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• Updated On 4.0.1

Crafter Studio Experience Builder Plugin Example

The Experience Builder panel is the panel on the right of Studio that is enabled by clicking on Edit mode (pencil icon) or Move mode (two vertical ellipsis icon) on the top right of Studio or, by hitting the e or m key on your keyboard

Let’s take a look at an example of creating an experience builder panel plugin in Studio using a project called My Editorial created using the Website Editorial blueprint.

1. The first thing we have to do is to create the folder structure where we will be placing the JS file for our experience builder plugin. We’ll follow the convention listed in UI Plugin Directory Structure. For our example, CATEGORY is experiencebuilder and the NAME is test-experiencebuilder

   In a local folder, create the descriptor file for your plugin craftercms-plugin.yaml with the plugin.id set to org.craftercms.plugin.experiencebuilder, then create the following folder structure:

   Experience Builder Plugin Directory Structure

   <plugin-folder>/
     craftercms-plugin.yaml
     authoring/
       static-assets/
         plugins/
           org/
             craftercms/
               plugin/
                 experiencebuilder/
                   experiencebuilder/
                     test-experiencebuilder/
   

   
   

   We will be placing the JS file implementing the toolbar plugin under the test-experiencebuilder folder. For our example, the <plugin-folder> is located here: /users/myuser/myplugins/experiencebuilder-plugin

   
   

   For our example, the <plugin-folder> is located here: /users/myuser/myplugins/experiencebuilder-plugin

2. We’ll create the JavaScript file for our plugin by following the instructions in the plugin example here which will generate the index.js file.

   Inside the test-experiencebuilder folder, create two empty files, index.css and script.js, and place the index.js file in it.

3. To setup our experience builder plugin to be automatically wired in the corresponding configuration file in Studio (which for an experience builder, is the User Interface Configuration file) during the installation, add the following to your craftercms-plugin.yaml descriptor file

   craftercms-plugin.yaml

   installation:
     - type: preview-app
       parentXpath: //widget[@id='craftercms.components.ICEToolsPanel']
       testXpath: //plugin[@id='org.craftercms.plugin.experience.builder']
       element:
         name: configuration
         children:
         - name: widgets
           children:
           - name: widget
             attributes:
             - name: id
               value: org.craftercms.sampleComponentLibraryPlugin.components.reactComponent
             children:
             - name: plugin
               attributes:
               - name: id
                 value: org.craftercms.plugin
               - name: type
                 value: experiencebuilder
               - name: name
                 value: test-experiencebuilder
               - name: file
                 value: index.js
   

   
   

   Remember to use the same value used in plugin.id (found at the top of the descriptor file) for the installation section plugin.id which for our example is org.craftercms.plugin

4. After placing your plugin files and setting up auto-wiring, the plugin may now be installed for testing/debugging using the crafter-cli command copy-plugin.

   
   
   

   When running a crafter-cli command, the connection to CrafterCMS needs to be setup via the add-environment command. Once the connection has been established, we can now install the plugin to the project my-editorial by running the following:

   ./crafter-cli copy-plugin -e local -s my-editorial --path /users/myuser/myplugins/experiencebuilder-plugin
   

   
   

5. Let’s take a look at our plugin in action by clicking on the pencil icon at the top right of your browser to open the experience builder panel

   
   
   

   Here’s the auto-wired section in the configuration after installing the plugin:

   <siteUi>
     ...
     <widget id="craftercms.components.ICEToolsPanel">
       <configuration>
         <widgets>
           <widget id="craftercms.components.ToolsPanelPageButton">
             <configuration>
               <target id="icePanel"/>
               <title id="previewSearchPanel.title" defaultMessage="Search"/>
               <icon id="@mui/icons-material/SearchRounded"/>
               <widgets>
                 <widget id="craftercms.components.PreviewSearchPanel"/>
               </widgets>
             </configuration>
           </widget>
           ...
           <widget id="org.craftercms.sampleExperienceBuilderPlugin.components.reactComponent">
             <plugin id="org.craftercms.plugin"
                     type="experiencebuilder"
                     name="test-experiencebuilder"
                     file="index.js"/>
           </widget>
          </widgets>
       </configuration>
      </widget>
      ...