coleslaw/docs/plugin-api.md

General Use

1. A lisp file should be created in coleslaw's plugins directory.

2. Any necessary lisp libraries not loaded by coleslaw should be included like so:

   (eval-when (:compile-toplevel :load-toplevel) (ql:quickload '(foo bar)))

3. A package should be created for the plugin code like so:

   (defpackage :coleslaw-$NAME (:use :cl) (:export #:enable) ...)

   where $NAME is the pathname-name of the lisp file. (eg. :coleslaw-disqus for disqus.lisp)

4. An enable function should be present even if it's a no-op. Any work to enable the plugin is done there.

Extension Points

• New functionality via JS, for example the Disqus and Mathjax plugins. In this case, the plugin's enable function should call add-injection with an injection and a keyword. The injection itself is a list of the string to insert and a lambda or function that can be called on a content instance to determine whether the injection should be included on the page. The keyword specifies whether the injected text goes in the HEAD or BODY element. The Disqus plugin is a good example of this.

• New markup formats, for example the ReStructuredText plugin, can be created by definining an appropriate render-text method. The method takes text and format arguments and is EQL-specialized on the format. Format should be a keyword matching the file extension (or pathname-type) of the markup format. (eg. :rst for ReStructuredText)

• New hosting options, for example the Amazon S3 plugin, can be created by definining a deploy :after method. The method takes a staging directory, likely uninteresting in the :after stage. But by importing *config* from the coleslaw package and getting its deploy location with (deploy-dir *config*) a number of interesting options become possible.

• New content types, for example a bookmark-like content type such as "shouts". This has not yet been attempted as a plugin but should be possible without much difficulty.

• New service integrations, for example crossposting to twitter/facebook/tumblr/livejournal/etc, should also be possible by adding an :after hook to the deploy method as with hosting. Alternately, an :after hook on the render method might be used.