Creating Plugins

• Getting Started
• Plugin Overview
  • Plugin Fields
• Results
  • Result Fields
  • Internal Ranking
• Blocking Operations
• Debugging
• Plugin Context
  • Console
  • CWD
  • Clipboard
  • Native Image
• Submitting your plugin

Getting Started

There is a package boilerplate you can start your packages off of.

The best development workflow is to start the project on GitHub, install the bare plugin inside of Zazu and work in the directory Zazu created itself. For instance if you installed tinytacoteam/zazu-template it would be located in ~/.zazu/plugins/tinytacoteam/zazu-template and if you have GIT installed locally, this will have origin setup. Once you make your changes you can tell Zazu to Reload Configuration to see your change appear in Zazu.

Plugin Overview

Plugins, written in Node and JavaScript, provide all the end user behavior. Plugins use a workflow architecture, where some blocks return results, and other process data. You can have as many blocks as you want that can do their own specific tasks.

At the root of every plugin there is a zazu.json file that tells Zazu how to communicate with your plugin.

{
  "name": "Demo Plugin",
  "icon": "icon.png",
  "stylesheet": "dist/main.css",
  "blocks": {
    "input": [
      {
        "id": 1,
        "type": "Keyword",
        "keyword": "play",
        "title": "Test Notification",
        "subtitle": "Click to test notifications",
        "connections": [2]
      }
    ],
    "output": [
      {
        "id": 2,
        "type": "SendNotification",
        "title": "Hello world",
        "message": "{value}"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Plugin Fields

• icon string: If the result does not provide an individual icon, the plugin icon will be used. The icon here is treated as a relative path.
• stylesheet string: Optional. Relative path of a compiled stylesheet to be used when a single result is being previewed.
• blocks object: Blocks are the foundations of every great plugin. They are so great, they have their own block page.

Results

The input blocks in your plugins will need to return results to Zazu. Here is an example:

[
    {
      "id": "42",
      "icon": "fa-calculator",
      "title": "The answer is 42",
      "subtitle": "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything",
      "preview": "<span>42!</span>",
      "value": 42
    }
]

Result Fields

• id string: Identifier for internal ranking.
• icon string: Supports font awesome icons as well as relative paths to the icon in your project. If one is not provided it will fallback tot he icon for your project.
• title string: Larger text you see in a result.
• subtitle string: Optional. Smaller text under the title.
• preview string: Optional. HTML that shows up next to an active result.
• previewCss string: Optional. A css string to style preview.
• value mixed: Value is the what is passed from block to block to make your plugin run. In this case the value 42 as a number would be passed to whatever the connection block is, which could be to copy to the clipboard or it could run a custom user script.

Internal Ranking

If you provide results with an id, Zazu will rank frequently clicked items higher in the results list. This works well even if you sort the results yourself. If you don’t want this behavior, simply don’t add an id to the result.

Blocking Operations

Zazu runs your application in the same thread, this is useful so your plugin can share the same objects between blocks, however if you are planning on running a long synchronous job, you should consider using a child_process.fork within your block.

Debugging

In the Tray icon, under Development there is a debugger called Plugin Debugger that will output info, warnings and errors of all plugins in a filterable interface. Select the plugin you are trying to debug and get logs for all the blocks being executed.

Plugin Context

The pluginContext object passed to node scripts and contains some useful functions to help enable your scripts.

Console

The Plugin Debugger is useful, since we surface information to you to help you develop your plugins better. This API allows you to surface your own logs to the Plugin Debugger.

• level string: Log level verbose, info, warn or error
• message string: Log message to be displayed.
• data object: Other misc data that could be useful.

module.exports = (pluginContext) => {
  pluginContext.console.log('verbose', 'hello world', {
    ping: 'pong',
  })
}

CWD

The current working directory of the node script being ran.

const path = require('path')
module.exports = (pluginContext) => {
  const outputFile = path.join(pluginContext.cwd, 'output.json')
}

Clipboard

An instance of the Electron Clipboard instance.

const path = require('path')
module.exports = (pluginContext) => {
  const clipboard = pluginContext.clipboard
}

Native Image

An instance of the Electron Native Image instance.

const path = require('path')
module.exports = (pluginContext) => {
  const nativeImage = pluginContext.nativeImage
}

Submitting your plugin

Once you finish, submit it to the plugin page by making a package file in the documentation.