jbrowse-plugin-template

Template to quickly start a new JBrowse plugin

Usage

You can use this template to create a new GitHub repository or a new local project.

Software requirements

• git
• Node.js (version 10 or greater)
• yarn (or npm which comes with Node.js)
• JBrowse 2 (version 2.0 or greater)

Create a new project from this template

You can click the "Use this template" button in the repository (instructions here):

Or you can use the GitHub CLI:

$ gh repo create jbrowse-plugin-my-project --template https://github.com/GMOD/jbrowse-plugin-template.git

Or you can start a plugin locally:

$ git clone https://github.com/GMOD/jbrowse-plugin-template.git jbrowse-plugin-my-project
$ cd jbrowse-plugin-my-project
$ rm -rf .git
$ # If you want to use Git, re-initialize it
$ git init

Getting started

Setup

Run yarn init (or npm init) and answer the prompts to fill out the information for your plugin

• Make sure you at least enter a "name" (probably starting with "jbrowse-plugin-", or "@myscope/jbrowse-plugin-" if you're going to publish to an NPM organization)
• Other fields may be left blank
• leave the "entry point" as dist/index.js

Now run yarn (or rm yarn.lock && npm install to use npm instead of yarn) to install the necessary dependencies.

After this, run yarn setup (or npm run setup). This configures your project, and adds a build of JBrowse 2 that can be used to test your plugin during development.

Build

$ yarn build ## or `npm run build`

Development

To develop against JBrowse Web:

• Start a development version of JBrowse Web (see here)
• In this project, run yarn start (or npm run start)
• Assuming JBrowse Web is being served on port 3000, navigate in your web browser to http://localhost:3000/?config=http://localhost:9000/jbrowse_config.json
• When you make changes to your plugin, it will automatically be re-built. You can then refresh JBrowse Web to see the changes.

Note: The current version of jbrowse-plugin-template is only compatible with "JBrowse 2" v2.0 or greater. If you are developing for a version of "JBrowse 2" v1.x, please consider upgrading, or you will have to manually downgrade the package dependencies in this template to ensure compatibility.

Testing

To test your plugin, there are several commands available:

yarn browse or npm run browse

Launches your local JBrowse 2 build that is used for integration testing, with your plugin already included in the configuration. Your plugin must also be running (yarn start or npm run start).

yarn test or npm test

Runs any unit tests defined during plugin development.

yarn cypress:run or npm run cypress:run

Runs the cypress integration tests for your plugin. Both the plugin and browse must already be running.

yarn test:e2e or npm run test:e2e

Starts up the JBrowse 2 build as well as your plugin, and runs the cypress integration tests against them. Closes both resources after tests finish.

yarn cypress or npm run cypress

Launches the cypress test runner, which can be very useful for writing integration tests for your plugin. Both the plugin and browse must already be running.

Github Action

This template includes a Github action that runs your integration tests when you push new changes to your repository.

Publishing to NPM

Once you have developed your plugin, you can publish it to NPM. Remember to remove "private": true from package.json before doing so.

Using plugins with embedded components

If you are using plugins in the embedded apps such as @jbrowse/react-linear-genome-view, then you can install jbrowse plugins such as this one using normal "npm install jbrowse-plugin-yourplugin" if you have published them to NPM, and use code like this

import React from 'react'
import ViewType from '@jbrowse/core/pluggableElementTypes/ViewType'
import PluginManager from '@jbrowse/core/PluginManager'
import Plugin from '@jbrowse/core/Plugin'

// in your code
import { createViewState, JBrowseLinearGenomeView } from '@jbrowse/react-linear-genome-view'
import MyPlugin from 'jbrowse-plugin-yourplugin'

export const MyApp = () => {
  const state = createViewState({
    assembly: {/*...your assembly config...*/},
    plugins: [MyPlugin],
    tracks: [/*...your track configs...*/],
    location: 'ctgA:1105..1221',
  })

  return (
    <JBrowseLinearGenomeView viewState={state} />
  )
}

See https://jbrowse.org/storybook/lgv/main/?path=/docs/using-plugins--docs for live example, and also method for loading plugins from urls instead of from NPM in embedded

Using plugins with JBrowse Web

If you are using JBrowse Web, after the plugin is published to NPM, you can use unpkg to host plugin bundle. The plugin can then be referenced by URL in the config.json

A JBrowse Web config using this plugin would look like this:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "MyProject",
      "url": "https://unpkg.com/jbrowse-plugin-my-project/dist/jbrowse-plugin-my-project.umd.production.min.js"
    }
  ]
}

You can also use a specific version in unpkg, such as https://unpkg.com/jbrowse-plugin-my-project@1.0.1/dist/jbrowse-plugin-my-project.umd.production.min.js

TypeScript vs. JavaScript

This template is set up in such a way that you can use both TypeScript and JavaScript for development. If using only JavaScript, you can change src/index.ts to src/index.js.

If using only TypeScript, you can remove "allowJs": true from tsconfig.json and "@babel/preset-react" from .babelrc (and from "devDependencies" in package.json).