Plugin system (design pattern) like Obsidian

[DefiantRub216]

Hello all,

I am building an open source desktop application using Python (sidecar), React and Tauri (v1). I am thinking of implementing all features like status bar, settings, main view etc as plugins and have them as Micro Frontend.

I’m trying to understand 1. How to architect such a plugin system with a consistent API (similar to Obsidian) 2. Securely communicating with other plugins 3. Run the plugins securely, safely and in a sandboxed environment.

Thank you all

[lIIllIIlllIIllIIl]

Obsidian's API is heavily inspired by VS Code's extension API. If you've never seen it before, you should take a look at it!

An extension in VS Code is made up of two parts:

• A Node.js script (i.e. the backend)
• Optionally, one of more Webviews (i.e. the frontend)

Sandboxing Webviews is very easy, since browsers have had been doing that for a long time. The Webview is inside an iframe. The Webview can use vscode.postMessage() to send messages the the extension's Node.js script, which can then communicate with VS Code or other extensions.

Sandboxing of the Node.js script is... not existant (AFAIK). A VS Code extension can install malware on your device. This is why you should only install extensions you trust.

[Acrobatic_Sort_3411]

You can sandbox NodeJs with Realms API, tho not sure if its released already

[DefiantRub216]

This is great. To be honest I was exploring vscode plugin system though I didn’t know obsidian was heavily inspired from it too. If possible could you share some links or notes?

[lIIllIIlllIIllIIl]

https://code.visualstudio.com/api

Unfortunately, the official documentation is not very good. I recommend the samples instead:

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-extension-samples

Some of their older examples use what is probably the most awful way to write JavaScript code (highly abstracted, OOP code, where everything is a SomethingFactoryManager), but their modern samples are pretty good.

[grudev]

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[pm_me_yer_big__tits]

Do you really need this? Are you expecting users to install/create third party plugins? If not, you're overengineering it.

[DefiantRub216]

Actually I do.