---
id: js-setup
title: Desktop Plugin Development
---

## Workflow

In a nutshell, the workflow for creating Flipper Desktop Plugin is the following:
1) [To make your custom plugins discoverable by Flipper](#dynamically-loading-plugins), create a directory to contain them, e.g. `~/flipper-plugins`, and add this path to the `pluginPaths` property in the Flipper config (`~/.flipper/config.json`).
2) Create a directory for your plugin inside the directory created at step 1, e.g. `~/flipper-plugins/my-plugin`.
3) [Define your plugin](#plugin-definition) in the directory created at step 2.
4) [Start a development build of Flipper](#development-build) which will automatically [transpile, bundle and load](#transpiling-and-bundling) the defined plugin, as well as all other plugins found in the directories specified as `pluginPaths` in the Flipper config.
5) [Debug your plugin](debugging), make necessary changes and verify them in the running Flipper development build instance which will re-load the changed components automatically.
6) If you want to be sure the plugin works as expected with a release build, you can [package it as a tarball](#packaging-to-file) and [install it from the file system](#installation-from-file) into a released version of Flipper.
7) Finally, [bundle the plugin and publish it to npm](#publishing-to-npm), so it can be discovered and installed by any Flipper user.

## Dynamically Loading Plugins

Flipper loads and runs plugins it finds in a configurable location. The paths searched are specified in `~/.flipper/config.json`. These paths, `pluginPaths`, should contain one folder for each of the plugins it stores. An example config setting and plugin file structure is shown below:

`~/.flipper/config.json`:
```
{
  ...,
  "pluginPaths": ["~/flipper-plugins"]
}
```
Plugin File example structure:
```
~ flipper-plugins/
    my-plugin/
      package.json
      src/index.tsx
      dist/bundle.js
```

## Plugin Definition

All Flipper Desktop plugins must be self-contained in a directory. This directory must contain at a minimum package.json and entry source file, e.g.:
* package.json
* src/index.tsx

The best way to initialize a JS plugin is to create a directory, and run `yarn init` inside it. By convention, the `name` of a Flipper plugin package should start with `flipper-plugin-`, e.g. `flipper-plugin-myplugin`.

Make sure that the `id` field in your package.json is the same as the identifier of the client plugin, e.g. if your Java plugin returns `myplugin` from its `getId()` method, the `id` field in your `package.json` should also be `myplugin`.

Flipper has [tooling for transpiling and bundling](#transpiling-and-bundling) which allows writing plugins in plain ES6 JavaScript, [Flow](https://flow.org/) or [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) but we recommend you use **TypeScript** for the best development experience. We also recommend you use the file extension `.tsx` when using TypeScript which adds support for inline React expressions.

After `yarn init` finishes, create an `src/index.tsx` file which will be the entry point to your plugin. An example `package.json` file could look like this:

Example `package.json`:
```
{
  "name": "flipper-plugin-myplugin",
  "id": "myplugin",
  "specVersion": 2,
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "dist/bundle.js",
  "flipperBundlerEntry": "src/index.tsx",
  "license": "MIT",
  "keywords": ["flipper-plugin"],
  "title": "My Plugin",
  "icon": "apps",
  "bugs": {
    "email": "you@example.com"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "prepack": "flipper-pkg bundle"
  }
  "dependencies": {
    "flipper": "latest"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "flipper-pkg": "latest"
  }
}
```

Important attributes of `package.json`:

- `name` Npm package name. Should start with `flipper-plugin-` by convention, so Flipper plugins can be easily found on npm.

- `specVersion` Version of the Flipper plugin specification. Currently, Flipper supports plugins defined using version 2 of the specification which is described in the current section.

- `id` Used as the plugin native identifier and **must match the mobile plugin identifier**.

- `main` Points to the plugin bundle which will be loaded by Flipper. The "flipper-pkg" utility uses this field to determine output location during plugin bundling.

- `flipperBundlerEntry` Points to the source entry point which will be used for plugin code bundling. "flipper-pkg" takes the path specified in `flipperBundlerEntry` as source, transpiles and bundles it, and saves the output to the path specified in `main`.

- `keywords` The field must contain the `flipper-plugin` keyword, otherwise Flipper won't discover the plugin. Additionally, the field can also contain any other keywords for better plugin discoverability.

