From d4a7af8a896f9962a252af43863f559c5340c1d2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jonathan Senecal Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 17:12:18 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Update plugins development docs --- docs/plugins/development/index.md | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/plugins/development/index.md b/docs/plugins/development/index.md index 98db9e0bb..7c2334713 100644 --- a/docs/plugins/development/index.md +++ b/docs/plugins/development/index.md @@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ Plugins can do a lot, including: * Provide their own "pages" (views) in the web user interface * Inject template content and navigation links * Extend NetBox's REST and GraphQL APIs +* Load additionnal Django Apps * Add custom request/response middleware However, keep in mind that each piece of functionality is entirely optional. For example, if your plugin merely adds a piece of middleware or an API endpoint for existing data, there's no need to define any new models. @@ -82,6 +83,7 @@ class FooBarConfig(PluginConfig): default_settings = { 'baz': True } + django_apps = ["foo", "bar", "baz"] config = FooBarConfig ``` @@ -101,6 +103,7 @@ NetBox looks for the `config` variable within a plugin's `__init__.py` to load i | `base_url` | Base path to use for plugin URLs (optional). If not specified, the project's `name` will be used. | | `required_settings` | A list of any configuration parameters that **must** be defined by the user | | `default_settings` | A dictionary of configuration parameters and their default values | +| `django_apps` | A list of additionnal apps to load alongside the plugin | | `min_version` | Minimum version of NetBox with which the plugin is compatible | | `max_version` | Maximum version of NetBox with which the plugin is compatible | | `middleware` | A list of middleware classes to append after NetBox's build-in middleware | @@ -112,6 +115,15 @@ NetBox looks for the `config` variable within a plugin's `__init__.py` to load i All required settings must be configured by the user. If a configuration parameter is listed in both `required_settings` and `default_settings`, the default setting will be ignored. +#### Important notes about `django_apps` + +Loading additional apps may cause more harm than good and could lead to make identifying problems within NetBox itself more difficult. The `django_apps` attribute is intented to be used only for advanced use-cases that require a deeper Django integration. + +Apps from this list are inserted *before* the plugin's `PluginConfig` in the same order. Adding the plugin's `PluginConfig` module to this list changes this behavior and allows for apps to be loaded *after* the plugin. + +Any additionnal app must be installed within the the same Python environment as NetBox or `ImproperlyConfigured` exceptions will be raised when loading the plugin. + + ## Create setup.py `setup.py` is the [setup script](https://docs.python.org/3.8/distutils/setupscript.html) used to package and install our plugin once it's finished. The primary function of this script is to call the setuptools library's `setup()` function to create a Python distribution package. We can pass a number of keyword arguments to control the package creation as well as to provide metadata about the plugin. An example `setup.py` is below: