Plugins

Welcome to Livestorm’s Plugins SDK documentation.

Plugins are apps that developers can build on top of Livestorm to customize Livestorm events.
Check this page to know more about the extent of what plugins allow you to build.

Discover more about plugins and how they work, and the APIs that we expose through the SDK.

Requirements

• NodeJS (any recent version >=12 will do)
• npm
• yarn (this is optional but below commands use it)

Create your first Livestorm plugin

First off, install the Livestorm plugin CLI :

yarn global add @livestorm/cli

Then run :

livestorm create

This will guide through a few steps required to configure your plugin.

API Token

The creation process will prompt you for an API token. This token is the link between your plugin and your Livestorm account.

Any plugin published with this API token will be available within the organization associated with the token.

📘

To obtain a Livestorm API token, follow these steps : Authorization

Dependencies

Once created, you'll notice that the created folder is nothing more than a preconfigured Javascript library.

You can of course add and manage dependencies with yarn. Do not hesitate to take a look at the package.json file to have an idea of what the project is shipped with.

Go to an event room

Livestorm plugins are activated within event rooms (where events take place).

That means that to test your plugin, you will need to jump into an event of your organization (new or existing) on which your plugin will be activated.

If you need to create an event, you can follow this guide.

Note: Please note that plugins are only compatible with regular events. Instant meetings are not supported.

Start building

Once you have completed the above steps, you should be ready to start coding.
Open your project folder and open the src/app.ts file.

This is the entry point of your Livestorm plugin. This code is executed in a sandboxed Javascript environment which communicates directly to Livestorm via a standard iframe <> DOM communication.

import Livestorm from '@livestorm/plugin'
/*
*
* The `Livestorm` object contains all of the exposed APIs that allow 
* you to act and build on top of the Livestorm room
*
* Do not hesitate to console.log(Livestorm) or use the auto-completion of your editor 
* to understand what is inside and what are the exposed APIs
*
*/


/*
*
* A simple "Hello world" example consists in publishing a message in the chat
* This message will be received by anyone who enters the event
*
*/
Livestorm.Chat.send({
   user: {
      firstName: 'My awesome plugin',
    },
   text: 'Hello world !'
})

👍

Looking for complete Plugins code examples ?

Make sure to browse our collection of open source plugins on Github right here

Publishing

Whenever you want to try your plugin or publish it for good, simply run :

livestorm publish

This will publish your plugin based on the API token and version number you set in the package.json

In the development phase it is advised that you use the watch command that allows iterate much faster.

livestorm watch

it will automatically run the publish command whenever you make a change in your code.

To see the result in the room simply refresh the page.

📘

Learn more about the Publish process

To learn more about the publish process, it is advised that you read the Environments page.

Going further

In this video you are going to dive into the APIs of the SDK to build an actual plugin.

Follow our entire video course on Wistia.

Need a hand?

We are here to help, feel free to drop an issue at our Github repo or to contact us directly at [email protected].