RFC: User-defined plugins

[epage]

We'd have a new folder _plugins full of FILLER that we load.

Plugins include

• Liquid tags, blocks, and filters
  • For tags and blocks, we just parse all parameters as named or position arguments without any validating logic (ie Vec<(Option<KString>, Value)>) until end of %}. We then pass that to the plugin to deal with
  • Plugins can just accept these as arguments
  • Plugins can turn these into a form of syntax like treating one of the elements as a keyword

Open questions

• What language?
  • Lua is well know
  • Rhai would integrate well with Rust
  • Dyon and Gluon are from the game community
• Plugin per file or multiple in a file?
  • If multiple, whats the idiomatic way to do it for the given language?

[Geobert]

Can you develop what kind of plugins?

On the language, I'd vote for Rhai, because Rust. And I have bad past experience with Lua (I don't know if it's still true, but the "if not marked as local, it's global) made me freak out a lot

[epage]

Can you develop what kind of plugins?

So far the only ones I've thought are are listed:

Liquid tags, blocks, and filters

So say you want a custom shortcode plugin ({% youtube id="foobar" %}). In python (since I don't know the embedded languages) it'd look like

def plugins():
    return {
        "tag": {
            "youtube": youtube_shortcode,
        }
    }

def youtube_shortcode(arguments):
    args = {}
    for name, value in arguments:
        if name is None:
            raise ValueError("Only named arguments are supported")
        elif name in ["id"]:
            args[name] = value
        else:
            raise ValueError("Unsupported argument: %s" % name)
    ... do formatting ...
    return full_url

[Geobert]

I see :) (Even if for shortcodes, I have something in antimoine to load custom shortcode, so they're easier to write, but maybe plugins is a better way?)

[epage]

I see :) (Even if for shortcodes, I have something in antimoine to load custom shortcode, so they're easier to write, but maybe plugins is a better way?)

Shortcodes was a trivial example that can be solved in multiple ways. Other extensibilty ideas include filter-blocks and macros

cobalt-org/liquid-rust#321
cobalt-org/liquid-rust#322

[captn3m0]

If plugins are supported, having the ability to write custom generators in Rust would be nice.

I'd love to port https://github.com/avillafiorita/jekyll-datapage_gen/ and https://github.com/captn3m0/jekyll-sqlite/ for eg.