Files
flipper/docs/tutorial/js-setup.md
Michel Weststrate 2f5096ddc8 Improve setup documentation
Summary:
Random observations

1. RN already generates the Flipper initialization code out of the box
2. This code assumes a prefixed namespace: `facebook.flipper`. Maybe it would be better if that were `appname`, but that seems an unnecessary burden at this point, preventing direct copy / paste possibilities
3. Out of the box, the generated code by RN doesn't align with the code provided here, because no `ReactInstanceManager` argument is passed in (nor does it seem to be available in a straight-forward way)
4. patch MainApplication.java with `getReactNativeHost().getReactInstanceManager()`
5. turn this into an explicit section: https://fbflipper.com/docs/tutorial/js-table.html#dynamic-plugin-loading. Also explain that when using `node_modules`, config doesn't need to be changed?
6. xcode 10! sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode_10.XXX/Contents/Developer/
7. Also tried to install Reactotron plugins by Infinite Red, got that compilable in the end, but the andoid / ios implementations still seems to be stub, so I'll try to follow up with them later, to be notified when they actually have something

Reviewed By: passy

Differential Revision: D18349098

fbshipit-source-id: 233bbe20a37c57c7dfe08c8fccdd4508bdefe96f
2019-11-08 04:40:27 -08:00

1.9 KiB

id, title, sidebar_label
id title sidebar_label
js-setup Building a Flipper desktop plugin Building a desktop plugin

Now that we have the native side covered, let's display the data we're sending on the desktop side.

Custom cards UI for our sea mammals plugin

Dynamic Plugin loading

By default, Flipper will start with the plugins it was bundled with. You can configure it to also look for plugins in custom directories. To do that, modify the ~/.flipper/config.json file that is created the first time you start Flipper and add a newly created directory the pluginPaths attribute.

Your file will then look something like this:

{
  "pluginPaths": [
    "~/Flipper/custom-plugins/"
  ],
  ...
}

Creating the Plugin Package

With the loading part out of the way, we can create the new plugin. For that, first create a new folder inside the custom plugins directory. Then use yarn init (npm init if that's more your style) to initialise a new JavaScript package:

$ cd ~/Flipper/custom-plugins/
$ mkdir sea-mammals
$ cd sea-mammals
$ yarn init

When choosing the package name, remember to use the name we have specified on the native side as ID. In our case, that is "sea-mammals". Once done, open the package.json. In addition to the name, you can also specify a title to show in the Flipper sidebar and an icon to display here. For instance:

{
  "name": "sea-mammals",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "index.tsx",
  "license": "MIT",
  "keywords": ["flipper-plugin"],
  "icon": "apps",
  "title": "Sea Mammals",
  "category": "Example Plugin",
  "dependencies": {
    "flipper": "latest"
  }
}

See package.json

Now that our package has been set up, we are ready to build a UI for our plugin. Either by using a standardized table-based plugin, or by creating a custom UI.