Writing JavaScript Plugins

A JavaScript plugin is simply a pure JavaScript object that defines a set of property hooks:

If you want to pass args to your plugins，you can use a closure.

note

• See Create Plugin to create a new plugin quickly based on official plugin templates.
• This document only covers how to create, develop and publish a js plugin, for more detail about the plugin hooks, see Js Plugin Hooks.

Conventions

For farm specific js plugins:

• The Farm Js plugin should have a name with a farm-plugin- prefix and clear semantics.
• Include the farm-plugin- keyword in package.json.

If your plugin is only applicable to a specific framework, its name should follow the following prefix format:

• farm-plugin-vue-: Prefix as a Vue plugin
• farm-plugin-react-: Prefix as a React plugin
• farm-plugin-svelte-: Prefix as a svelte plugin
• ...

Concepts

Before you start to write your js plugin, you should know the following concepts:

• filters: Cause Js Plugins are much slower than Rust Plugins, your js plugin need to set explicit filters to avoid unnecessary call for js plugins hook. For example, you should set transform.filters.moduleTypes = ['js'] to make sure that the transform hook of your js plugin only runs for .js/mjs/cjs files.
• module_type: The type of the module, it can be js, ts, css, sass, json, etc. Farm supports js/ts/jsx/tsx, css, html, json, static assets(png, svg, etc) natively. module_type is returned by load hook or transform hook.
• resolved_path and module_id: resolved_path is the absolute path of the module, and module_id is the unique id of the module, it's usually relative path of the module from the project root + query. For example, we import a module as import './a?query', the resolved_path is /project/src/a.ts and the module_id is src/a.ts?query.
• context: All the hooks in the plugin accept a context argument, it's the compilation context of the farm project, you can use it to get the ModuleGraph, Module, Resources, etc.
• Resource and Resource Pot: Resource is the final output bundle file, and Resource Pot is the abstract representation of the resource, similar to Chunk of other bundlers. Inside Farm, first we will generate Resource Pots from ModuleGraph, render Resource Pots and finally generate Resources from Resource Pots.

Filters

Cause Js Plugins are much slower than Rust Plugins, Farm use filters to control the execution of js plugin hooks. The plugin hook executes only when given filters matched to improve performance. filters is neccessary for some commonly used hooks, such as resolve, load, transform, etc.

For example, if you want to transform css files, you can use transform.filters.moduleTypes = ['css'] to make sure that the transform hook of your js plugin only runs for .css files:

Module Type

In Farm, every thing is First Class Citizens, so Farm designs module_type to identify the type of a module and handle different kinds of ModuleTypes in different plugins.

module_type returned by load hook, and can be transformed by transform hook. Farm supports js/ts/jsx/tsx, css, html, json, static assets(png, svg, etc) natively. For these module types, you can return them directly in load or transform hook directly. But if you want to handle custom module types, you may need to implement ohter hooks like parse, render_resource_pot_modules, generate resources, etc to control how to parse, render and generate resources for the custom module types.

note

Js Plugins don't support parse, render_resource_pot_modules, generate resources hooks, you have to use Rust Plugins to handle custom module types.

Create Plugin

Farm provides official templates to help your create your js plugins quickly:

pnpm

npm

yarn

then follow the prompts to create your plugin.

or you can create a plugin derectly by running the following command:

pnpm

npm

yarn

Above command will create new js plugin with name my-farm-plugin in the current directory. --type can be rust or js

Develop Plugin

After creating the plugin, you can start to develop your plugin. The plugin is a pure JavaScript object that defines a set of property hooks:

tip

For more detail about the plugin hooks, see Js Plugin Hooks.

Run npm run dev to compile the plugin and watch for changes. Run npm run build to build the plugin.

Publish Plugin

A js plugin package is a normal npm package, you can publish it to npm registry by running npm publish.