Creating a Plugin

• Plugin Lifecycle
• Terminology

Much of the built in functionality in Sitegen is implemented by plugins. You can create your own plugins to add custom functionality to the various steps of building the site. A plugin is implemented as a MoonScript class. Functionality is injected into the build by implemending certain properties or methods. The Plugin Lifecycle describes what happens to a plugin when Sitegen builds the site.

Plugin Lifecycle

• Each plugin is instantiated for the site being compiling. The constructor receives one argument, the instance of the site. The instances of the plugins are stored in the site.
• Before Sitegen reads site.moon…
  • For each plugin that provides a mixin_funcs property:
    • Each method listed in mixin_funcs is copied to the site’s config scope. These methods can be called from site.moon, they are bound to the instance of the plugin
  • For each plugin with a type_name property:
    • Plugin is saved as an aggregator for that type
• As Sitegen renders each page…
  • For each page that has an is_a property:
    • Any plugins marked as aggregators with a type_name matching a value in is_a are called via the on_aggregate method. The current page is passed to the method as the first argument
  • For each plugin that provides a tpl_helpers property:
    • Each method listed in tpl_helpers is made available to be called in any template, the methods are bound the instance of the plugin. They will also receive an instance of a page before any arguments passed to the method.
• After Sitegen has rendered all the pages…
  • Any plugins implementing a write method are called. The write method is called with no arguments. This is when a plugin can create any necessary side effect files

Terminology

site scope: the object that represents the function environment that is used when running the initialize function. The mixin_funcs property on a plugin is used to extend this scope.

template scope: the object that holds all the fields available to any template rendered for that page. The tpl_helpers property on a plugin is used to extend this scope.