Creating a Plugin

In order to get started, you first need to setup your Castopod dev environment.

1. Create the plugin folder

You’ll first need to create your plugin folder in the plugins/ directory.

Using the create command Recommended

To quickly get you started, you can have a folder generated for you using the following CLI command:

php spark plugins:create

👉 You will be prompted for metadata and hooks usage to have a skeleton plugin project generated for you!

Manual setup

create a plugin folder inside a vendor directory
- Directoryplugins
  - Directoryacme
    Directoryhello-world/
    …
  - …
add a manifest.json file
- Directoryhello-world
  - manifest.json
See the manifest reference.
add the Plugin.php class
- Directoryhello-world
  - manifest.json
  - Plugin.php

2. Build your plugin

Now that your plugin folder is set, you can start working on your Plugin’s logic by implementing the hooks needed.

Settings forms

You can prompt users for data through settings forms.

These forms can be built declaratively using the settings attribute in your manifest.

{
  "settings": {
    "general": {
      "field-key": {
        "type": "text",
        "label": "Enter a text"
      }
    },
    "podcast": {
      "field-key": {
        "type": "text",
        "label": "Enter a text for this podcast"
      }
    },
    "episode": {
      "field-key": {
        "type": "type",
        "label": "Enter a text for this episode"
      }
    }
  }
}

This example will generate settings forms at 3 levels:

general: a general form to prompt data to be used by the plugin
podcast: a form for each podcast to prompt for podcast specific data
episode: a form for each episode to prompt for episode specific data

The data can then be accessed in the Plugin class methods via helper methods taking in the field key:

$this->getGeneralSetting('field-key');

$this->getPodcastSetting($podcast->id, 'field-key');

$this->getEpisodeSetting($episode->id, 'field-key');