Compressarr Job Action Plugin Template

This is a template Compressarr job action plugin and can be used as a base to help you get started developing your own plugin.

Clone As Template

Click the link below to create a new GitHub Repository using this template, or click the Use This Template button above.

Create New Repository From Template

Setup Development Environment

To develop Compressarr 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:

• ESLint

Install Development Dependencies

Using a terminal, navigate to the project folder and run this command to install the development dependencies:

yarn install

Update package.json

Open the package.json and change the following attributes:

• name - this should be prefixed with compressarr- or @username/compressarr- and contain no spaces or special characters apart from a dashes
• displayName - this is the "nice" name displayed in the Compressarr UI
• repository.url - Link to your GitHub repo
• bugs.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.

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.

yarn run build

Link To Compressarr

Run this command so your global install of Compressarr can discover the plugin in your development environment:

yarn link

You can now start Compressarr, use the -D flag so you can see debug log messages in your plugin:

compressarr -D

Watch For Changes and Build Automatically

If you want to have your code compile automatically as you make changes, and restart Compressarr automatically between changes you can run:

yarn run watch

This will launch an instance of Compressarr 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 ~/.compressarr. You may need to stop other running instances of Compressarr while using this command to prevent conflicts. You can adjust the Compressarr startup command in the nodemon.json file.

Customise Plugin

You can now start customising the plugin template to suit your requirements.

• src/jobAction.ts - this is where your job action setup and and control logic should go.

Versioning Your Plugin

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, such as 1.4.3, increment the:

1. MAJOR version when you make breaking changes to your plugin,
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner, and
3. PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.

You can use the yarn version command to help you with this:

# major update / breaking changes
yarn version major

# minor update / new features
yarn version update

# patch / bugfixes
yarn 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:

yarn publish

If you are publishing a scoped plugin, i.e. @username/compressarr-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.

# create a new pre-release version (eg. 2.1.0-beta.1)
yarn version prepatch --preid beta

# publsh to @beta
yarn publish --tag=beta

Users can then install the beta version by appending @beta to the install command, for example:

sudo yarn global add compressarr-example-plugin@beta