3 Micro supports creating plugins with a simple Lua system. Every plugin has a
4 main script which is run at startup which should be placed in
5 `~/.config/micro/plugins/pluginName/pluginName.lua`.
7 There are a number of callback functions which you can create in your plugin to
8 run code at times other than startup. The naming scheme is `onAction(view)`. For
9 example a function which is run every time the user saves the buffer would be:
18 The `view` variable is a reference to the view the action is being executed on.
19 This is almost always the current view, which you can get with `CurView()` as
22 All available actions are listed in the keybindings section of the help.
24 For callbacks to mouse actions, you are also given the event info:
27 function onMousePress(view, event)
28 local x, y = event:Position()
34 These functions should also return a boolean specifying whether the view should
35 be relocated to the cursor or not after the action is complete.
37 Note that these callbacks occur after the action has been completed. If you want
38 a callback before the action is executed, use `preAction()`. In this case the
39 boolean returned specifies whether or not the action should be executed after
40 the lua code completes.
42 Another useful callback to know about which is not an action is
43 `onViewOpen(view)` which is called whenever a new view is opened and the new
44 view is passed in. This is useful for setting local options based on the
45 filetype, for example turning off `tabstospaces` only for Go files when they are
48 Similar to `onViewOpen(view)` there is also `onBufferOpen(buf)`.
52 There are a number of functions and variables that are available to you in order
53 to access the inner workings of micro. Here is a list (the type signatures for
54 functions are given using Go's type system):
56 * `OS`: variable which gives the OS micro is currently running on (this is the
57 same as Go's GOOS variable, so `darwin`, `windows`, `linux`, `freebsd`...)
59 * `configDir`: contains the path to the micro configuration files
61 * `tabs`: a list of all the tabs currently in use
63 * `curTab`: the index of the current tabs in the tabs list
65 * `messenger`: lets you send messages to the user or create prompts
67 * `NewBuffer(text, path string) *Buffer`: creates a new buffer from a given
68 reader with a given path
70 * `GetLeadingWhitespace() bool`: returns the leading whitespace of the given
73 * `IsWordChar(str string) bool`: returns whether or not the string is a 'word
76 * `RuneStr(r rune) string`: returns a string containing the given rune
78 * `Loc(x, y int) Loc`: returns a new `Loc` struct
80 * `WorkingDirectory() string`: returns a rooted path name to the current working
83 * `JoinPaths(dir... string) string`: combines multiple directories to a full
86 * `DirectoryName(path string)`: returns all but the last element of path,
87 typically the path's directory
89 * `GetOption(name string)`: returns the value of the requested option
91 * `AddOption(name string, value interface{})`: sets the given option with the
92 given value (`interface{}` means any type in Go)
94 * `SetOption(option, value string)`: sets the given option to the value. This
95 will set the option globally, unless it is a local only option.
97 * `SetLocalOption(option, value string, view *View)`: sets the given option to
98 the value locally in the given buffer
100 * `BindKey(key, action string)`: binds `key` to `action`
102 * `MakeCommand(name, function string, completions ...Completion)`:
103 creates a command with `name` which will call `function` when executed. Use 0
104 for completions to get NoCompletion.
106 * `MakeCompletion(function string)`:
107 creates a `Completion` to use with `MakeCommand`
109 * `CurView()`: returns the current view
111 * `HandleCommand(cmd string)`: runs the given command
113 * `HandleShellCommand(shellCmd string, interactive bool, waitToClose bool)`:
114 runs the given shell command. The `interactive` bool specifies whether the
115 command should run in the background. The `waitToClose` bool only applies if
116 `interactive` is true and means that it should wait before returning to the
119 * `ToCharPos(loc Loc, buf *Buffer) int`: returns the character position of a
122 * `Reload`: (Re)load everything
124 * `ByteOffset(loc Loc, buf *Buffer) int`: exactly like `ToCharPos` except it it
125 counts bytes instead of runes
127 * `JobSpawn(cmdName string, cmdArgs []string, onStdout, onStderr, onExit string, userargs ...string)`:
128 Starts running the given process in the background. `onStdout` `onStderr` and
129 `onExit` are callbacks to lua functions which will be called when the given
130 actions happen to the background process. `userargs` are the arguments which
131 will get passed to the callback functions
133 * `JobStart(cmd string, onStdout, onStderr, onExit string, userargs ...string)`:
134 Starts running the given shell command in the background. Note that the
135 command execute is first parsed by a shell when using this command. It is
136 executed with `sh -c`.
138 * `JobSend(cmd *exec.Cmd, data string)`: send a string into the stdin of the job
141 * `JobStop(cmd *exec.Cmd)`: kill a job
143 This may seem like a small list of available functions but some of the objects
144 returned by the functions have many methods. `CurView()` returns a view object
145 which has all the actions which you can call. For example
146 `CurView():Save(false)`. You can see the full list of possible actions in the
147 keybindings help topic. The boolean on all the actions indicates whether or not
148 the lua callbacks should be run. I would recommend generally sticking to false
149 when making a plugin to avoid recursive problems, for example if you call
150 `CurView():Save(true)` in `onSave()`. Just use `CurView():Save(false)` so that
151 it won't call `onSave()` again.
