Plugins

Finding plugins

You can find community plugins on npm (https://www.npmjs.com/browse/keyword/breakdance).

If you author a breakdance plugin, be sure to add the keyword breakdance to your project's package.json.

Authoring plugins

Why create a plugin for breakdance?

Plugins are easy to write, and can be used to:

• override existing functionality or options
• extend the functionality of breakdance
• bundle together some common defaults or preferences you'd like to use every time you run breakdance

Learn the basics

Before moving on to authoring plugins, it might help to understand how the parser/compiler works

• Learn about the core concepts in the Breakdance API and code base
• Visit the snapddragon documentation to learn how the parser and compiler work.

Writing your first plugin

A breakdance plugin is a function that takes an instance of breakdance.

Example

function yourPlugin(breakdance) {
  // do stuff with breakdance API
}

As a general rule, it's best to wrap the function with another function to allow users to pass options.

Example

module.exports = function(options) {
  return function(breakdance) {
    // define your plugin here
  };
};

Even if your plugin doesn't take options, following this convention will provide users with a consistent experience across all plugins.

Usage example

Users can now require in and use your plugin, like this:

var foo = require('breakdance-foo');
var options = {};

breakdance.use(foo(options));

Publishing your plugin

Once you're ready to publish your plugin to npm, you can do that now with the following command from the root of the project:

(Are you ready?!)

$ npm publish

Next steps

Now that you've published your breakdance plugin project, let's tell the world about the great work you've done!

• To make your project as discoverable as possible, please add the keywords breakdance and breakdanceplugin to package.json.
• Tweet about it, and be sure to mention @breakdancejs or use the #breakdancejs hashtag (don't forget the js part on twitter, so the world knows you mean code, not dancing)
• Show your love by starring breakdance
• Get implementation help on StackOverflow (as with twitter, please use the breakdancejs tag in questions)
• Gitter Discuss breakdance with us on Gitter