = require('./plugins.json')

const app = require('express')()

loadPlugins(app, plugins)
// done! 🚀💫

Installation

$ npm i plugin-powered

Usage

loadPlugins(target, plugins[, options])

or

loadPlugins(plugins, options)

target

object | function | Array

plugins

options

target

object | function | Array

optionally specifies where plugins should be installed.

use

optional string default: 'use'

Name of the use method. target[use] must be a function

errors optional

null | object | function | Array | Console | logger

---

Writing Plugins

Writing a plugin is super simple. A plugin is just a regular module that exports a function which takes a single parameter, options:

module.exports = function plugin(options) {
  // do things
}

Life Cycle

1. Resolve Name. baseDir/name, baseDir/prefix-name, name, prefix-name
2. Loading. The resolved module name is loaded using require.
3. Initialization. Its exported function is called. options is passed as argument unless options is true, in which case no options are passed.
4. Use. If the Initialization step returns a function, then it is added to its host by calling the use function, i.e. use(pluginReturnValue).
5. Execution.

Plugin options

Value	Description
false	Disabled. A plugin that’s set to false will not be loaded and its function will not be called.
true	Defaults. If your plugin accepts options, then the value true should mean 'use meaningful defaults'. Note: The plugin will be called without any arguments.
other	Plugin Specific. Plugin authors are free to define whatever options their plugin expects.