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LP Plugins Mechanics¤

Guide to creating custom plugins.

There is a very simple plugin machinery, based on the "mode" header parameter.

Default for mode is simply "bash", meaning all your evaluation is handled by the bash.py plugin.

See here for available parameters of the default mode.

Important

Plugins are lazy loaded, i.e. only on first use, within a docs build session.

Creating your own plugins¤

Before we look into the directory above, we try import any plugin directly, the first time we need it.

Therefore, by supplying a $PYTHONPATH, pointing to a plugin directory of your own, you can have your own plugins supported (or overwrite the default ones).

docs folder required

The docs are linked over to the docset at lp/plugs and inserted into nav via the find-pages plugin.

Interface¤

  • The plugins need to supply a run(cmd, kw) method. In kw you get any available contextual information, incl. the mkdocs config, via the LP class.

  • You may also declare run="cmd", which will put the full lp block body as a result - as is.

  • You have to return a string (which would be the cached raw result) or a dict with res and optionally

    • a formatted key.
    • a nocache=<bool> key
    • a page_assets key
    • header, footer, md (see below, page assets)

  • The formatted value has to contain directly the markdown to be displayed, exclusive indentation. If simply True then the res value is taken.

  • The page_assets value has to contain plain markdown (or javascript, html, css) added unindented once at the end of a page.
  • You may provide formatted and nocache also on module level

  • Also you may declare a page_assets dict on module level, with understood keys:

    • md: markdown source added to markdown of page, will go into to-html rendering
    • header: html (e.g. scripts) added at start of container element, added after rendering
    • footer: html added at end of container element, added after rendering

    See the chartist plugin for an example.

    Note: https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material/issues/2338 only inside

  • The full res will be the (cached) raw result, incl both optional keys.

Adding Page Assets¤

Some LP plugins, e.g. mermaid or chartist require additional javascript or CSS to be included into the page.

They can declare or imperatively add such add ons for either

  • header
  • footer
  • md

There are assets which are required once and others which you require per block.

mkdocs material's nav.instant

Note that instant loading will, at page navigation events, (only) (re-)evaluate all script tags that are part of the container component.

Means: Manually adding assets after the content, e.g. via assets won't work. This is why LP assets mechnics add the scripts and css within the container component.

Here is how we do it:

Normal way to achieve this (example, declare on module level):

page_assets = {
'header': [
    '//cdn.jsdelivr.net/chartist.js/latest/chartist.min.css',
    '//cdn.jsdelivr.net/chartist.js/latest/chartist.min.js',
]
}

https://github.com/AXGKl/docutools/blob/master/src/lcdoc/mkdocs/lp/plugs/chartist/__init__.py#L2

This will register the assets by key plugin name (=mode).

If the run method's response includes any of header, footer, md, that asset will be registered by id of the block, i.e. rendered into the final html, guaranteed:

def run(cmd, kw):
    ...
    return {
        'res': <just a raw result, not rendered, since formatted is given. could be empty>,
        'formatted': <what will be within the block, indented>,
        'footer': <block specific js>}
    }

Alternatively you may return True for formatted, then we treat res like it:

def run(cmd, kw):
    ...
    return {
        'formatted': True,
        'res': <what will be within the block, indented>,
        'footer': <block specific js>}
    }

Multi Purpose Assets¤

Sometimes more than one plugin require sth like jquery. You can declare those by their own namespace, using the mode key as in:

page_assets = {
    'mode': 'jquery', # or ['jquery', ...]
    'footer': {
        'script': '//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/featherlight@1.7.14/release/featherlight.min.js',
        'css': '//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/featherlight@1.7.14/release/featherlight.min.css',

where the string 'jquery' is a known asset:

h = 'header'
known_assets = {
    'd3': {h: '//unpkg.com/d3@6/dist/d3.min.js'},
    'jquery': {h: '//code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js'},
    'jquery_datatables': {
        h: [
            '//cdn.datatables.net/1.11.2/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js',
            #'//cdn.datatables.net/1.11.2/css/jquery.dataTables.min.css',
        ]
    },
    'raphael': {h: '//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/raphael/2.3.0/raphael.min.js'},
}

https://github.com/AXGKl/docutools/blob/master/src/lcdoc/mkdocs/lp/__init__.py#L45

If your multipurpose asset is now known, than declare the full dict under the mode key.