• Document Up to Date
  • Updated On 4.1.6

Plugins

What are plugins?

A plugin can contain one or more extensions for CrafterCMS in a single package. These extensions can:

  • Extend Crafter Studio (authoring)

    • Add Studio authoring widgets that drive the Sidebar and other UI elements

    • Add embedded applications that render in their own page within Studio (see Plugin Host)

    • Add new Form Engine extensions including data sources and components

    • Add server-side code and services that drive the Studio UI extensions

  • Extend Crafter Engine and the project/web application (delivery)

    • Add new content types along with their Groovy controllers and FreeMarker templates

    • Add REST APIs and/or server-side code

    • Add 3rd party integrations to your web app

Plugins allows the user to easily add/extend functionality and features of a Web experience (site, mobile app) or the content authoring experience (authoring tools) or both. Examples of features/functionalities a user may want to add to their Web app may be a contact form, a chat bot or Website analytics.

Authoring Plugins

Authoring plugins are those that allow extending Crafter Studio through UI widgets, applications, and backend services.

UI Widgets and Standalone Apps

There are two types of UI plugins

  • UI widgets to be used around the different plugable sections of Studio UI

  • Standalone apps that run in the Plugin Host page

Plugins can access Studio client-side components (React), services and utilities through two main mechanisms:

  • When using npm, you can yarn add or npm i the @craftercms/studio-ui package

  • In the Studio browser runtime, the window.craftercms global

    • The following namespaces are available through window.craftercms

      • libs allows access to the published third party techs that power Studio UI

        • React

        • ReactDOM/Client

        • MaterialUI

        • ReactRedux

        • ReactIntl

        • createEmotion

        • ReduxToolkit (createAction)

        • RxJS

        • Emotion (createEmotion)

      • components contains Studio UI components

      • icons contains custom Studio UI icons

      • utils contains utilities for issuing AJAX requests, manipulation objects, arrays, strings, paths, content types, and much more

      • services contains functions to invoke Studio APIs categorized by module (e.g. users, groups, sites, auth, content types, etc.)

      • getStore returns the Redux store that powers the UI

We recommend using React and Material UI to develop your apps and widgets since these will provide the most coherent integration and seamless experience for the end user provided that CrafterCMS’ UI is developed in those technologies. This will also allow you to leverage all of Studio UI components, utilities and apis. See examples below for sample apps developed using these technologies.

Examples of UI Plugins are

  • Component library: illustrates the creation of a library of widgets that can be rendered throughout Studio UI.

  • Vite example: illustrates a plugin host app using a dev toolchain with dev server and how to optionally keep the app resources out of the project repo while still using the plugin host.

  • Vanilla Standalone: illustrates a simple standalone app with single JS entry point without transpilation.

Services

Through authoring plugins you can add your own service API rest scripts.

For example, you may want to create an API to connect and/or monitor AWS services and create a UI extension to consume your APIs.

Delivery Plugins

Delivery plugins allow you to extend the CrafterCMS project by adding content types (and all content types involve) and REST APIs.

Content Types

You can add Content Types including their definition, Groovy controller, Freemarker templates and accompanying assets.

For example, a delivery plugin may be a YouTube video component. The plugin would have the content type definition, its freemarker template and some JavaScript and CSS to render the content type when used. When the extension containing the content type is installed, authors would be able to make use of the YouTube video component adding videos to their content.

Scripts

Scripts allow you to add APIs to you CrafterCMS project application.

Templates

Through delivery plugins, you can add Freemarker templates to your project. Templates could be the rendering template of a content type or a Freemarker template hook (explained below). So, in summary, you can add templates to render your extension content types or to add functionality to pages via the Freemarker template hooks.

Freemarker Template Hooks

CrafterCMS provides a mechanism (a “hook”) for adding markup and defining macros for plugins via Freemarker templates. These templates, when the plugin has one of them will be automatically included in the project.