- `title` Shown in the main sidebar as the human-readable name of the plugin.

- `icon` Determines the plugin icon which is displayed in the main sidebar. The list of available icons is static for now: https://github.com/facebook/flipper/blob/master/desktop/static/icons.json.

- `bugs` Specify an email and/or url, where plugin bugs should be reported.

In `index.tsx` you will define the plugin in JavaScript. This file must export a default class that extends `FlipperPlugin`. Browse our [JS API docs](js-plugin-api) to see what you can do, and make sure to check out our [UI Component Library](ui-components) for lots of pre-made components.

Example `index.tsx`:
```js
import {FlipperPlugin} from 'flipper';

export default class extends FlipperPlugin {
  render() {
    return 'hello world';
  }
}
```

### npm dependencies

If you need any dependencies in your plugin, you can install them using `yarn add`.

## Development Build

A Flipper development build should be used for plugin debugging. It is also used for Flipper core development and provides the following features:

- Automatic transpilation and bundling of loaded plugins: ES6, Flow, TypeScript, JSX.
- Automatic refresh after code changes.
- React and Redux Dev Tools.
- [Debugging](debugging) using Chrome Dev Tools or Visual Studio Code.

Prerequisites for Flipper development build:
- node ≥ 8
- yarn ≥ 1.5
- git
- watchman

To start a development build, clone the Flipper repository, install the dependencies and execute the `start` script:

```
git clone https://github.com/facebook/flipper.git
cd flipper/desktop
yarn
yarn start
```

## Transpiling and Bundling

As we already mentioned, the [Flipper development build](#development-build) automatically transpiles and bundles plugins on loading. It is capable of all the ES6 goodness, Flow annotations, TypeScript, as well as JSX and applies the required babel-transforms.

The Flipper release build, in contrast, does not transpile or bundle plugins on loading. For production usage, plugins should be [bundled before publishing](#packaging-and-publishing) using [flipper-pkg](https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/package/flipper-pkg). This utility applies the same modifications as the plugin loader of the development build.

The tool is published to npm and can be installed as a `devDependency` for the plugin package, or as a global CLI tool:
```
yarn global add flipper-pkg
```

Then, to bundle the plugin, execute the following command in its folder:
```
flipper-pkg bundle
```
This command reads the `package.json`, takes the path specified in the `flipperBundleEntry` field as entry point, transpiles and bundles all the required code, and outputs the produced bundle to the path specified in field `main`.

You can get the list of other available commands by invoking `flipper-pkg help`, and get detailed description for any command by invoking `flipper-pkg help [COMMAND]`. You can also check README on npmjs.com for usage details: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flipper-pkg.

## Packaging and Publishing

### Publishing to npm

Flipper plugins are essentially standard npm packages. So you can publish them by executing `yarn publish` or `npm publish` in the plugin directory. The only requirements are:
1) `package.json` and code [must follow the Flipper plugin specification](#plugin-definition)
2) code must be bundled using "flipper-pkg" before packing or publishing. This can be done by executing `flipper-pkg bundle` on `prepack` step:
    ```
    {
      ...
      "devDependencies": {
        ...
        "flipper-pkg": "latest"
      },
      "scripts": {
        ...
        "prepack": "flipper-pkg bundle"
      }
    }
    ```

### Packaging to File

To package plugin as a tarball, you can use the same command as for packaging any other npm package, e.g. `yarn pack` or `npm pack`.

"flipper-pkg" also provides a convenient command `pack` which:
1) Installs the plugin dependencies
2) Bundles the plugin
3) Creates the tarball and saves it at the specified location

E.g. to package plugin located at `~/flipper-plugins/my-plugin` to `~/Desktop`, execute the following command:
```
flipper-pkg pack ~/flipper-plugins/my-plugin -o ~/Desktop
```

### Installation from File

It is possible to install plugins into Flipper from tarballs. This is useful in cases when you need to try a plugin version which is not published to npm, or if you want to distribute plugin privately:
1) Launch Flipper
2) Click the "Manage Plugins" button in the bottom-left corner
3) Select the "Install Plugins" tab in the opened sheet
4) Specify the path to the plugin package (or just drag and drop it) and click "Install"
