The Every Door OpenStreetMap editor supports plugins. Those can be written as static files, or with Dart and Flutter code. This package simplifies creation of a plugin (either kind), and provides models and bindings for the development.

Creating a static plugin

With this package, it's easy: it provides a script that can be executed from anywhere. Install it with:

dart pub global activate every_door_plugin

The proper way would be to create a directory for a plugin, and inside it, a plugin directory with all the files, including plugin.yaml. When you run edp (or dart pub global run every_door_plugin if that doesn't work), it would create a dist subdirectory, in which it would put a packaged plugin.

Obviously for a static plugin, you can just use whatever archiving option you've got: edp files are just zip archives.

Creating a plugin with code

First, create a Flutter package with its generator or with Android Studio — whatever works for you. Name it as your plugin: the title should start with a latin letter and contain, besides those, only numbers, dashes, and underscores.

Alternatively just create a directory. For code, put this into pubspec.yaml:

name: plugin_id
description: "Plugin Name"
version: 0.1.0

environment:
  sdk: ^3.6.0
  flutter: "^3.35.0"

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter
  every_door_plugin: ^0.1.0

Add every_door_plugin: 0.1.0 to the dependencies in pubspec.yaml. Also mind that those keys will be copied to the plugin metadata:

• name → id
• description → name (don't write "every door plugin" or anything like there)
• homepage → homepage
• version → version

Note that while version there follows semantic versioning, only the first two numbers will be used for the plugin version (e.g. for 0.3.1 the version would be 0.3, so there is no point in using patch versions).

You can also add an every_door section and straight write plugin.yaml contents there. The pubspec top values still have the priority.

Note that for publishing to EDPR, you would need the description key, so you can't get around adding that section. See the example.

Create a plugin directory for any static files you will need packaged. When you refer a file like icons/bus.svg, whether from the yaml file or from the code, it will be expected in plugin/icons/bus.svg.

The code goes into the lib directory, with the lib/main.dart for the main code. It can include other dart files from the same directory or sub-directories.

Besides flutter and every_door_plugin packages, you can also use anything listed in this description.

Hints for writing a plugin in Dart

Alas there is no simple way to upload your built .edp file to the device and immediately open in in Every Door. Android permission system (not to speak of iOS) forbids all the options. There are two ways for testing:

• Share the file via a messenger or a sync service like KDE Connect, and having received the file on the device, open it with Every Door. Always check the system log.
• Set up the development environment and write your plugin in the lib/plugins/_construction.dart. That way you would only need to disable-enable plugin after a hot reload. When finished, transfer the code to a separate repository and split it into files if needed.

The dart_eval compiler supports just a subset of Dart language, and often an unexpected subset. You might need to make multiple iterations to just ensure the code compiles and executes correctly in Every Door. Sorry about that, we are working on improving the compiler. But compilers are hard.

Here are some hints for tracking and fixing compilation issues:

• The implied dynamic type is hard to work with, so please state parameter, field, and variable types in the code. Even for simple definitions like final FocusNode node = FocusNode(). Most execution errors come from trying to box/unbox dynamic variables.
• Generics are not always parsed properly. Which means, accessing widget. fields from a widget state may randomly fail. You might need to explicitly define the types.
• All event listeners and most other things are async and should return a Future. There is no FutureOr class in dart_eval.
• Loop and condition variables in list comprehension might confuse their scope. Try extracting loop body to a function, and localize class fields. Scopes are hard.
• Overriding of operators and sometimes toString doesn't yet work in dart_eval.

There might be other causes for errors, including incorrect wrappers built-in into the editor. When you're stuck, contact Ilya or create an issue somewhere related, copying the relevant code and the full exception message, including the runtime code.

Building a plugin

Having added this package as a dependency, type this in the console (e.g. in Android Studio terminal):

flutter pub get
dart run every_door_plugin

It will compile the code and create an edp file in the dist subdirectory with the plugin id and version for the file name: plugin_id_1.0.edp. Transfer it to your phone to test it, and upload to the repository when finished.

Author and License

Written by Ilya Zverev, published under the ISC license.

The author is sponsored by many individual contributors through GitHub and Liberapay. Thank you everybody!

The NLNet Foundation is sponsoring the development in 2025 through the NGI Commons Fund with funds from the European Commission.

Want to sponsor the development? Contact Ilya directly or through his company.