How to make custom plugins (bleeding edge)

API is not yet stabilized. Expect some changes to happen. Yes, documentation is a very messy ... feel free to improve

Resources

• test driven development how to
• how to use mock data via configuration file
•  unit test coverage
•  generated documents not yet up(?)

Resources, autogenerated from wiki

Making custom plugins should be easy for anyone with some python experience.

If you're working on good re-usable plugin I'd be more than happy to include it in official distribution. Contact me for subversion write permissions.

Registering plugins

Plugins are registered by calling register_plugin method.

register_plugin(<class name>, '<keyword>', [parameters])

You can also pass some optional named arguments

Optional arguments:
    priority    - when multiple plugins of same event type are enabled for a feed
                  this is used to determine execution order. Default 0. Larger number, higher priority.
    builtin     - set to True if plugin should be executed always
    group       - group name this plugin belongs to
    groups      - list of group names this plugin belongs to

Example:

register_plugin(FilterRegexp, 'regexp', priorities={'filter': 128})

Event methods

Listed in order of execution.

• on_feed_start(self, feed)
• on_feed_input(self, feed)
• on_feed_metainfo(self, feed)
• on_feed_filter(self, feed)
• on_feed_download(self, feed)
• on_feed_modify(self, feed)
• on_feed_output(self, feed)
• on_feed_exit(self, feed)

Feed execution UML

Only most important events shown.

Other events

• on_feed_abort(self, feed)

Application events

• on_process_start(self, feed)
• on_process_end(self, feed)

These are triggered on startup and shutdown, not between feeds.

Registering custom events

Plugins may create new feed events, signature is on_feed_<name>(self, feed).

Adding commandline parameters

You can also add more commandline parameters. Check existing plugins. See  Optik homepage for documentation.

Feed class

Feed is a class that represents one feed in configuration file.

Feed's attributes:

name

name of the feed

config

feed specific configuration (dict).

entries

list containing entries?.

accepted

list containing accepted entries

rejected

list containing rejected entries

simple_persistence

provides easy key, value persistence for modules that do not require the full SQLAlchemy capabilities.

You shouldn't modify name or config as they are used by other modules.

Feed methods

accept(entry, [reason])

Mark entry accepted. Can still be rejected

reject(entry, [reason])

Mark entry to be removed. It will be removed from feed once module event returns.

fail(entry)

Mark entry to be failed (ie. download 404 etc)

get_input_url(keyword)

Helper method for modules. Return url for a specified keyword. Supports configuration in following forms:
..<keyword>: <address>
and
..<keyword>:
....url: <address> Will be moved in 1.0

Manager class

Accessible trough feed.manager

unit_test

True when executing unit tests

Plugin class

todo: write

Unit testing

Run tests

bin/paver test

Argument --online can be used to enable online tests

Run a single test

bin/nosetests tests/__init__.py:TestDisableBuiltins

Running IPython inside FlexGet

First install IPython

bin/easy_install ipython

And then place this where you wish to hack:

from IPython.Shell import IPShellEmbed
args = []
ipshell = IPShellEmbed(args)
ipshell()