mirror-chatterino2/docs/wip-plugins.md

Plugins

If Chatterino is compiled with the CHATTERINO_PLUGINS CMake option, it can load and execute Lua files. Note that while there are attempts at making this decently safe, we cannot guarantee safety.

Plugin structure

Chatterino searches for plugins in the Plugins directory in the app data, right next to Settings and Logs.

Each plugin should have its own directory.

Chatterino Plugins dir/
└── plugin_name/
    ├── init.lua
    └── info.json

init.lua will be the file loaded when the plugin is enabled. You may load other files using import global function.

info.json contains metadata about the plugin, like its name, description, authors, homepage link, tags, version, license name. The version field must be semver 2.0 compliant. The general idea of info.json will not change however the exact contents probably will, for example with permission system ideas. Example file:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Chatterino/chatterino2/master/docs/plugin-info.schema.json",
  "name": "Test plugin",
  "description": "This plugin is for testing stuff.",
  "authors": ["Mm2PL"],
  "homepage": "https://github.com/Chatterino/Chatterino2",
  "tags": ["test"],
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "license": "MIT"
}

An example plugin is available at https://github.com/Mm2PL/Chatterino-test-plugin

Plugins with Typescript

If you prefer, you may use TypescriptToLua to typecheck your plugins. There is a chatterino.d.ts file describing the API in this directory. However this has several drawbacks like harder debugging at runtime.

API

The following parts of the Lua standard library are loaded:

• _G (most globals)
• table
• string
• math
• utf8

The official manual for them is available here.

Chatterino API

All Chatterino functions are exposed in a global table called c2. The following members are available:

log(level, args...)

Writes a message to the Chatterino log. The level argument should be a LogLevel member. All args should be convertible to a string with tostring().

Example:

c2.log(c2.LogLevel.Warning, "Hello, this should show up in the Chatterino log by default")

c2.log(c2.LogLevel.Debug, "Hello world")
-- Equivalent to doing qCDebug(chatterinoLua) << "[pluginDirectory:Plugin Name]" << "Hello, world"; from C++

LogLevel enum

This table describes log levels available to Lua Plugins. The values behind the names may change, do not count on them. It has the following keys:

• Debug
• Info
• Warning
• Critical

register_command(name, handler)

Registers a new command called name which when executed will call handler. Returns true if everything went ok, false if there already exists another command with this name.

Example:

function cmdWords(ctx)
    -- ctx contains:
    -- words - table of words supplied to the command including the trigger
    -- channel_name - name of the channel the command is being run in
    c2.system_msg(ctx.channel_name, "Words are: " .. table.concat(ctx.words, " "))
end

c2.register_command("/words", cmdWords)

Limitations/known issues:

• Commands registered in functions, not in the global scope might not show up in the settings UI, rebuilding the window content caused by reloading another plugin will solve this.
• Spaces in command names aren't handled very well (https://github.com/Chatterino/chatterino2/issues/1517).

send_msg(channel, text)

Sends a message to channel with the specified text. Also executes commands.

Example:

function cmdShout(ctx)
    table.remove(ctx.words, 1)
    local output = table.concat(ctx.words, " ")
    c2.send_msg(ctx.channel_name, string.upper(output))
end
c2.register_command("/shout", cmdShout)

Limitations/Known issues:

• It is possible to trigger your own Lua command with this causing a potentially infinite loop.

system_msg(channel, text)

Creates a system message and adds it to the twitch channel specified by channel. Returns true if everything went ok, false otherwise. It will throw an error if the number of arguments received doesn't match what it expects.

Example:

local ok = c2.system_msg("pajlada", "test")
if (not ok)
    -- channel not found
end

Changed globals

load(chunk [, chunkname [, mode [, env]]])

This function is only available if Chatterino is compiled in debug mode. It is meant for debugging with little exception. This function behaves really similarity to Lua's load, however it does not allow for bytecode to be executed. It achieves this by forcing all inputs to be encoded with UTF-8.

See official documentation

require(modname)

This is Lua's require() function. However the searcher and load configuration is notably different than default:

• Lua's built-in dynamic library searcher is removed,
• package.path is not used, in its place are two searchers,
• when require() is used, first a file relative to the currently executing file will be checked, then a file relative to the plugin directory,
• binary chunks are never loaded

As in normal Lua, dots are converted to the path separators ('/' on Linux and Mac, '\' on Windows).

Example:

require("stuff") -- executes Plugins/name/stuff.lua or $(dirname $CURR_FILE)/stuff.lua
require("dir.name") -- executes Plugins/name/dir/name.lua or $(dirname $CURR_FILE)/dir/name.lua
require("binary") -- tried to load Plugins/name/binary.lua and errors because binary is not a text file

print(Args...)

The print global function is equivalent to calling c2.log(c2.LogLevel.Debug, Args...)