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airdcpp-create-extension Node.js CI npm package

Generic starter project for creating extension for AirDC++.

In case you have questions about extension development or the Web API, you may use the issue tracker of this project or join the dev hub at adcs://web-dev.airdcpp.net:1511

Resources

Installation and usage

Preparation

It's required to have node.js installed (using the latest LTS version is highly recommended). Note that when using Linux, the version offered by package manager may be somewhat outdated.

This starter project will automatically transpile your code with babel to make many of the latest language features run with older version of node.js.

  • Download the latest available release and extract it to any location on your system
  • Run npm install inside the root extension directory

Developing

Extension's entry point for extension-specific code is src/main.js. Files inside the dist directory are generated automatically and should not be modified by hand.

Running/debugging the extension

  • Create a copy of devtools/settings.js.example and rename it to devtools/settings.js
  • Edit devtools/settings.js to contain the correct API address and user credentials

Visual Studio Code

The project contains debug configuration files for Visual Studio Code so that extension can be launched directly via editor's Debug panel.

Running from terminal

If you don't want to use Visual Studio Code, you may launch a development server from terminal by running command npm start. The extension will be restarted automatically every time the source files are updated.

Publishing extensions

You must have an account and logged in from the npm client. Please see npm help for more information.

  • Ensure that package.json contains the correct information. See the package.json section for more information.

When publishing a new package, it may make sense to test it for a while, possibly with a limited group of users, before adding it in the public extension directory. After publishing the extension, run npm view my-package-name dist.tarball to get the direct installation URL for the extension. Users installing the extension via the URL will still be notified about possible extension updates (assuming that the private property is not set).

  • Build the package by running npm run build
  • Publish it by running npm publish

Additional information

package.json

Please see the extension specifications for application-specific field remarks.

Dependencies

When writing extensions, you generally want to use other npm packages (such as airdcpp-apisocket) to provide certain functionality. Unlike when writing regular npm packages used by Javascript developers, AirDC++ won't perform npm install when the extension is installed by the user, which means that all the required dependencies must be shipped with the extension itself. Use of binary dependencies should generally be avoided due to possible portability issues.

Using module bundler

airdcpp-create-extension handles external dependencies by using a module bundler (Webpack) to bundle all code required by the extension into a single file. This approach should work just fine for most cases, but certain npm packages targeted for server-side use may not be suitable to be used with a module bundler.

Using bundleDependencies

If you need to use dependencies that can't be bundled using Webpack, you might want to check out the bundledDepencencies field in package.json.

All packages listed in dependencies should also be included in the bundledDepencencies array similar to this:

dependencies: {
  "complex-dependency-1": "^1.0.0",
  ....
},
bundledDepencencies: [ 'complex-dependency-1', ... ],

You may transpile your own code to be compatible with older version of node by running npm run babel. This will simply just put transpiled versions of your code into dist folder without any bundling.

If you still want to continue using Webpack as part of your build process, it's possible to configure it to skip bundling of external dependencies (see http://jlongster.com/Backend-Apps-with-Webpack--Part-I for more information).

The downside of using bundledDependencies is increased extension installation size and (usually) large amount of files to install.

Keeping the extension responsive

Since extensions use WebSockets to communicate with the API, they are pinged regularly by the server (application) to ensure that the connection stays alive. The default ping timeout is 10 seconds and if a managed extension is unable to response to a ping request within that time, the extension will exit. Unresponsive extensions are also incapable of handling possible API hooks, that may cause visible delays to the user (such in cases where you have hooks for incoming/outgoing chat messages). It's thus recommended to perform possible long-running operations (such as handling of large files on disk) asynchronously so that they won't block the main thread.

However, there are certain caveats in heavily asynchronous code as well. If a large amount of (CPU-bound) asynchronous tasks are being queued simultaneously, they will take priority over subsequently initiated actions, and once again, your main thread may be blocked for a long time. When performing heavy operations that may utilize a large number of asynchronous functions (such as recursively iterating over all shared directories on filesystem), you should be vary of the number of queued operations and possibly wait for the existing ones to complete before launching new ones. See the scanning method of airdcpp-release-validator for an example of recursive, asynchronous directory scanner.