Choosy Plugins

A future version of Choosy will support plugins, so that as well as opening URLs in browsers you can do all manner of other things with them.

This repository contains example plugins so that other developers can feedback on the general structure of plugins while the format is still in development.

What are plugins?

A plugin is currently just any executable file wrapped up with an icon and a name. Plugins will be displayed in the browser prompt and when they are clicked the URL will be passed to the executable. Simple, but effective.

Plugin format

The plugins are OS X bundles (essentially just folders with a particular structure) with a .choice extension.

The folder structure is:

• MyPlugin.choice/
  • Contents/
    • Info.plist - An XML file containing metadata
    • Resources/
      • An icon file
      • An executable file
      • An HTML file with a description of the plugin
      • Any other files needed by the plugin

The bundle's Info.plist file should contain the following Choosy-specific keys:

• ChoosyDescription - A short description of the plugin.
• ChoosyExecutable - A path to the executable that carries out the plugin's work. The path should be relative to the bundle's Contents/Resources directory. When the bundle is triggered the executable will be run with Contents/Resources as the current working directory and the URL as the first (and only) argument.
• ChoosyAboutFile - A path to an HTML file that contains more information about the plugin. The path should be relative to the bundle's Contents/Resources directory.

It should also contain the usual OS X bundle keys:

• CFBundleIconFile - The name of an ICNS file in the Contents/Resources directory.
• CFBundleIdentifier - A unique, reverse-domain-name identifier, e.g. org.example.plugins.myplugin
• CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion - 6.0 is a magic number.
• CFBundleName - The name of the bundle, which will be displayed to the user.
• CFBundlePackageType - Set this to BNDL to tell the OS it's not an application.
• CFBundleShortVersionString - User friendly version string.
• CFBundleVersion - Machine friendly version number.