Plugin Development

The capabilities of Girder can be extended via plugins. The plugin framework is designed to allow Girder to be as flexible as possible, on both the client and server sides.

A plugin is self-contained python package with an optional “web_client” directory containing the client side extension. In this document, we describe the minimal components necessary to create and distribute a python package containing a Girder plugin for basic use cases. For a more detailed guide, see python’s own packaging documentation and tutorial.

Quick Start

We maintain a Cookiecutter template to help developers get started with their own Girder plugin. To generate your own plugin using this template, install the cookiecutter package

pip install cookiecutter

and run this command

cookiecutter gh:girder/cookiecutter-girder-plugin

It will ask you a few questions to customize the plugin. For details on these options see the README in the template’s git repository.

Example Plugin

We’ll use a contrived example to demonstrate the capabilities and components of a plugin. Our plugin will be called cats.

mkdir cats

The first thing we should do is create a setup.py file describing the package we are going to create.

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name='girder_cats',
    version='1.0.0',
    description='A contrived example of a Girder plugin.',
    author='Plugin Development, Inc.',
    author_email='plugin-developer@girder.test',
    url='https://my-plugin-documentation-page.com/cats',
    license='Apache 2.0',
    classifiers=[
      'Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable',
      'Environment :: Web Environment',
      'License :: OSI Approved :: Apache Software License'
    ],
    include_package_data=True,
    packages=find_packages(exclude=['plugin_tests']),
    zip_safe=False,
    setup_requires=['setuptools-git'],
    install_requires=['girder>=3', 'girder-jobs'],
    entry_points={
        'girder.plugin': [ 'cats = girder_cats:CatsPlugin' ]
    }
)

Many of these values are metadata associated with a standard python package. See also the list of available classifiers that can be added to aid in discoverability of your package. Several arguments in this example are specific to a Girder plugin. These are as follows:

include_package_data=True
This tells python to include data files in addition to python modules found in your repository. This is necessary to ensure the web client assets are included in the package distribution. See the setuptools documentation for details.
setup_requires=['setuptools-git']
This works with the include_package_data option to automatically include all non-python files that are checked into your git repository. Alternatively, you can generate a MANIFEST.in for more fine-grained control over which files are included.
packages=find_packages(exclude=['plugin_tests'])
This will include all python “packages” found inside the local path in the distribution with the exception of the plugin_tests directory. If any other python modules or testing files are not desired in the distributed bundle, they should be added to this list.
zip_safe=False
Unless this flag is provided, the python installer will install the package (and its non-python data files) as a python “egg”. Girder plugins including web extensions do not support this feature.
install_requires=['girder>=3', 'girder_jobs']
This tells the installer that Girder of at least version 3 is required for this package to function. When installing with pip, Girder will be automatically installed from pypi if it is not already installed. Any additional dependencies (including other Girder plugins) should be added to this list as well.
entry_points={'girder.plugin': [ 'cats = girder_cats.CatsPlugin' ]}
This is the piece that registers your plugin with Girder’s application. When Girder starts up, it queries this entrypoint (girder.plugin) for all registered plugins. Here the name cats is the internal name registered to this plugin. The value girder_cats.CatsPlugin is an import path resolving to a class that is expected to derive from girder.plugin.GirderPlugin. See below for an example of how to define this object.

Defining a Plugin Descriptor Class

Once you have created your setup.py file, you should begin to define the python package that will contain your plugin. In our case, we will name the python package girder_cats so that it is a unique name on pypi

mkdir girder_cats
touch girder_cats/__init__.py

The base class at girder.plugin.GirderPlugin defines the interface between Girder and its plugins. For advanced requirements, plugin authors can override the properties defined on this class, but for most use cases inserting the following into the top level __init__.py will suffice.

from girder.plugin import getPlugin, GirderPlugin

class CatsPlugin(GirderPlugin):
    DISPLAY_NAME = 'Cats in Girder'
    CLIENT_SOURCE_PATH = 'web_client'

    def load(self, info):
        getPlugin('jobs').load(info)
        # attach endpoints, listen to events, etc...

Girder inspects attributes on this class for several pieces of metadata. Most of this metadata is automatically determined from the package-level metadata defined in your setup.py file. The additional attributes defined on this class instance provide the following:

DISPLAY_NAME
This provides Girder with a “user facing” name, e.g. a short description of the plugin not limited by the tokenization rules inherent in the “entrypoint name”. By default, the entrypoint name will be used if none is provided here.
CLIENT_SOURCE_PATH
If your plugin contains a web client extension, you need to set this property to a path containing an npm package. The path is always interpreted relative the python package install path.

Other optional attributes are defined on this class for more advanced use cases, see the class documentation at girder.plugin.GirderPlugin for details.

Adding a new route to the web API

If you want to add a new route to an existing core resource type, just call the route() function on the existing resource type. For example, to add a route for GET /item/:id/cat to the system,

from girder.api import access
from girder.api.rest import boundHandler

@access.public
@boundHandler
def myHandler(self, id, params):
    self.requireParams('cat', params)

    return {
       'itemId': id,
       'cat': params['cat']
    }

You can then attach this route to Girder in your plugin’s load method

from girder.plugin import GirderPlugin
class CatsPlugin(GirderPlugin)
  def load(self, info):
      info['apiRoot'].item.route('GET', (':id', 'cat'), myHandler)

You should always add an access decorator to your handler function or method to indicate who can call the new route. The decorator is one of @access.admin (only administrators can call this endpoint), @access.user (any user who is logged in can call the endpoint), or @access.public (any client can call the endpoint).

In the above example, the girder.api.rest.boundHandler decorator is used to make the unbound method myHandler behave as though it is a member method of a girder.api.rest.Resource instance, which enables convenient access to methods like self.requireParams.

If you do not add an access decorator, a warning message appears: WARNING: No access level specified for route GET item/:id/cat. The access will default to being restricted to administrators.

When you start the server, you may notice a warning message appears: WARNING: No description docs present for route GET item/:id/cat. You can add self-describing API documentation to your route using the autoDescribeRoute decorator and girder.api.describe.Description class as in the following example:

from girder.api.describe import Description, autoDescribeRoute
from girder.api import access

@access.public
@autoDescribeRoute(
    Description('Retrieve the cat for a given item.')
    .param('id', 'The item ID', paramType='path')
    .param('cat', 'The cat value.', required=False)
    .errorResponse())
def myHandler(id, cat):
    return {
       'itemId': id,
       'cat': cat
    }

That will make your route automatically appear in the Swagger documentation and will allow users to interact with it via that UI. See the RESTful API docs for more information about the Swagger page. In addition, the autoDescribeRoute decorator handles a lot of the validation and type coercion for you, with the benefit of ensuring that the documentation of the endpoint inputs matches their actual behavior. Documented parameters will be sent to the method as kwargs (so the order you declare them in the header doesn’t matter). Any additional parameters that were passed but not listed in the Description object will be contained in the params kwarg as a dictionary, if that parameter is present. The validation of required parameters, coercion to the correct data type, and setting default values is all handled automatically for you based on the parameter descriptions in the Description object passed. Two special methods of the Description object can be used for additional behavior control: girder.api.describe.Description.modelParam() and girder.api.describe.Description.jsonParam().

The modelParam method is used to convert parameters passed in as IDs to the model document corresponding to those IDs, and also can perform access checks to ensure that the user calling the endpoint has the requisite access level on the resource. For example, we can convert the above handler to use it:

@access.public
@autoDescribeRoute(
    Description('Retrieve the cat for a given item.')
    .modelParam('id', 'The item ID', model='item', level=AccessType.READ)
    .param('cat', 'The cat value.', required=False)
    .errorResponse())
def myHandler(item, cat, params):
    return {
       'item': item,
       'cat': cat
    }

The jsonParam method can be used to indicate that a parameter should be parsed as a JSON string into the corresponding python value and passed as such.

