Building a minimal plugin architecture in Python

I have an application, written in Python, which is used by a fairly technical audience (scientists).

I'm looking for a good way to make the application extensible by the users, i.e. a scripting/plugin architecture.

I am looking for something extremely lightweight. Most scripts, or plugins, are not going to be developed and distributed by a third-party and installed, but are going to be something whipped up by a user in a few minutes to automate a repeating task, add support for a file format, etc. So plugins should have the absolute minimum boilerplate code, and require no 'installation' other than copying to a folder (so something like setuptools entry points, or the Zope plugin architecture seems like too much.)

Are there any systems like this already out there, or any projects that implement a similar scheme that I should look at for ideas / inspiration?

Mine is, basically, a directory called "plugins" which the main app can poll and then use imp.load_module to pick up files, look for a well-known entry point possibly with module-level config params, and go from there. I use file-monitoring stuff for a certain amount of dynamism in which plugins are active, but that's a nice-to-have.

Of course, any requirement that comes along saying "I don't need [big, complicated thing] X; I just want something lightweight" runs the risk of re-implementing X one discovered requirement at a time. But that's not to say you can't have some fun doing it anyway :)

module_example.py:

def plugin_main(*args, **kwargs):
    print args, kwargs

loader.py:

def load_plugin(name):
    mod = __import__("module_%s" % name)
    return mod

def call_plugin(name, *args, **kwargs):
    plugin = load_plugin(name)
    plugin.plugin_main(*args, **kwargs)

call_plugin("example", 1234)

It's certainly "minimal", it has absolutely no error checking, probably countless security problems, it's not very flexible - but it should show you how simple a plugin system in Python can be..

You probably want to look into the imp module too, although you can do a lot with just __import__, os.listdir and some string manipulation.

Have a look at at this overview over existing plugin frameworks / libraries, it is a good starting point. I quite like yapsy, but it depends on your use-case.

While that question is really interesting, I think it's fairly hard to answer, without more details. What sort of application is this? Does it have a GUI? Is it a command-line tool? A set of scripts? A program with an unique entry point, etc...

Given the little information I have, I will answer in a very generic manner.

What means do you have to add plugins?

You will probably have to add a configuration file, which will list the paths/directories to load.
Another way would be to say "any files in that plugin/ directory will be loaded", but it has the inconvenient to require your users to move around files.
A last, intermediate option would be to require all plugins to be in the same plugin/ folder, and then to active/deactivate them using relative paths in a config file.

On a pure code/design practice, you'll have to determine clearly what behavior/specific actions you want your users to extend. Identify the common entry point/a set of functionalities that will always be overridden, and determine groups within these actions. Once this is done, it should be easy to extend your application,

Example using hooks, inspired from MediaWiki (PHP, but does language really matters?):

import hooks

# In your core code, on key points, you allow user to run actions:
def compute(...):
    try:
        hooks.runHook(hooks.registered.beforeCompute)
    except hooks.hookException:
        print('Error while executing plugin')

    # [compute main code] ...

    try:
        hooks.runHook(hooks.registered.afterCompute)
    except hooks.hookException:
        print('Error while executing plugin')

# The idea is to insert possibilities for users to extend the behavior 
# where it matters.
# If you need to, pass context parameters to runHook. Remember that
# runHook can be defined as a runHook(*args, **kwargs) function, not
# requiring you to define a common interface for *all* hooks. Quite flexible :)

# --------------------

# And in the plugin code:
# [...] plugin magic
def doStuff():
    # ....
# and register the functionalities in hooks

# doStuff will be called at the end of each core.compute() call
hooks.registered.afterCompute.append(doStuff)

Another example, inspired from mercurial. Here, extensions only add commands to the hg commandline executable, extending the behavior.

def doStuff(ui, repo, *args, **kwargs):
    # when called, a extension function always receives:
    # * an ui object (user interface, prints, warnings, etc)
    # * a repository object (main object from which most operations are doable)
    # * command-line arguments that were not used by the core program

    doMoreMagicStuff()
    obj = maybeCreateSomeObjects()

# each extension defines a commands dictionary in the main extension file
commands = { 'newcommand': doStuff }

For both approaches, you might need common initialize and finalize for your extension. You can either use a common interface that all your extension will have to implement (fits better with second approach; mercurial uses a reposetup(ui, repo) that is called for all extension), or use a hook-kind of approach, with a hooks.setup hook.

But again, if you want more useful answers, you'll have to narrow down your question ;)

Building a minimal plugin architecture in Python

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