getting_started.md

Getting Started

In this chapter, you will learn how to write a simple fixed response plugin.

Make sure you installed RunFlow.

Creating Project Directory

You'll start by making a directory where you like, it doesn't matter where the directory locate, or directly choose an exists directory. Here, we will create a directory named: hello-runflow.

Writing Hello Json File

Next, make a new json file to response fixed text, and call it hello_runflow.json (the file name is not important, it's just we named it like this here), open the file and write the following content.

hello_runflow.json

Learn more about these fields, see Action Result.

Writing Plugin Specification File

In this step, you should create a plugin specification file that named plugin-spec.yml (note: the configuration file name is fixed, you can't customize it), then input the following content into it.

plugin-spec.yml

Learn more about the Plugin Specification Configuration.

Bundling Language Resource (Optional)

If you want to your plugin to support multi languages, you need bundle the language resources.

Create a directory named language, then create an english language file called en_us.yml in language directory. If you also want to support simplified chinese, you can create a file named zh_cn.yml, other language codes see here.

The file content as following:

en_us.yml

en_us.yml

zh_cn.yml

zh_cn.yml

We strongly suggest developer to support english language at least.

Describing Plugin (Optional)

By reading description file, let users known what features your plugin provided and how to use these functions conveniently.

Use english to describe the plugin by creating description_en_us.md in project directory, and writing the helpful content to users. In this example, we write the following content:

description_en_us.yml

Creating description_zh_cn.yml to support simplified chinese description:

description_zh_cn.yml

Running Plugin

When you follow the steps to get here, everything is ready, now we just running it. Open RunFlow action window, go to Settings -> General Settings, scroll to the bottom, you will see a label Load External Plugins, choose our plugin-spec.yml to load this plugin.

Then type the hello keyword in action input field, you will see the result: Hello RunFlow, and if you switch the language to simplified chinese, retyping the keyword hello you will see 你好RunFlow (if you bundled zn_cn.yml).

The Example Full Code

What's Next

Learn our conceptual interpretation.