153 Using the view object, you can also access the buffer associated with that view
154 by using `CurView().Buf`, which lets you access the `FileType`, `Path`,
157 The possible methods which you can call using the `messenger` variable are:
159 * `messenger.Message(msg ...interface{})`
160 * `messenger.Error(msg ...interface{})`
161 * `messenger.YesNoPrompt(prompt string) (bool,bool)`
162 * `messenger.Prompt(prompt, historyType string, completionType Completion) (string, bool)`
163 * `messenger.AddLog(msg ...interface{})`
167 Go function signatures use `.` and lua uses `:` so
179 If you want a standard prompt, just use
182 messenger:Prompt(prompt, "", 0)
185 Debug or logging your plugin can be done with below lua example code.
188 messenger:AddLog("Message goes here ",pluginVariableToPrintHere)
191 In Micro to see your plugin logging output press `CtrlE` then type `log`, a
192 logging window will open and any logging sent from your plugin will be displayed
196 ## Accessing the Go standard library
198 It is possible for your lua code to access many of the functions in the Go
201 Simply import the package you'd like and then you can use it. For example:
204 local ioutil = import("io/ioutil")
205 local fmt = import("fmt")
207 local data, err = ioutil.ReadFile("SomeFile.txt")
210 messenger:Error("Error reading file: SomeFile.txt")
212 -- Data is returned as an array of bytes
213 -- Using Sprintf will convert it to a string
214 local str = fmt.Sprintf("%s", data)
216 -- Do something with the file you just read!
221 Here are the packages from the Go standard library that you can access.
222 Nearly all functions from these packages are supported. For an exact
223 list of which functions are supported you can look through `lua.go`
224 (which should be easy to understand).
243 For documentation for each of these functions, you can simply look
244 through the Go standard library documentation.
246 ## Adding help files, syntax files, or colorschemes in your plugin
248 You can use the `AddRuntimeFile(name, type, path string)` function to add
249 various kinds of files to your plugin. For example, if you'd like to add a help
250 topic to your plugin called `test`, you would create a `test.md` file, and call
254 AddRuntimeFile("test", "help", "test.md")
257 Use `AddRuntimeFilesFromDirectory(name, type, dir, pattern)` to add a number of
258 files to the runtime. To read the content of a runtime file use
259 `ReadRuntimeFile(fileType, name string)` or `ListRuntimeFiles(fileType string)`
260 for all runtime files.
263 ## Autocomplete command arguments
265 See this example to learn how to use `MakeCompletion` and `MakeCommand`
268 local function StartsWith(String,Start)
269 String = String:upper()
270 Start = Start:upper()
271 return string.sub(String,1,string.len(Start))==Start
274 function complete(input)
275 local allCompletions = {"Hello", "World", "Foo", "Bar"}
278 for i,v in pairs(allCompletions) do
279 if StartsWith(v, input) then
280 table.insert(result, v)
287 messenger:Message(arg)
290 MakeCommand("foo", "example.foo", MakeCompletion("example.complete"))
296 For examples of plugins, see the default `autoclose` and `linter` plugins
297 (stored in the normal micro core repo under `runtime/plugins`) as well as any
298 plugins that are stored in the official channel
299 [here](https://github.com/micro-editor/plugin-channel).
304 Micro also has a built in plugin manager which you can invoke with the
305 `> plugin ...` command.
307 For the valid commands you can use, see the `command` help topic.
309 The manager fetches plugins from the channels (which is simply a list of plugin
310 metadata) which it knows about. By default, micro only knows about the official
311 channel which is located at github.com/micro-editor/plugin-channel but you can
312 add your own third-party channels using the `pluginchannels` option and you can
313 directly link third-party plugins to allow installation through the plugin
314 manager with the `pluginrepos` option.
316 If you'd like to publish a plugin you've made as an official plugin, you should
317 upload your plugin online (to Github preferably) and add a `repo.json` file.
318 This file will contain the metadata for your plugin. Here is an example:
322 "Name": "pluginname",
323 "Description": "Here is a nice concise description of my plugin",
324 "Tags": ["python", "linting"],
328 "Url": "https://github.com/user/plugin/archive/v1.0.0.zip",
337 Then open a pull request at github.com/micro-editor/plugin-channel adding a link
338 to the raw `repo.json` that is in your plugin repository. To make updating the
339 plugin work, the first line of your plugins lua code should contain the version
340 of the plugin. (Like this: `VERSION = "1.0.0"`) Please make sure to use
341 [semver](http://semver.org/) for versioning.