Sunstone is a library that implements plugin architecture for Nodejs. You can use it to create applications that your users can extend by creating plugins.
The primary goal of a plugin architecture is extensibility; the ability to customize or add new features to software without modifying its source code. Plugins provide extensibility through modularity and by establishing well-defined interfaces for programming with the host application's internal components.
The feature-level modularity offered by plugins makes writing large and complex programs more feasible. But it also helps to manage project scope, since every possible contingency for user requirements need not be planned for in advance. Users can obtain plugins created by third-party developers and even write their own.
Sunstone aims to provide all the necessities for a successful plugin ecosystem: feature-level modularity, versioning, dependency and lifecycle management, component-level security, organizational conventions, and well-defined programming interfaces.
Sunstone’s internal design is inspired by the Eclipse plugin model, and it’s API is modeled after AngularJS’ dependency injection. The former addresses application-level extensibility while the latter provides a programming interface that’s familiar and easy to learn.
- host application instantiation
- plugin registry
- plugin loading from host and extending apps
- plugin dependency validation
- plugin development interface
- injector (DI container)
- node module registration
- component extension
- plugin API extension
- initializer callback
- starter callback
- component registration validation
- registry and injector filtering
- configurable plugin directories
- more unit tests
- plugin loading from npm packages
- plugin detection/initialization during runtime
- methods for controlling lifecycle from outside the running application
- stop, enable, disable, install, remove methods for plugins
- plugin security
- ...
Copyright (c) 2016 Anvil Research, Inc.