Here are the supported templates:

  • definitions.ftl: can be used to define macros for the plugin

  • head.ftl: can be used to add markup in the HTML <head> element

  • body_top.ftl: can be used to add markup at the beginning of the HTML <body> element

  • body_bottom.ftl: can be used to add markup at the end of the HTML <body> element

Place the template/s in the {your_plugin_folder}/delivery/templates directory location in your plugin like below:

 1{your_plugin_folder}/
 2  craftercms-plugin.yaml
 3  .crafter/
 4    screenshots/
 5      default.png
 6  delivery/
 7    templates/
 8      definitions.ftl
 9      head.ftl
10      body_top.ftl
11      body_bottom.ftl

The Google Analytics plugin for CrafterCMS available from the Marketplace uses a Freemarker template (google-analytics-plugin/delivery/templates/plugins/org/craftercms/plugin/google/analytics/head.ftl) to add markup in the HTML <head> element.

See https://github.com/craftercms/google-analytics-plugin/blob/master/delivery/templates/plugins/org/craftercms/plugin/google/analytics/head.ftl for an example on what can be in included in the template.

How Do I Make My Own Plugin?

You’ll need the following for creating your plugin:

  • Your plugin files

  • A plugin descriptor file, craftercms-plugin.yaml

Your plugin files/folders could be JavaScript files, XML files, Groovy scripts, images, CSS files, and more depending on the plugin type you’re creating.

The craftercms-plugin.yaml file contains information about your plugin, such as the license, the versions of CrafterCMS supported, and other configurations and metadata. See below for more information.

CrafterCMS Plugin Descriptor

The craftercms-plugin.yaml file contains information for use in CrafterCMS. This descriptor file contains information about your extension, such as the license, the versions of CrafterCMS supported, and other configurations and metadata. In this section, we’ll take a look at a plugin descriptor file.

Sample plugin descriptor file
 1# This file describes a plugin for use in CrafterCMS
 2
 3# The version of the format for this file
 4descriptorVersion: 2
 5
 6# Describe the plugin
 7plugin:
 8  type: site
 9  id: org.craftercms.plugin.test
10  name: Project Plugin Example
11  tags:
12    - test
13  version:
14    major: 3
15    minor: 0
16    patch: 1
17  description: A simple example for project plugins
18  documentation: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/craftercms/site-plugin-example/master/readme.md"
19  website:
20    name: Plugin Example
21    url: https://github.com/craftercms/site-plugins-example
22  media:
23    screenshots:
24      - title: CrafterCMS
25        description: CrafterCMS Example Plugin
26        url: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/craftercms/site-plugin-example/master/.crafter/screenshots/default.png"
27  developer:
28    company:
29      name: CrafterCMS
30      email: info@craftercms.com
31      url: https://craftercms.com
32  license:
33    name: MIT
34    url: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
35  crafterCmsVersions:
36    - major: 4
37      minor: 0
38      patch: 0
39  crafterCmsEditions:
40    - community
41    - enterprise
42  # Option auto-wiring section
43  # installation:

Here are some things to note in the descriptor file:

Descriptor file fields

Field

Required

Description

descriptorVersion

✓

The version of the format for this file which is currently 2

plugin.type

✓

Set the value to site

plugin.id

✓

A unique Id that is meaningful/recognizable to people who will be using the plugin

plugin.name

✓

The name displayed in the Crafter Marketplace.
Pick a unique name for your plugin. You can check in the Crafter Marketplace if
the name you picked does not exist yet. It’s also a best practice to provide a name
for your plugin that is meaningful or recognizable to users.
The name can be multiple words such as Contact Form

plugin.version

✓

The version number for the plugin

plugin.description

Contains a short description of the plugin and is displayed underneath the plugin name in
the Crafter Marketplace

plugin.documentation

Serves as the help block for the plugin. It contains a URL to the plugin’s documentation file
(must be in Markdown) containing information on how to use/configure the plugin. The documentation
will appear alongside the plugin in Crafter Studio and the Crafter Marketplace

plugin.website.url

Can be a page for more information on your plugin or for announcing updates, reporting bugs, etc.
from your user community.

plugin.media.url

The path to look for a representative image of the plugin.
CrafterCMS uses a default path for CrafterCMS to look for a default representative image of a plugin,|br| the url ../.crafter/screenshots/.

plugin.license

The license supported by the plugin

plugin.crafterCmsVersions

✓

Contains the CrafterCMS version/s that the plugin is compatible with
(look in the Release Notes section for the versions available), and you’ll need to keep
this up to date

Note

For the images to be used for the screenshots in the craftercms-plugin.yaml file, we recommend using images with approximately a 4:3 aspect ratio (width to height), such as an image sized at 1200x800

Auto-wiring

CrafterCMS supports automatically wiring your plugin to the corresponding configuration file in Studio during your plugin installation.

