Your first plugin

In order to create your first plugin lets navigate into the plugins directory found in your DCTS' folder. There you create a folder with the name of your plugin, in this case "example-plugin".

NOTE

The plugin name needs to be url friendly! You can set the proper display title in the config.json file.

Okay now that we are in your plugin folder (e.g. /home/name/dcts/plugins) we will need to create some basic structure.

---

File & Folder setup

In the plugins directory, create the following folders and files so it reflects this structure:

├── config.json 
│ 
├── functions  
│   └── plugin_onLoad.mjs  
│
├── README.md  
│
├── sockets  
│
└── web  
   └── main.js

The README.md and web/main.js/ files are the only optional files, tho a README is highly recommended!

---

Config Setup

The config.json file expects a specific strucutre. The minimum required strucutre is as following:

{
  "title": "My cool plugin!",
  "author": "Your name here",
  "image": "https://...",
  "version": 1,
  "dependencies": [
    "package@version"
  ],
  "settings": {
	"your_setting_1": "bla",
    "another_settings": {
      "another_key": "some value",
    }
  }
}

There are some things to now

• Inside settings you can define whatever you want. Everything you enter here will be visible to the admin in the plugins settings page! For example if you're making a bot, you could let users enter a bot token this way.
• If you plugin requires any other rider/npm/bun packages, you can define it inside dependencies and they will be automatically installed when installing a plugin or when the server starts.
• image: You can define a plugin image url which will be shown as banner in the plugin list inside of the DCTS plugin screen.

---

Server Entry Point

If you want to modify the backend of the DCTS server you will need to create a file inside your plugin folder's functions folder and needs to include onLoad in the file name. Additionally it needs to end with .mjs.

Example: /home/name/dcts/plugins/example-plugin/functions/plugin_onLoad.mjs. The file content itself doesnt require any special structure.

NOTE

You cannot use require() for the backend, only import.

---

Socket Handlers

You can also register custom socket.io events using the sockets folder! The DCTS Plugin System will simply scan for all files ending in .mjs . In addition these files require a specific strucutre:

import { validateMemberId } from "../../../modules/functions/main.mjs";

export default (socket) => {
    socket.on('yourCoolEventName', async (member, response) => {
	    // your custom code here!
        if (await validateMemberId(member?.id, socket, member?.token) === true) {

            // some cool code here ;)
            response({ error: null });
        }
    });
};

The key element here is export default (socket) => {}, as socket files that do not have this line inside them wont be loaded. This means you can use these socket files to also register express endpoints like this:

import {app} from "../../../index.mjs"

// just here for the sake of being loaded
export default (socket) => {};

// your custom code outside of it
app.get("/someurl", async (req, res) => {
    doSomething();
    res.send("Hello World!");
})

function doSomething(){
    // sick code here
}

As long as the magic line is present, you can do whatever you want.

---

Web Entry Point

In order to manipulate the web client shipped from the DCTS Server you need to have a file named main.js inside it. If present this is the first file the web client will load.

From there you can do pretty much anything, like loading additional files, injecting css and more.

// Example code
injectCss("/plugins/discord-bridge/messages.css")
loadScript("/plugins/discord-bridge/web/stuff.js")

// on message SEND event
EventDispatcher.on("messageSend", async(payload) => {
    let {message, channelType} = payload;

    if(channelType === "discord_text"){
        let sendingResult = await sendDiscordMessage(message)
    }
})

There has been work going into providing some tools specifically made for plugins as you can see in this example. You can find all default events in Event Dispatchers.

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README

By creating a README.md file it will be displayed on the plugin info page and will be rendered. You can use it to explain what your plugin does, its purpose and more.