[Epic] Plugin Framework about insomnia HOT 8 CLOSED

Closing this one, as a basic plugin system is underway, and future work will be done as smaller, separate tasks.

from insomnia.

How would be plugin associated with Insomnia app?

from insomnia.

@Andreyco If plugins are HTTP-based like the description states, I don't see any clear elegant solutions. If plugins were run as JS child processes it would be much easier.

Here are a few ideas I had so far:

• plugin contains manifest file which describes how to interact with it
• plugin adds itself by pinging the Insomnia app through a protocol request: insomnia://plugins/add?...

Any other ideas?

from insomnia.

Is it possible to associate schema/file extension to Electron application? If so, plugin could be packed as archive of target type. When opened, it could be copied to Insomnia sandbox (or whatever Electron offers) and run after restart.

We should copy Chrome/Firefox behaviour here.

In my understanding, plugin should be able to register pre/post request hooks. Modify payload, or do whatever it needs get done.

Plugin should be able to:

• read/modify request payload
• read/modify response payload
• register UI elements in app
• set env variables
• set it's priority somehow (in case it's output should affect request - could be tricky)
• more?!

Also, there should be mechanism to run Insomnia without running plugins in case something breaks ;)

from insomnia.

@Andreyco I think it's an awesome idea to model this system after the way browsers do it.

Like Chrome's .crx extension files, Insomnia could have a .insomnia extension. The package format could be a simple zip file with the extension renamed.

There are ways to set an Electron app to open certain file extensions (I'm pretty sure), but they could also be added via an open dialog, drag-n-drop handler, or command line interface.

from insomnia.

I believe it can be a good idea to mimic not chrome by atom's plug-ins system http://flight-manual.atom.io/using-atom/sections/atom-packages/
It looks completely possible to store plug-ins remotely, besides that there are some extra pros:

• plug-in can have it own dependencies
• no need to implement a new file type and methods to work with it

I'll leave the link to atom package manager here for you to take a look https://github.com/atom/apm

from insomnia.

@ValeriaVG there is also https://hyper.is/ which piggy-backs on npm for plugins. That might be a good thing to start with.

After taking a peek, it looks like apm is just a small wrapper around npm.

from insomnia.

@gschier Yes, it's just a wrapper. And hyper looks promising at first sight. But how it will work with http - based plug-ins?

from insomnia.