talk/PLUGINS.md

Talk Plugins

Plugins for Talk can take various forms, currently we are only supporting server side plugins.

Plugin Registration

The parsing order for the plugin registration is as follows:

• TALK_PLUGINS_JSON environment variable
• plugins.json file
• plugins.default.json file

If you need to "disable all plugins", you can simply provide {} as the contents of process.env.TALK_PLUGINS_JSON or the plugins.json.

The format for this is thus:

{
  "server": [
    "people"
  ]
}

Where we have a server key with an array of plugins that match the folder name in the plugins/ folder. For example, the above config would require a plugin from plugins/people, which must provide a index.js file that returns an object that matches the Plugin Specification.

If the package is external (available on NPM) you can specify the string for the version by using an object instead, for example:

{
  "server": [
    {"people": "^1.2.0"}
  ]
}

External plugins can be resolved by running:

./bin/cli plugins reconcile

This achieves two things:

1. It will traverse into local plugin folders and install their dependencies. Note that if the plugin is already installed and available in the node_modules folder, it will not be fetched again unless there is a version mismatch. This will result in the project package.json and yarn.lock files to be modified, this is normal as this ensures that repeated deployments (with the same config) will have the same config, these changes should not be committed to source control.
2. It will seek out dependencies that are listed in the object notation and try to install them from npm.

Plugin Dependencies

You may also include additional external dependencies in your local packages by specifying a package.json at your plugin root which will result in a node_modules folder being generated at the plugin root with your specific dependencies.

Deployment Solutions

Plugins can be deployed with a production instance of Talk.

Source

Source deployments can just modify the plugins.json file and include any local plugins into the plugins/ directory. After including the config, you need to reconcile the plugins and build the static assets:

# get plugin dependancies and remote plugins
./bin/cli plugins reconcile

# build staic assets (including enabled client side plugins)
yarn build

Then the application can be started as is.

Docker

If you deploy using Docker, you can extend from the *-onbuild image, an example Dockerfile for your project could be:

FROM coralproject/talk:latest-onbuild

Where the directory for your instance would contain a plugins.json file describing the plugin requirements and a plugins directory containing any other local plugins that should be included.

Onbuild triggers will execute when the image is building with your custom configuration and will ensure that the image is ready to use by building all assets inside the image as well.

Server Plugins

API

You can access any API available inside the talk directory in a plugin by simply importing the file relative to the talk project root. An example would be if you wanted to import the MetadataService, you would simply write:

const MetadataService = require('services/metadata');

Specification

Each plugin should export a single object with all hooks available on it.

Note: You will have access to the whole core and other plugin's typeDefs, context, loaders, mutators, resolvers, hooks. This is intentional, as it encourages composing plugins to merge functionality, like a Slack plugin which provides a Slack notify context function as well as having the loader for comments.

The following are the hooks available:

Field: typeDefs

enum COLOUR {
  RED
  BLUE
}

type Person {
  name: String!
  colour: COLOUR!
}

type RootMutation {
  createPerson(name: String!): Person
}

type RootQuery {
  people: [Person!]
}

type Subscription {
  leader: Person
}

Thanks to gql-merge the contents of typeDefs should be a string that will be merged with the existing type definitions. enum's will be appended to, types will be appended, and new types will be added.

Field: context

{
  Slack: (context) => ({
    notify: (message) => {
      // return a promise after we're done sending notifications.
    }
  })
}

Any property provided here will be added to the context parameter available inside all resolvers, loaders, mutators, and of course, other context based plugins.

The top level item must accept a context for the request which it should use to configure the context plugin before it would be mounted at context.plugins. This plugin above would mount at: context.plugins.Slack, or, if you're using object destructuring, {plugins: {Slack}}.

Field: loaders

(context) => ({
  People: {
    load: () => db.people.find({user: context.user})
  }
})

Loaders should be provided as a function which returns a map which is used in the resolvers function. These must return a promise or a value.

Field: mutators

(context) => ({
  People: {
    create: (name) => {
      return db.people.insert({user: context.user, name});
    }
  }
})

Mutators should be provided as a function which returns a map which is used in the resolvers function. These must return a promise or a value.

Field: resolvers

{
  Person: {
    name(obj, args, context) {
      return obj.name;
    },
    colour(obj, args, context) {
      // Bill likes the colour red, everyone else likes blue.
      return obj.name === 'bill' ? 'RED' : 'BLUE';
    }
  },
  RootQuery: {
    people(obj, args, {loaders: {People}}) {
      return People.load();
    }
  },
  RootMutation: {
    createPerson(obj, {name}, {mutators: {People}}) {
      return People.create(name);
    }
  }
}

Should return a resolver map as described in the Apollo Docs.

This will merge with the existing resolvers in core and from previous plugins.