If you are creating routes that you explicitly do not wish to be exposed in the Swagger documentation for whatever reason, you can pass hide=True to the autoDescribeRoute decorator, and no warning will appear.

@autoDescribeRoute(Description(...), hide=True)

Adding a new resource type to the web API

Perhaps for our use case we determine that cat should be its own resource type rather than being referenced via the item resource. If we wish to add a new resource type entirely, it will look much like one of the core resource classes, and we can add it to the API in the load() method.

from girder.api.rest import Resource

class Cat(Resource):
    def __init__(self):
        super(Cat, self).__init__()
        self.resourceName = 'cat'

        self.route('GET', (), self.findCat)
        self.route('GET', (':id',), self.getCat)
        self.route('POST', (), self.createCat)
        self.route('PUT', (':id',), self.updateCat)
        self.route('DELETE', (':id',), self.deleteCat)

    def getCat(self, id, params):
        ...

As done when extending an existing resource, this should be mounted into Girder’s API inside your plugin’s load method:

from girder.plugin import GirderPlugin
class CatsPlugin(GirderPlugin)
    def load(self, info):
        info['apiRoot'].cat = Cat()

Adding a prefix to an API

It is possible to provide a prefix to your API, allowing associated endpoints to be grouped together. This is done by creating a prefix when mounting the resource. Note that resourceName is not provided as the resource name is also derived from the mount location.

from girder.api.rest import Resource, Prefix
from girder.plugin import GirderPlugin

class Cat(Resource):
    def __init__(self):
        super(Cat, self).__init__()

        self.route('GET', (), self.findCat)
        self.route('GET', (':id',), self.getCat)
        self.route('POST', (), self.createCat)
        self.route('PUT', (':id',), self.updateCat)
        self.route('DELETE', (':id',), self.deleteCat)

    def getCat(self, id, params):
        ...

class CatsPlugin(GirderPlugin):
    def load(self, info):
        info['apiRoot'].meow = Prefix()
        info['apiRoot'].meow.cat = Cat()

The endpoints are now mounted at meow/cat/

Adding a new model type in your plugin

Most of the time, if you add a new resource type in your plugin, you’ll have a Model class backing it. These model classes work just like the core model classes as described in the Models section. If you need to use the ModelImporter class with your model type, you will need to explicitly register the model type to a string, e.g.

from girder.plugin import GirderPlugin
from girder.utility.model_importer import ModelImporter
from .models.cat import Cat

class CatsPlugin(GirderPlugin):
    def load(self, info):
        ModelImporter.registerModel('cat', Cat, plugin='cats')

Adding custom access flags

Girder core provides a way to assign a permission level (read, write, and own) to data in the hierarchy to individual users or groups. In addition to this level, users and groups can also be granted special access flags on resources in the hierarchy. If you want to expose a new access flag on data, have your plugin globally register the flag in the system:

from girder.constants import registerAccessFlag

registerAccessFlag(key='cats.feed', name='Feed cats', description='Allows users to feed cats')

When your plugin is installed, a new checkbox will automatically appear in the access control dialog allowing resource owners to specify what users and groups are allowed to feed cats (assuming cats are represented by data in the hierarchy). Additionally, if your resource is public, you will also be able to configure which access flags are available to the public. If your plugin exposes another endpoint, say POST cat/{id}/food, inside that route handler, you can call requireAccessFlags, e.g.:

from girder_cat import Cat

@access.user
@autoDescribeRoute(
    Description('Feed a cat')
    .modelParam('id', 'ID of the cat', model=Cat, level=AccessType.WRITE)
)
def feedCats(self, cat, params):
    Cat().requireAccessFlags(item, user=getCurrentUser(), flags='cats.feed')

    # Feed the cats ...

That will throw an AccessException if the user does not possess the specified access flag(s) on the given resource. You can equivalently use the Description.modelParam method using autoDescribeRoute, passing a requiredFlags parameter, e.g.:

@access.user
@autoDescribeRoute(
    Description('Feed a cat')
    .modelParam('id', 'ID of the cat', model=Cat, level=AccessType.WRITE,
                requiredFlags='cats.feed')
)
def feedCats(self, cat, params):
    # Feed the cats ...

