flipper/js/js-flipper

js-flipper

This package exposes JavaScript bindings to talk from web / Node.js directly to flipper.

Installation

yarn add js-flipper

Usage

How to build Flipper plugins is explained in the flipper documentation: Creating a Flipper plugin. Building a Flipper plugin involves building a plugin for the Desktop app, and a plugin that runs on a Device (web or Node.js). This package is only needed for the plugin that runs on the device (web / Node.js), and wants to use the WebSocket connection to communicate to Flipper.

This package exposes a flipperClient. It has:

• addPlugin method. It accepts a plugin parameter, that registers a client plugin and will fire the relevant callbacks if the corresponding desktop plugin is selected in the Flipper Desktop. The full plugin API is documented here.
• start method. It starts the client. It has two arguments:
  • appName - (required) the name dsplayed in Flipper
  • options which conforms to the infterface

    interface FlipperClientOptions {
      // Make the client connect to a different URL
      urlBase?: string;
      // Override WebSocket implementation (Node.js folks, it is for you!)
      websocketFactory?: (url: string) => FlipperWebSocket;
      // Override how errors are handled (it is simple `console.error` by default)
      onError?: (e: unknown) => void;
      // Timeout after which client tries to reconnect to Flipper
      reconnectTimeout?: number;
    }
    

Example (web)

An example plugin can be found in FlipperTicTacToe.js.

The corresponding Desktop plugin ships by default in Flipper, so importing the above file and dropping the <FlipperTicTacToe /> component somewhere in your application should work out of the box.

The sources of the corresponding Desktop plugin can be found here.

Node.js

Node.js does not have a built-in WebSocket implementation. You need to install any implmentation of WebSockets for Node.js that is compatible with the interface of the web version.

import flipperClient from 'js-flipper';
// Say, you decided to go with 'ws'
// https://github.com/websockets/ws
import WebSocket from 'ws';

// Start the client and pass some options
// You might ask yourself why there is the second argument `{ origin: 'localhost:' }`
// Flipper Desktop verifies the `Origin` header for every WS connection. You need to set it to one of the whitelisted values (see `VALID_WEB_SOCKET_REQUEST_ORIGIN_PREFIXES`).
flipperClient.start('My cool nodejs app', { websocketFactory: url => new WebSocket(url, {origin: 'localhost:'}) });

An example plugin should be somewhat similar to what we have for React. It is currently WIP (do not confuse with RIP!).