To setup a plugin to be automatically wired in the corresponding configuration file in Studio (for example, a form control, will be wired to the Content Type Editor Configuration file) during the installation, add the following to your craftercms-plugin.yaml descriptor file

Setup auto-wiring to Studio in descriptor file
 1installation:
 2 - type: preview-app
 3   parentXpath: //widget[@id='craftercms.components.ToolsPanel']
 4   elementXpath: //plugin[@id='org.craftercms.sampleComponentLibraryPlugin.components.reactComponent']
 5   element:
 6     name: configuration
 7     children:
 8     - name: widgets
 9       children:
10       - name: widget
11         attributes:
12         - name: id
13           value: org.craftercms.sampleComponentLibraryPlugin.components.reactComponent
14         children:
15         - name: plugin
16           attributes:
17           - name: id
18             value: org.craftercms.plugin.sidebar
19           - name: type
20             value: sidebar
21           - name: name
22             value: react-sample
23           - name: file
24             value: index.modern.js

where:

  • installation.type is the type of plugin for auto-wiring in Studio. Available values are form-control, form-datasource, preview-app, site-filter and site-context

  • installation.parentXpath is an XPath selector for the element where the plugin will be added, required when installation-type is preview-app

  • installation.elementXpath is an XPath selector to check if the plugin is already present in the configuration and used to remove the config when the plugin is uninstalled

  • installation.element.name is the element name to be wired in your project configuration file so the plugin will show up in Studio Available values are control (for form-control installation type), datasource (for form-datasource installation type) and for preview-app installation type, the start of the section the plugin needs to be inserted in, e.g. configuration, etc.

  • installation.element.children contains any number of name and children describing your plugin, such as the icon to be used by your plugin if applicable, or the plugin location, where:

    • name is the name of what’s being described, e.g. plugin or icon

    • children contains any number of name and value and can contain the class (icon), plugin id, plugin type, plugin name and plugin files/folders (plugin location) and its corresponding values


Below are examples on how to setup auto-wiring in Studio for various plugin types:

Below is a sample auto-wiring setup for a form control.

Example installation for a form-control
 1installation:
 2  - type: form-control
 3    elementXpath: //control/plugin[pluginId='org.craftercms.plugin.control']
 4    element:
 5      name: control
 6      children:
 7        - name: plugin
 8          children:
 9            - name: pluginId
10              value: org.craftercms.plugin.control
11            - name: type
12              value: control
13            - name: name
14              value: text-input
15            - name: filename
16              value: main.js
17        - name: icon
18          children:
19            - name: class
20              value: fa-pencil-square-o

See here for examples of plugins auto-wired in Studio.

Passing Parameters to Project via Plugins

Some parameters may need to be passed to the project instead of left in the plugin, say, AWS credentials, Box credentials, CommerceTools credentials, etc. CrafterCMS supports passing parameters to projects from plugins.

To add parameters to be passed to projects via a plugin, simply add the following to the craftercms-plugin.yaml file

parameters:
 - label: My Parameter Label
   name: myParam
   type: STRING
   description: My parameter
   required: true

where:

  • label: Label to display for parameter on Create Project dialog

  • name: Name of the parameter in camelCase notation

  • type: Type of the parameter, possible values are STRING and PASSWORD. The default is STRING

  • description: Description of the parameter

  • required: Indicates whether the parameter is required. The default is true

To use the parameters in scripts and template files, simply use pluginConfig, e.g. pluginConfig.getString("PARAM_NAME") where PARAM_NAME is the name of the parameter.

Example

Let’s take a look at an example of a plugin with parameters. We’ll use the CrafterCMS Stripe Plugin plugin (available from the Marketplace) to see how parameters are added to plugins that are then passed on to the projects after installing.