Normally, anyone with ownership access on the resource will be allowed to enable the flag on their resources. If instead you want to make it so that only site administrators can enable your custom access flag, pass admin=True when registering the flag, e.g.

registerAccessFlag(key='cats.feed', name='Feed cats', admin=True)

We cannot prescribe exactly how access flags should be used; Girder core does not expose any on its own, and the sorts of policies that they will enforce will be entirely defined by the logic of your plugin.

The events system

In addition to being able to augment the core API as described above, the core system fires a known set of events that plugins can bind to and handle as they wish.

In the most general sense, the events framework is simply a way of binding arbitrary events with handlers. The events are identified by a unique string that can be used to bind handlers to them. For example, if the following logic is executed by your plugin at startup time,

from girder import events

def handler(event):
    print event.info

events.bind('some_event', 'my_handler', handler)

And then during runtime the following code executes:

events.trigger('some_event', info='hello')

Then hello would be printed to the console at that time. More information can be found in the API documentation for Events.

There are a specific set of known events that are fired from the core system. Plugins should bind to these events at load time. The semantics of these events are enumerated below.

  • Before REST call

Whenever a REST API route is called, just before executing its default handler, plugins will have an opportunity to execute code or conditionally override the default behavior using preventDefault and addResponse. The identifiers for these events are of the form rest.get.item/:id.before. They receive the same kwargs as the default route handler in the event’s info.

Since handlers of this event run prior to the normal access level check of the underlying route handler, they are bound by the same access level rules as route handlers; they must be decorated by one of the functions in girder.api.access. If you do not decorate them with one, they will default to requiring administrator access. This is to prevent accidental reduction of security by plugin developers. You may change the access level of the route in your handler, but you will need to do so explicitly by declaring a different decorator than the underlying route handler.

  • After REST call

Just like the before REST call event, but this is fired after the default handler has already executed and returned its value. That return value is also passed in the event.info for possible alteration by the receiving handler. The identifier for this event is, e.g., rest.get.item/:id.after.

You may alter the existing return value, for example adding an additional property

event.info['returnVal']['myProperty'] = 'myPropertyValue'

or override it completely using preventDefault and addResponse on the event

event.addResponse(myReplacementResponse)
event.preventDefault()
  • Before model save

You can receive an event each time a document of a specific resource type is saved. For example, you can bind to model.folder.save if you wish to perform logic each time a folder is saved to the database. You can use preventDefault on the passed event if you wish for the normal saving logic not to be performed.

  • After model creation

You can receive an event after a resource of a specific type is created and saved to the database. This is sent immediately before the after-save event, but only occurs upon creation of a new document. You cannot prevent any default actions with this hook. The format of the event name is, e.g. model.folder.save.created.

  • After model save

You can also receive an event after a resource of a specific type is saved to the database. This is useful if your handler needs to know the _id field of the document. You cannot prevent any default actions with this hook. The format of the event name is, e.g. model.folder.save.after.

  • Before model deletion

Triggered each time a model is about to be deleted. You can bind to this via e.g., model.folder.remove and optionally preventDefault on the event.

  • During model copy

Some models have a custom copy method (folder uses copyFolder, item uses copyItem). When a model is copied, after the initial record is created, but before associated models are copied, a copy.prepare event is sent, e.g. model.folder.copy.prepare. The event handler is passed a tuple of ((original model document), (copied model document)). If the copied model is altered, the handler should save it without triggering events.

