Development plugin types

Since the standard types of plugins are usually pretty difficult to work with while developing a plugin, there are more types of plugins that developers can use, but these are not recommended for distribution.

Folder

Note: this plugin format is not enabled by default. The DevTools plugin is required to load this type of plugin.

This plugin format is similar to a PHAR plugin in structure, but all the files are in a folder on the disk instead of inside a phar file. This gives you easy access to the source code when you’re developing a plugin.

This plugin format is commonly used for development, because it is just as feature-complete as a PHAR plugin, and can be compiled to a PHAR plugin when you’re ready to release it.

You can see the ExamplePlugin or any plugin source-code repository to get an idea of how this should look.

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  1. If you don’t have the DevTools plugin, download its phar file and put it in your plugins folder.

  2. Move the folder containing the plugin’s source code into your plugins folder. The plugin’s folder should contain a plugin.yml file and a src folder.

  3. Restart the server and the plugin will be loaded.

Script

This plugin format works out of the box, but it’s not recommended for production use, and has less features than a normal plugin would. This format is useful if you want to quickly test some features but don’t need a full-blown plugin.

See this thread to see how a script plugin looks and works.

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  1. Drop the .php file into your plugins folder.

  2. Restart the server and the plugin will be loaded.