  1. Let’s take a look at the parameters in the craftercms-plugin.yaml file of the plugin. In the craftercms-plugin.yaml in the plugin folder, scroll to the following lines in the file:

    stripe-plugin/craftercms-plugin.yaml
     1...
 2
 3parameters:
 4  - label: Publishable key
 5    name: publishableKey
 6    description: Stripe Publishable key
 7  - label: Secret key
 8    name: secretKey
 9    description: Stripe secret key
10  - label: Callback domain
11    name: callbackDomain
12    description: Callback domain of your application

  2. Next, we’ll take a look at how to use the parameters passed in your scripts using pluginConfig in the checkout-session.get.groovy file

    stripe-plugin/delivery/scripts/rest/plugins/org/craftercms/plugin/stripe/checkout-session.get.groovy
    ...

Stripe.apiKey = pluginConfig.getString('secretKey')

...

  3. Let’s now take a look at the plugin parameters in action during the plugin installation. Open the project you want to install the stripe-plugin into. Next, click on Project Tools -> Plugin Management -> Search & Install and search for stripe. For the example below, we’ll be installing the plugin in the Editorial project.

    Search for stripe in "Plugin Management"

  4. Click on the Install button to install the stripe-plugin. The next screen will now ask the user for the parameters we saw listed in the craftercms-plugin.yaml file:

    User prompted for values for parameters in the plugin

Directory Structure

A plugin consist of a group of files that are copied to the project repository when installed. To create your own plugin, your files/folders needs to go in the corresponding type of plugin folder, following the structure below:

  • craftercms-plugin.yaml: the plugin descriptor, see CrafterCMS Plugin Descriptor for details

  • .crafter

    • screenshots

      • default.png : the default representative image of the plugin placed under the default path .crafter/screenshots/

  • authoring: contains all files related to Crafter Studio extensions

    • content-types

      • component: contains configuration files for components, see below for an example

      • page: contains configuration files for pages

    • static-assets: contains files for Studio UI plugins

    • scripts

      • classes: contains Groovy classes

      • rest: contains REST Groovy scripts

  • delivery: contains all files related to Crafter Engine extensions

    • templates: contains Freemarker templates

    • static-assets: contains binary files

    • scripts

      • classes: contains Groovy classes

      • components: contains Groovy scripts for components

      • controllers: contains Groovy controllers

      • filters: contains Groovy filters

      • pages: contains Groovy scripts for pages

      • rest: contains Groovy REST scripts

An easy way to develop new plugins is to start with an empty project and when all the files are ready copy them to a new repository following the given structure. However all references should be updated to match the final destination of the file:

Location in the plugin repository

Location in the project repository

authoring/content-types/component/*

/config/studio/content-types/component/<plugin id path>/*

authoring/content-types/page/*

/config/studio/content-types/page/<plugin id path>/*

authoring/static-assets/*

/config/studio/static-assets/plugins/<plugin id path>/*

authoring/scripts/classes/*

/config/studio/scripts/classes/<plugin id path>/*

authoring/scripts/rest/*

/config/studio/plugins/scripts/rest/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/templates/*

/templates/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/static-assets/*

/static-assets/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/classes/*

/scripts/classes/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/components/*

/scripts/components/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/controllers/*

/scripts/controllers/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/filters/*

/scripts/filters/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/pages/*

/scripts/pages/<plugin id path>/*

delivery/scripts/rest/*

/scripts/rest/<plugin id path>/*

Your plugin is installed in a project via the Marketplace or via copy-plugin CLI command, your plugin descriptor containing the directory structure will be read and corresponding plugin files copied to the project.

UI Plugin Directory Structure

Authoring plugins should use the following directory structure:

{PLUGIN_DIRECTORY}/authoring/static-assets/{ID}/{CATEGORY}/{NAME}/

where:

  • ID: A directory named after the plugin id (e.g. org.craftercms.sample)

  • CATEGORY: A directory named after the type of plugin (e.g. control, datasource, sidebar, app, lib, etc.)

  • NAME: A directory named after the plugin name

    • Plugin sources and/or build output of the plugin would be placed here.

Example Directory Structure

Here’s an example directory structure for a plugin with the pluginId value set to org.craftercms.sample :

Directory structure example
 1{your_plugin_folder}/
 2  craftercms-plugin.yaml
 3  .crafter/
 4    screenshots/
 5      default.png
 6  authoring/
 7    static-assets/
 8      plugins/
 9        org/
10          craftercms/
11            sample/
12              controls/
13                color-picker/
14                  main.js
15                  style.css
16  delivery/
17    scripts/
18      rest/
19        org/
20          craftercms/
21            sample/
22              hello.groovy
23    templates/
24      org/
25        craftercms/
26          sample/
27            head.ftl

The repository here contains a skeleton plugin directory structure for your use. You can use the repository to help you start create your plugin. Simply fill in the plugin descriptor file craftercms-plugin.yaml file and remove items you don’t need

Create your plugin

To create a plugin, a descriptor file craftercms-plugin.yaml is required. This article contains more information on what’s in the file and an example file.