Field: hooks

{
  RootMutation: {
    createPerson: {
      post: async (obj, args, {plugins: {Slack}}, info, person) {
        if (!person) {
          return person;
        }

        await Slack.notify(`A new person just was created with name ${person.name}`);

        return person;
      }
    }
  }
}

Hooks here are pretty special, for each resolver field, you can specify a pre/post hook that will execute pre and post field resolution.

If your post function accepts four parameters, then it can modify the field result. It is required that the function resolves a promise (or returns) with the modified value or simply the original if you didn't modify it.

Field: setupFunctions

setupFunctions: {
  leader: (options, args) => ({
    leader: {
      filter: (person) => person.place === 1
    },
  }),
}

Setup functions allow you to create filters that control which pubsub.publish() events send data to the client. If the type in question contains args, clients may subscribe using those arguments to further filter their subscription.

For more information, see the Apollo Docs.

Field: router

(router) => {
  router.get('/api/v1/people', (req, res) => {
    res.json({people: [{name: 'Bob'}]});
  });
}

The Router hook allows you to create a function that accepts the base express router where you can mount any amount of middleware/routes to do any form of action needed by external applications. We also provide the authorization middleware via:

const authorization = require('middleware/authorization');

module.exports = {
  router(router) {
    router.get('/api/v1/people', authorization.needed('ADMIN'), (req, res) => {
      res.json({people: [{name: 'SECRET PEOPLE'}]});
    });
  }
}

Field: passport

const FacebookStrategy = require('passport-facebook').Strategy;
const UsersService = require('services/users');
const {ValidateUserLogin, HandleAuthPopupCallback} = require('services/passport');

module.exports = {
  passport(passport) {
    passport.use(new FacebookStrategy({
      clientID: process.env.TALK_FACEBOOK_APP_ID,
      clientSecret: process.env.TALK_FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET,
      callbackURL: `${process.env.TALK_ROOT_URL}/api/v1/auth/facebook/callback`,
      passReqToCallback: true,
      profileFields: ['id', 'displayName', 'picture.type(large)']
    }, async (req, accessToken, refreshToken, profile, done) => {

      let user;
      try {
        user = await UsersService.findOrCreateExternalUser(profile);
      } catch (err) {
        return done(err);
      }

      return ValidateUserLogin(profile, user, done);
    }));
  },
  router(router) {

    // Note that we have to import the passport instance here, it is
    // instantiated after all the strategies have been mounted.
    const {passport} = require('services/passport');

    /**
     * Facebook auth endpoint, this will redirect the user immediatly to facebook
     * for authorization.
     */
    router.get('/facebook', passport.authenticate('facebook', {display: 'popup', authType: 'rerequest', scope: ['public_profile']}));

    /**
     * Facebook callback endpoint, this will send the user a html page designed to
     * send back the user credentials upon sucesfull login.
     */
    router.get('/facebook/callback', (req, res, next) => {

      // Perform the facebook login flow and pass the data back through the opener.
      passport.authenticate('facebook', HandleAuthPopupCallback(req, res, next))(req, res, next);
    });
  }
};

This is a full example including the routes hook to add the required components to the application router to support a different auth strategy.

Full Example

Contents of plugins.json:

{
  "server": [
    "people"
  ]
}

Located in plugins/people/index.js:

module.exports = {
  typeDefs: `
  enum COLOUR {
    RED
    BLUE
  }

  type Person {
    name: String!
    colour: COLOUR!
  }

  type RootMutation {
    createPerson(name: String!): Person
  }

  type RootQuery {
    people: [Person!]
  }

  type Subscription {
    leader: Person
  }
  `,
  context: {
    Slack: () => ({
      notify: (message) => {
        // return a promise after we're done sending notifications.
      }
    })
  },
  loaders: ({user}) => ({
    People: {
      load: () => db.people.find({user})
    }
  }),
  mutators: ({user}) => ({
    People: {
      create: (name) => {
        return db.people.insert({user, name});
      }
    }
  }),
  resolvers: {
    Person: {
      name(obj, args, context) {
        return obj.name;
      },
      colour(obj, args, context) {
        // Bill likes the colour red, everyone else likes blue.
        return obj.name === 'bill' ? 'RED' : 'BLUE';
      }
    },
    RootQuery: {
      people(obj, args, {loaders: {People}}) {
        return People.load();
      }
    },
    RootMutation: {
      createPerson(obj, {name}, {mutators: {People}}) {
        return People.create(name);
      }
    }
  },
  hooks: {
    RootMutation: {
      createPerson: {
        post: async (obj, args, {plugins: {Slack}}, info, person) => {
          if (!person) {
            return person;
          }

          await Slack.notify(`A new person just was created with name ${person.name}`);

          return person;
        }
      }
    }
  },
  setupFunctions: {
    leader: (options, args) => ({
      leader: {
        filter: (person) => person.place === 1
      }
    }
  }
};