When the copy is fully complete, and copy.after event is sent, e.g. model.folder.copy.after.

  • Override model validation

You can also override or augment the default validate methods for a core model type. Like the normal validation, you should raise a ValidationException for failure cases, and you can also preventDefault if you wish for the normal validation procedure not to be executed. The identifier for these events is, e.g., model.user.validate.

  • Override user authentication

If you want to override or augment the normal user authentication process in your plugin, bind to the auth.user.get event. If your plugin can successfully authenticate the user, it should perform the logic it needs and then preventDefault on the event and addResponse containing the authenticated user document.

  • Before file upload

This event is triggered as an upload is being initialized. The event model.upload.assetstore is sent before the model.upload.save event. The event information is a dictionary containing model and resource with the resource model type and resource document of the upload parent. For new uploads, the model type will be either item or folder. When the contents of a file are being replaced, this will be a file. To change from the current assetstore, add an assetstore key to the event information dictionary that contains an assetstore model document.

  • Just before a file upload completes

The event model.upload.finalize after the upload is completed but before the new file is saved. This can be used if the file needs to be altered or the upload should be cancelled at the last moment.

  • On file upload

This event is always triggered asynchronously and is fired after a file has been uploaded. The file document that was created is passed in the event info. You can bind to this event using the identifier data.process.

  • Before file move

The event model.upload.movefile is triggered when a file is about to be moved from one assetstore to another. The event information is a dictionary containing file and assetstore with the current file document and the target assetstore document. If preventDefault is called, the move will be cancelled.

Note

If you anticipate your plugin being used as a dependency by other plugins, and want to potentially alert them of your own events, it can be worthwhile to trigger your own events from within the plugin. If you do that, the identifiers for those events should begin with the name of your plugin, e.g., events.trigger('cats.something_happened', info='foo')

  • User login

The event model.user.authenticate is fired when a user is attempting to login via a username and password. This allows alternative authentication modes to be used instead of core, or prior to attempting core authentication. The event info contains two keys, “login” and “password”.

Customizing the Swagger page

To customize text on the Swagger page, create a Mako template file that inherits from the base template and overrides one or more blocks. For example, plugins/cats/server/custom_api_docs.mako:

<%inherit file="${context.get('baseTemplateFilename')}"/>

<%block name="docsHeader">
  <span>Cat programming interface</span>
</%block>

<%block name="docsBody">
  <p>Manage your cats using the resources below.</p>
</%block>

Install the custom template in the plugin’s load function:

import os
from girder.plugin import GirderPlugin

PLUGIN_PATH = os.path.dirname(__file__)
class CustomTemplatePlugin(GirderPlugin):
    def load(self, info):
        # Initially, the value of info['apiRoot'].templateFilename is
        # 'api_docs.mako'. Because custom_api_docs.mako inherits from this
        # base template, pass 'api_docs.mako' in the variable that the
        # <%inherit> directive references.
        baseTemplateFilename = info['apiRoot'].templateFilename
        info['apiRoot'].updateHtmlVars({
            'baseTemplateFilename': baseTemplateFilename
        })

        # Set the path to the custom template
        templatePath = os.path.join(PLUGIN_PATH, 'custom_api_docs.mako')
        info['apiRoot'].setTemplatePath(templatePath)

Extending the Client-Side Application

The web client may be extended independently of the server side. Plugins may import Pug templates, Stylus files, and JavaScript files into the application.

