Developing your first Sarah Plugin in Python

Before going through this process you need to insure that sarah core and old plugins in this repo are working perfectly in your system . if you didn't clone sarah repo you need to check the README file for the installation guide.

Prepare for your plugin :

1- The Idea :

first of all you need to have a good idea on what will your plugin do exactly and please focus on the idea because the users won't love or use your plugins if they don't enjoy it :)

2- Creating files :

first navigate to the plugins folder using terminal or your file manager and create a new folder inside your plugins folder and name it with your plugin name . after creating the folder you will also need to create other two files : .plugin file and .py file and also prefered to have the same name of your plugin .

3- Writing the code :

lets do an example of a plugin to print hello world sentence so first thing we need to write in .plugin file so open it with your favourite text editor and paste the below lines :

[Plugin]

Module=hello

Loader=python3

Name=hello

Description=python hello plugin

change the values with your plugin's values but don't chane the Loader value you will need to write your plugin in python3 . now we need to write the python code for our plugin so open .py file with your editor and paste the below line :

#!/usr/bin/env python

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

#

# hello.py

#

# Copyright 2016 Semicode Inc <[email protected]>

#

# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify

# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or

# (at your option) any later version.

#

# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

# GNU General Public License for more details.

#

# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

# Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,

# MA 02110-1301, USA.

#

#

import gi

gi.require_version('Peas', '1.0')

gi.require_version('Sarah', '1.0')

from gi.repository import GObject, Peas, Sarah

class HiPlugin(GObject.Object, Sarah.IExtension):

`__gtype_name__ = 'HiPlugin'`

`object = GObject.property(type=GObject.Object)`

`def do_activate(self, args, argv):`
    `print("hello from Python plugin", args)`

`def do_deactivate(self):`

pass

and compile sarah again and do :

./sarah yourplugin