Feature request: Plugin/extension system for custom UI pages and tools

[csstup]

I’d like to see some kind of generic plugin/extension mechanism for Z-Wave JS UI.

The main use case I have right now is a custom routing/topology report that uses existing Z-Wave JS data like LWR/NLWR, neighbor information, RSSI, etc. I’ve been prototyping it against the existing Socket.IO API, and it works well, but there doesn’t seem to be a clean way to install something like this without either modifying/forking Z-Wave JS UI or running it as a separate external page.

What I’m thinking is something fairly simple:

store/plugins/
  my-plugin/
    manifest.json
    frontend.js
    style.css

Z-Wave JS UI could scan a persistent plugin directory at startup (or via a reload action), and plugins could register a page/menu entry and use a documented subset of the existing UI/API functionality.
For example, a plugin could potentially register:

Route Report
Firmware Inventory
Security Audit
Battery Report
Custom Diagnostics

I’m not suggesting arbitrary deep access into Z-Wave JS UI internals. It would probably be better to expose a small/stable plugin API so plugins don’t depend on internal Vue/Pinia implementation details.
Something along the lines of:

activate(context) {
  context.pages.register(...)
  context.zwave.call(...)
}

The first use case I’d build with it is a route/topology page showing things like:

• current LWR
• previous NLWR
• routed vs direct nodes
• reported neighbors
• RSSI / RTT
• Z-Wave LR nodes
• basic route/problem-node diagnostics

For Home Assistant add-on users, the important part would be that plugins live in persistent storage outside of the container image so they survive upgrades. For Docker users, the existing persistent store volume seems like a natural place for this too.

I could also see HACS or another installer being used to distribute plugins later, but I think the useful first step would just be having a supported local plugin directory and a basic extension API.

I searched open/closed issues and discussions and didn’t find an existing request for a generic UI plugin system, but if there’s already something similar planned, I’d be interested in that direction too.

[csstup]

Some sample reports/debugging tools i've been putting together to help work out some routing issues. Im just injecting these for now but having a defined plugin interface would be ideal.

[robertsLando]

@csstup AFAIK there was another request around this some time ago, the problem is that this requires lot of work and from what I see plugins are used by really few people. Considering the few time I have in last period for all my OSS projects I prefer to focus on bugs and features that could be useful to most users so I keep this open but I will not work on this now I'm sorry