The next requirement for creating your plugin are the plugin files. Depending on the plugin type you are creating, this could be a JavaScript file, Freemarker template files, Groovy file, XML file, etc. The plugin file/s should then be placed in a directory structure as described above depending on the plugin created. For example, say your plugin is a component content type, your plugin files should be placed under the directory authoring/content-types/component

Example directory structure for a component content type plugin
authoring/
  content-types/
    component/
      <your_component_name>/
        config.xml
        controller.groovy
        form-definition.xml

CrafterCMS uses a default path to look for a default representative image of a plugin, the url ../.crafter/screenshots/. Here’s a sample plugin files/directory with a default image to represent the plugin:

Example directory structure for a component content type plugin with a default representative image
.crafter/
  screenshots/
    default.png
authoring/
  content-types/
    component/
      <your_component_name>/
        config.xml
        controller.groovy
        form-definition.xml

Reusing libraries written in Java in your plugin

Some users may have some libraries written in Java that they may want to reuse in their plugin. To reuse those libraries, do the following:

  • Publish your JARs to Maven Central

  • Pull the JARs from Maven in a small Groovy script in your plugin via Grapes

    If the JAR is available in Maven Central

    Pull JAR available in Maven Central via Grapes
    @Grab(value='com.example:my-java-plugin:1.0.0', initClass=false)
import com.example.java.Plugin // This class is made up, it can be anything

    If the JAR is in a private Maven Repo

    Pull JAR available in private Maven Repo via Grapes
    @GrabResolver(name='my-repo', root='https://maven.example.com/')
@Grab(value='com.example:my-java-plugin:1.0.0', initClass=false)
import com.example.java.Plugin // This class is made up, it can be anything

Publishing Your Plugin

To publish a plugin in the Crafter Marketplace you can follow the instructions in Create Extensions for the Crafter Marketplace

Retrieving Extension Assets

At the low level, Crafter Studio APIs provide an endpoint that gets a file for a given plugin, (i.e. getPluginFile). This API takes care of setting all the right headers for whatever kind of asset you’re retrieving (JavaScript, CSS, image, etc). There are also higher level mechanisms for developers to load and use plugins like the Plugin host or through the Crafter CLI.

If you need to manually load assets from your plugin (e.g. set the src of a <script />, set the href of a <link />, set the src of an <img />, etc.), you should use the following URL

/studio/1/plugin/file?siteId={siteId}&type={yourPluginType}&name={yourPluginName}&file={fileName}

If your extensions is nested on a plugin id directory, you should also include the pluginId argument.

/studio/1/plugin/file?siteId={siteId}&pluginId={yourPluginId}&type={yourPluginType}&name={yourPluginName}&file={fileName}

Installing a Plugin

Plugins may be installed a couple of ways depending on where the plugins are located:

After installing a plugin, depending on the plugin you created, the plugin will be be installed under the:

  • {siteRoot}/config/studio/static-assets/plugins/{yourPluginId}/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}/

  • {siteRoot}/config/studio/content-types/component/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}/

  • {siteRoot}/config/studio/content-types/page/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}/

  • {siteRoot}/templates/{yourPluginId}/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}

  • {siteRoot}/static-assets/{yourPluginId}/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}

  • {siteRoot}/scripts/{yourScriptType}/{yourPluginId}/{yourPluginType}/{yourPluginName}

Install a plugin from the Crafter Marketplace

Once a plugin is published to the Crafter Marketplace it can be installed using the Crafter Studio user interface or the REST API:

Note

To access the Plugin Management tool or use the install plugin REST API your user needs to have the following permissions:

  • list_plugins

  • install_plugins

For more information on installing plugins from the Crafter Marketplace using Crafter Studio, see Plugin Management

Install a plugin in development from a Studio local folder

For developers who want to test out their plugins before submitting to the Crafter Marketplace, CrafterCMS provides a CLI command copy-plugin for installing a plugin from a Studio local folder into a project using the crafter-cli.

Let’s take a look at an example to show how to install a plugin using the CrafterCMS cli copy-plugin command. We’ll use a project named myeditorial where we will be installing the plugin, and the plugin we want to install located in /Users/myuser/plugins/sidebar-plugin

To install the plugin sidebar-plugin to our project myeditorial, we’ll run the copy-plugin command like below:

./crafter-cli copy-plugin -e local -s myeditorial --path /users/myuser/plugins/sidebar-plugin

Remember that the connection to CrafterCMS needs to be setup via the add-environment command before using any of the crafter-cli commands.

For more information on the copy-plugin command, see the command line help

Example Creating a Plugin

Let’s take a look at an example of creating a component content type plugin named My Component

First, we’ll configure the descriptor file craftercms-plugin.yaml file for our plugin

Descriptor file for the example component content type plugin
 1# This file describes a plugin for use in CrafterCMS
 2
 3# The version of the format for this file
 4descriptorVersion: 2
 5
 6# Describe the plugin
 7plugin:
 8  type: site
 9  id: org.craftercms.plugin.mycomponent
10  name: My Component Plugin Example
11  tags:
12    - test
13  version:
14    major: 4
15    minor: 0
16    patch: 0
17  description: My simple component content type plugin
18  website:
19    name: Component Content Type Plugin Example
20    url: https://craftercms.com
21  media:
22    screenshots:
23      - title: CrafterCMS
24        description: CrafterCMS Example Component Plugin
25        url: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/craftercms/site-plugin-example/master/.crafter/screenshots/default.png"
26  developer:
27    company:
28      name: CrafterCMS
29      email: info@craftercms.com
30      url: https://craftercms.com
31  license:
32    name: MIT
33    url: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
34  crafterCmsVersions:
35    - major: 4
36      minor: 0
37      patch: 0
38  crafterCmsEditions:
39    - community
40    - enterprise

We’ll then create the directory structure for a component content type plugin authoring/content-types/component/*, to place our plugin files in,

Directory structure for component content type plugin My Component
authoring/
  content-types/
    component/
      mycomponent/
        config.xml
        controller.groovy
        form-definition.xml

Here are the plugin files:

authoring/content-types/component/mycomponent/config.xml
 1<content-type name="/component/mycomponent" is-wcm-type="true">
 2<label>My Component</label>
 3<form>/component/plugins/org/craftercms/mycomponent/mycomponent</form>
 4<form-path>simple</form-path>
 5<model-instance-path>NOT-USED-BY-SIMPLE-FORM-ENGINE</model-instance-path>
 6<file-extension>xml</file-extension>
 7<content-as-folder>false</content-as-folder>
 8<previewable>false</previewable>
 9<quickCreate>false</quickCreate>
10<quickCreatePath></quickCreatePath>
11<noThumbnail>true</noThumbnail>
12<image-thumbnail></image-thumbnail>
13</content-type>
authoring/content-types/component/mycomponent/form-definition.xml
  1<form>
  2    <title>Test</title>
  3    <description></description>
  4    <objectType>component</objectType>
  5    <content-type>/component/plugins/org/craftercms/plugin/mycomponent/mycomponent</content-type>
  6    <imageThumbnail>undefined</imageThumbnail>
  7    <quickCreate>false</quickCreate>
  8    <quickCreatePath></quickCreatePath>
  9    <properties>        <property>
 10            <name>display-template</name>
 11            <label>Display Template</label>
 12            <value>/templates/plugins/org/craftercms/plugin/mycomponent/mycomponent.ftl</value>
 13            <type>template</type>
 14        </property>
 15        <property>
 16            <name>no-template-required</name>
 17            <label>No Template Required</label>
 18            <value></value>
 19            <type>boolean</type>
 20        </property>
 21        <property>
 22            <name>merge-strategy</name>
 23            <label>Merge Strategy</label>
 24            <value>inherit-levels</value>
 25            <type>string</type>
 26        </property>
 27    </properties>
 28    <sections>        <section>
 29            <title>Test Properties</title>
 30            <description></description>
 31            <defaultOpen>true</defaultOpen>
 32            <fields>
 33                <field>
 34                    <type>auto-filename</type>
 35                    <id>file-name</id>
 36                    <iceId></iceId>
 37                    <title>Component ID</title>
 38                    <description></description>
 39                    <defaultValue></defaultValue>
 40                    <help></help>
 41                    <properties>
 42                        <property>
 43                            <name>size</name>
 44                            <value>50</value>
 45                            <type>int</type>
 46                        </property>
 47                        <property>
 48                            <name>maxlength</name>
 49                            <value>50</value>
 50                            <type>int</type>
 51                        </property>
 52                        <property>
 53                            <name>readonly</name>
 54                            <value></value>
 55                            <type>boolean</type>
 56                        </property>
 57                    </properties>
 58                    <constraints>
 59                    </constraints>
 60                </field>
 61                <field>
 62                    <type>input</type>
 63                    <id>internal-name</id>
 64                    <iceId></iceId>
 65                    <title>Internal Name</title>
 66                    <description></description>
 67                    <defaultValue></defaultValue>
 68                    <help></help>
 69                    <properties>
 70                        <property>
 71                            <name>size</name>
 72                            <value>50</value>
 73                            <type>int</type>
 74                        </property>
 75                        <property>
 76                            <name>maxlength</name>
 77                            <value>50</value>
 78                            <type>int</type>
 79                        </property>
 80                    </properties>
 81                    <constraints>
 82                        <constraint>
 83                            <name>required</name>
 84                            <value><![CDATA[true]]></value>
 85                            <type>boolean</type>
 86                        </constraint>
 87                    </constraints>
 88                </field>
 89                <field>
 90                    <type>input</type>
 91                    <id>someValue_s</id>
 92                    <iceId></iceId>
 93                    <title>Some Value</title>
 94                    <description></description>
 95                    <defaultValue></defaultValue>
 96                    <help></help>
 97                    <properties>
 98                        <property>
 99                            <name>size</name>
100                            <value>50</value>
101                            <type>int</type>
102                        </property>
103                        <property>
104                            <name>maxlength</name>
105                            <value>50</value>
106                            <type>int</type>
107                        </property>
108                        <property>
109                            <name>readonly</name>
110                            <value></value>
111                            <type>boolean</type>
112                        </property>
113                        <property>
114                            <name>tokenize</name>
115                            <value>false</value>
116                            <type>boolean</type>
117                        </property>
118                    </properties>
119                    <constraints>
120                        <constraint>
121                            <name>required</name>
122                            <value><![CDATA[]]></value>
123                            <type>boolean</type>
124                        </constraint>
125                        <constraint>
126                            <name>pattern</name>
127                            <value><![CDATA[]]></value>
128                            <type>string</type>
129                        </constraint>
130                    </constraints>
131                </field>
132            </fields>
133        </section>
134    </sections>
135    <datasources>    </datasources>
136</form>
authoring/content-types/component/mycomponent/controller.groovy
 1import scripts.libs.CommonLifecycleApi;
 2
 3def contentLifecycleParams =[:];
 4contentLifecycleParams.site = site;
 5contentLifecycleParams.path = path;
 6contentLifecycleParams.user = user;
 7contentLifecycleParams.contentType = contentType;
 8contentLifecycleParams.contentLifecycleOperation = contentLifecycleOperation;
 9contentLifecycleParams.contentLoader = contentLoader;
10contentLifecycleParams.applicationContext = applicationContext;
11
12def controller = new CommonLifecycleApi(contentLifecycleParams);
13controller.execute();

The plugin is now ready to be tested. We’ll install our plugin located under /users/myuser/component-plugin using the crafter-cli command copy-plugin to test it out to a project named editorial

./crafter-cli copy-plugin -e local -s editorial --path /users/myuser/component-plugin

After installing our plugin, we can now verify that our component plugin is available in projectTools Content Types

Example component content type plugin now available in project editorial

Some More Examples & Resources

Here are some more examples and resources to help you create your plugins

Guides

Below are more authoring examples of creating plugins:

Example Plugins

CrafterCMS also provides various plugin examples available from the Marketplace to help you create your own plugins. These plugins can be installed to your project using Plugin Management in projectTools through the Studio UI. See Plugin Management for more information on installing plugins from the Crafter Marketplace.