Types of plugins
Builder Content
If you'd like a plugin with specific features but it's not already in Builder, you can submit a community plugin to Builder with a GitHub pull request. A community plugin is a plugin that anyone can use with Builder. When a community plugin is merged, it becomes part of Builder and Builder developers maintain it.
This document covers the main types of plugins developers contribute with links to examples and more information.
Tip: You can create community plugins and submit a pull request on any plan. If a community plugin doesn't meet your needs, you can create a private plugin. Private plugins are included with paid plans, and Builder enables them for each Organization. You host your own plugins and handle configuration manually.
Prerequisites
To get started contributing plugins, you should be familiar with the following:
- the basics of Builder plugins
- git and GitHub
Types of Builder plugins
Plugin contributions tend to fall into three categories that cover the most common use cases:
Custom editor plugins
Custom editor plugins are the main use case for creating your own plugins. Almost all of the integrations in Builder use custom editors, which includes most of the built-in e-commerce plugins.
For example, with this type of plugin, teammates can search and link selected products and categories from their backend to structured data entries, Sections, and Pages within the Visual Editor with a minimal process.
Using custom editor plugins, marketing or design teammates can populate elements such as product cards, product galleries, add to cart buttons, and lists of product recommendations by selecting what they need from your plugin.
For more information, refer to the following resources:
- On the Builder Forum, visit How to build a Custom Editor plugin for my e-commerce backend with Builder.io.
- For an example of an e-commerce plugin in production, check out Builder's Swell plugin on GitHub.
- For help on creating your e-commerce plugin, Builder offers an e-commerce plugin utility library.
Data connector plugins
Use data connector plugins to enrich the data available in Visual Editor Sections and Pages from external sources. With a data plugin, teammates can select entries or query the source and bind to the results of queries directly in Builder.
Resources:
- For a step-by-step guide on connecting to data, visit the Builder blog post Using Contentful Data in Builder's Visual Editor.
- For example data plugin code, visit Builder's data plugin example on GitHub.
- For an example of a data plugin in production, check out Builder's Contentful plugin on GitHub.
- Builder also offers a data plugin utility library to help you in creating your data plugin.
Action shortcut plugins
You can use action shortcuts in Builder to give non-technical teammates access to some of the tasks that would otherwise require developer involvement. With action shortcuts, a user can trigger tracking events, set up conditional values, or set specific values on state without having to write code.
For example, a plugin might define an action such as Track Event with Google Analytics. When the user clicks a button, the action sends the event addToCart to Google Analytics.
For a practical example of setting up an action shortcut plugin, refer to Builder's example action plugin on GitHub.
Generic custom editor plugin
Custom editor plugins help you register custom field types for your Builder Model custom fields and inputs for your custom components, custom targeting, and Symbols.
To create a custom editor, build a React component that takes a value prop and an onChange prop. Within your custom editor component, call the passed in onChange() function when the value is updated. The value you set can be any type serializable to JSON — for example, string, number, null, array, object — and be as deeply nested as you need.
For more information, refer to the following resources:
What's next
If you're ready to start contributing, check these articles: