Can you add some other plugin types that you've planned, but are 'coming soon'?

Who are plugins available to? Make this clear both here and in the user docs

A basic 'how plugins work' here is helpful, say stuff like:

Plugin installation is handled natively by the Beekeeper Studio application, community plugins are published on the Beekeeper Studio community plugin repository (link)

You'll need a version of this for the user docs too, with screenshots

Can you add some other plugin types that you've planned, but are 'coming soon'?

Only sidebar plugins currently (beside json sidebar). But before that, we probably want to have sidebar tabs that can be dragged around. For example, JSON Viewer can be moved to the global sidebar and vice versa with mouse drag. Not sure, would love to discuss about that.

Add a screenshot

You need a 'Plugins' page in the user guide for users of plugins, detailing what they are, who they're available to, and how to install them

Make this a separate page in the user guide

Are these key components for the developer? Not really.

I'd have this be plugin lifecycle and say stuff like:

1. Install the beekeeper plugin API
2. Create your plugin
3. Push to your own repository
4. Publish a build on GitHub
5. Submit a PR to the Beekeeper Studio community plugins repository

We don't have an NPM package for this?

I'll add them today or next week.

Can we add the example plugin (the one you have screenshots of) link here, so folks can look at the real code?

Why implement these like bks.request('getTables') rather than bks.getTables()? The second way means that for each method we can add details JSDocs and then publish those as the reference using TypeDoc or JSDoc binaries.

No? Is there some advantage to this system that I'm missing?

To be clear: I'm fine with this for now, but seems like a lot more work to maintain

request is a very thin wrapper of window.parent.postMessage(). Basically it is this:

export async function request(name, args) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      const id = generateUUID();
      const data = { id, name, args };
      pendingRequests.set(id, { name, resolve, reject });
      window.parent.postMessage(data, "*");
  });
}

It's the very basic function for communicating that can't be replaced. In Beekeeper Studio, it is like this.$util.send.

I think we could add JSDocs to request function too right? the request function is typed. We could then add JSDocs this way:

/** jsdocs here */
export async function request(name: "getTables", args?: GetTablesRequest["args"]): Promise<GetTablesResponse>;

/** jsdocs here */
export async function request(name: "getColumns", args: GetColumnsRequest["args"]): Promise<GetColumnsResponse>;

/** jsdocs here */
export async function request(name: "getConnectionInfo"): Promise<GetConnectionInfoResponse>;

I'd be down to do bks.getTables too if it's better. It's gonna be a wrapper of the request function.

How are errors handled with request functions? What if malformed request is sent? How should the user debug?

Are there error classes or codes they should pay attention to?

I'll add those to the docs.

If you call request and there is an error, it will just throw an error.

When error happens, it usually happens in the plugin system, so the plugin system will respond with an object that goes { error: "Error message here" }.

We don't have custom classes for errors yet. I just used simple Error class with a message text.

Also, you can debug the messages by calling setDebugComms(true) which will log the three main functions.

What does this return when the notification is successful / unsuccessful? What errors can be thrown here?

So the communication module was inspired by LSP which basically has two ways of communications:

• Request/Response: If a plugin requests something, it expects something in return
• Notification: If the plugin system notifies the plugin, it does not expect a return

An example to notification is switchTheme: when user chooses a theme, the plugin system notifies all plugins (without expecting an answer from all plugin) with switchTheme.

But good questions though, will make the docs clearer.