CDS Plugin Packages ​

The cds-plugin technique allows to provide extension packages with auto-configuration.

Add a cds-plugin.js ​

Simply add a file cds-plugin.js next to the package.json of your package to have this detected and loaded automatically when bootstrapping CAP Node.js servers through cds serve, or other CLI commands.

Within such cds-plugin.js modules you can use the cds facade object, to register to lifecycle events or plugin to other parts of the framework. For example, they can react to lifecycle events, the very same way as in custom server.js modules:

const cds = require('@sap/cds')
cds.on('served', ()=>{ ... })

Sometimes cds-plugin.js files can also be empty, for example if you plugin only registers new settings.

Auto-Configuration ​

Plugins can also add new config settings, thereby providing auto configuration. Simply add a cds section to your package.json file, as you would do in a project's package.json.

For example, this is the configuration provided by the new SQLite service package @cap-js/sqlite:

{
  "cds": {
    "requires": {
      "db": "sql",
      "kinds": {
        "sql": {
          "[development]": {
            "kind": "sqlite"
          }
        },
        "sqlite": {
          "impl": "@cap-js/sqlite"
        }
      },
    }
  }
}

In effect this automatically configures a required db service using the sql preset. This preset is configred below to use the sqlite preset in development. The sqlite preset is in turn configured below, to use the plugin package's main as implementation.

cds. plugins ​

This property refers to a module that implements the plugin machinery in cds, by fetching and loading installed plugins along these lines:

1. For all entries in your package.json's dependencies and devDependencies ...
2. Select all target packages having a cds-plugin.js file in their roots ...
3. Add all target packages' cds entry in their package.json to cds.env
4. Load all target packages' cds-plugin.js module

The plugin mechanism is activated by adding this to CLI commands:

await cds.plugin

Currently, the following commands support plugins: cds-serve, cds watch, cds run, cds env, cds deploy, cds build, cds.test().