All of your plugin’s extensions to the web client must live in a directory inside of your python package. By convention, this is in a directory called web_client.

cd girder_cats ; mkdir web_client

When present, this directory must contain a valid npm package, which includes a package.json file. (See the npm documentation for details.) What follows is a typical npm package file for a Girder client side extension:

{
    "name": "@girder/cats",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "peerDependencies": {
        "@girder/core": "*",
        "@girder/jobs": "*"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "othermodule": "^1.2.4"
    },
    "girderPlugin": {
        "name": "cats",
        "main": "./main.js",
        "dependencies": ["jobs"],
        "webpack": "webpack.helper"
    }
}

In addition to the standard package.json properties, Girder plugins must also define a girderPlugin object to register themselves with Girder’s client build system. The important keys in the object are as follows:

name
This must be exactly the entrypoint name registered in your setup.py file.
main
This is the entrypoint into your plugin on the client. All runtime initialization should occur from here.
dependencies
This is an array of entrypoint names that your plugin depends on. Specifying this explicitly here is what allows Girder’s client build system to build the plugin assets in the correct order.
webpack

This is an optional property whose value is a node module that exports a function that can make arbitrary modification the webpack config used to build the plugin bundle.

By default, Girder includes loaders for pug, stylus, css, fonts, and images in all paths. For javascript inside the plugin, the code is transpiled through babel using babel-preset-env; however, this is not done for dependencies resolved inside node_modules. This option makes it easy to include additional transpilation rules. For an example of this in use, see the built in dicom_viewer plugin.

Core Girder code can be imported relative to the path @girder/core, for example import View from '@girder/core/views/View';. The entry point defined in your “main” file will be loaded into the browser after Girder’s core library, but before the application is initialized.

JavaScript extension capabilities

Plugins may bind to any of the normal events triggered by core via a global events object that can be imported like so:

import events from '@girder/core/events';

...

this.listenTo(events, 'g:event_name', () => { do.something(); });

This will accommodate certain events, such as before and after the application is initially loaded, and when a user logs in or out, but most of the time plugins will augment the core system using the power of JavaScript rather than the explicit events framework. One of the most common use cases for plugins is to execute some code either before or after one of the core model or view functions is executed. In an object-oriented language, this would be a simple matter of extending the core class and making a call to the parent method. The prototypal nature of JavaScript makes that pattern impossible; instead, we’ll use a slightly less straightforward but equally powerful mechanism. This is best demonstrated by example. Let’s say we want to execute some code any time the core HierarchyWidget is rendered, for instance to inject some additional elements into the view. We use Girder’s wrap utility function to wrap the method of the core prototype with our own function.

import HierarchyWidget from '@girder/core/views/widgets/HierarchyWidget';
import { wrap } from '@girder/core/utilities/PluginUtils';

// Import our template file from our plugin using a relative path
import myTemplate from './templates/hierachyWidgetExtension.pug';

// CSS files pertaining to this view should be imported as a side-effect
import './stylesheets/hierarchyWidgetExtension.styl';

wrap(HierarchyWidget, 'render', function (render) {
    // Call the underlying render function that we are wrapping
    render.call(this);

    // Add a link just below the widget using our custom template
    this.$('.g-hierarchy-widget').after(myTemplate());
});

Notice that instead of simply calling render(), we call render.call(this). That is important, as otherwise the value of this will not be set properly in the wrapped function.

Now that we have added the link to the core view, we can bind an event handler to it to make it functional:

HierarchyWidget.prototype.events['click a.cat-link'] = () => {
    alert('meow!');
};

This demonstrates one simple use case for client plugins, but using these same techniques, you should be able to do almost anything to change the core application as you need.

JavaScript events

The JavaScript client handles notifications from the server and Backbone events in client-specific code. The server notifications originate on the server and can be monitored by both the server’s Python code and the client’s JavaScript code. The client Backbone events are solely within the web client, and do not get transmitted to the server.

If the connection to the server is interrupted, the client will not receive server events. Periodically, the client will attempt to reconnect to the server to resume handling events. Similarly, if client’s browser tab is placed in the background for a long enough period of time, the connection that listens for server events will be stopped to prevent excessive resource use. When the browser’s tab regains focus, the client will once again receive server events.

When the connection to the server’s event stream is interrupted, a g:eventStream.stop Backbone event is triggered on the EventStream object. When the server is once more sending events, it first sends a g:eventStream.start event. Clients can listen to these events and refresh necessary components to ensure that data is current.

Setting an empty layout for a route

If you have a route in your plugin that you would like to have an empty layout, meaning that the Girder header, nav bar, and footer are hidden and the Girder body is evenly padded and displayed, you can specify an empty layout in the navigateTo event trigger.

As an example, say your plugin wanted a frontPage route for a Collection which would display the Collection with only the Girder body shown, you could add the following route to your plugin.

import events from '@girder/core/events';
import router from '@girder/core/router';
import { Layout } from '@girder/core/constants';
import CollectionModel from '@girder/core/models/CollectionModel';
import CollectionView from '@girder/core/views/body/CollectionView';

router.route('collection/:id/frontPage', 'collectionFrontPage', function (collectionId, params) {
    var collection = new CollectionModel();
    collection.set({
        _id: collectionId
    }).on('g:fetched', function () {
        events.trigger('g:navigateTo', CollectionView, _.extend({
            collection: collection
        }, params || {}), {layout: Layout.EMPTY});
    }, this).on('g:error', function () {
        router.navigate('/collections', {trigger: true});
    }, this).fetch();
});

Using another plugin inside a plugin

Girder plugins can use and extend other plugins as well. To do this, you need to add and load the other plugin explicitly so that it installs and initializes automatically. There are a number of places that the dependency relationship needs to be specified.

  • Python package

If you directly rely on another plugin for any reason, you should always add the dependency to your plugin’s setup.py file. This is done in the same way all python dependencies are specified and will ensure that all the required packages are installed when you plugin is “pip installed”.

# setup.py depending on girder-jobs and girder-homepage
setup(
    name='girder-example-plugin',
    # ...
    install_requires=['girder-jobs', 'girder-homepage']
)
  • Plugin loading

By default, Girder does not load its installed plugins in a deterministic order. If your plugin depends on other Girder being loaded prior to itself, your plugin must explicitly load the other dependant plugins during your plugin’s own loading.

Girder will guarantee that a given plugin is actually loaded only once, so multiple calls to load another plugin are safe and have no effect. Finally, it is possible to check for the existence of another plugin before loading it or performing other configuration, to support optional dependencies.

from girder.plugin import getPlugin, GirderPlugin
# An example of loading dependent plugins
class ExamplePlugin(GirderPlugin)
    def load(self, info):
        getPlugin('jobs').load(info)
        homepagePlugin = getPlugin('homepage')
        if homepagePlugin:
            # Optional dependency
            homepagePlugin.load(info)
        # ...
  • Javascript client

If your plugin contains a javascript client and it imports code from another plugin, then you need to add this dependency relationship to your web client package.json file. If you depend on another plugin, but do not directly import code from the other package in you javascript code, then this is not necessary.

// package.json depending on "girder-jobs"
{
    "name": "@girder/example",
    "peerDependencies": {
        "@girder/core": "*",

        // This ensures that `import '@girder/jobs'` can be resolved.
        "@girder/jobs": "*"
    },

    "girderPlugin": {
        "name": "example",
        "main": "./main.js",

        // This ensures that "girder-jobs" is built before this plugin.
        "dependencies": ["jobs"]
    }
}

Automated testing for plugins

We recommend using pytest to create automated tests for your plugin code. The core Girder development team maintains the pytest-girder package, which contains several useful fixtures and other utilities that make testing Girder plugins easier.

Example

This example shows the use of the server fixture, which spins up the Girder server and allows requests to be made against its REST API.

from girder_cats.models import Cat
import pytest
from pytest_girder.assertions import assertStatusOk

@pytest.mark.plugin('cats')    # Makes sure the cats plugin will load for this test
def testCatCreation(server):
    resp = server.request('/cat', method='POST', params={
        'name': 'Helga',
        'age': 4
    })
    assertStatusOk(resp)
    records = Cat().find()
    assert records.count() == 1
    assert records[0]['name'] == 'Helga'