Create Plugins

Learn how to create your own Terminus plugin.

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Add new commands to Terminus by creating a plugin. The following explains how to create our example plugin to demonstrate how to add new commands.

Create the Example Plugin using Terminus 3

This example provides a walkthrough of creating a Terminus plugin.

1. Create Plugin

Terminus 3 has a plugin manager that includes a command for scaffolding a new, empty plugin:

terminus self:plugin:create hello-world --project-name=terminus-plugin-project/hello-world

This will create a directory hello-world and populate it with an example plugin template, renamed to match the provided project name. The project name is onlyrequired if you plan to publish and distribute your plugin (e.g. on Packagist).

The self:plugin:create command also installs your new plugin so that you can start using it immediately.

2. Add Commands

The example plugin comes with two files in the Commands directory, each of which contains an example command.

Open up the src/Commands/HelloCommand.php file, and modify the output as shown below:

namespace Pantheon\TerminusHello\Commands;

use Pantheon\Terminus\Commands\TerminusCommand;

class HelloCommand extends TerminusCommand
{
    /**
     * Print the classic message to the log.
     *
     * @command hello
     * @param string $name Who to say "hello" to.
     * @option $first This is the first time we've said hello.
     */
    public function sayHello($name = 'World', $options = ['first' => false])
    {
        $this->log()->notice("Hello, {user}! THIS IS MY MODIFICATION TO THE PLUGIN.", ['user' => $name]);
        if ($options['first']) {
            $this->log()->notice("Pleased to meet you.");
        }
    }
}

The command should now be recognized and loaded by Terminus:

terminus hello

The provided example command should display the following when run:

[notice] Hello, World! THIS IS MY MODIFICATION TO THE PLUGIN.

Modify the @command line to change the name of your command. You may rename the source file the command is in as well, as long as it ends in Command.php.

Create the Example Plugin using Terminus 2

This example provides the structural requirements for plugins to be recognized and loaded by Terminus.

1. Create Plugin Directory

A plugin is a specific set of files bundled together in a directory. The first step in creating a new plugin is to create that directory. It does not matter what you name your plugin’s directory but it makes sense to give it the same name as your plugin. Plugins must live within $HOME/.terminus/plugins. You may need to create the $HOME/.terminus/plugins directory if it does not already exist.

Create a directory for your new plugin (e.g. hello-world):

mkdir $HOME/.terminus/plugins/hello-world

2. Create composer.json

In order for Terminus to recognize the directory as a plugin, the directory must contain a valid composer.json file. Download the following file and move it to your plugin's root directory (e.g. $HOME/.terminus/plugins/hello-world):

composer.json
{
  "name": "my-username/terminus-hello-world",
  "description": "An Hello, World Terminus command",
  "type": "terminus-plugin",
  "extra": {
    "terminus": {
      "compatible-version": "^3"
    }
  }
}

 Note

The name attribute is only required if you plan to publish and distribute your plugin (e.g. on Packagist).

3. Add Commands

Each command in Terminus is defined by its own class which contains a function that is run when the command is run. The class name must end with Command and the file that contains the class must be named similarly (e.g. HelloCommand class within HelloCommand.php).

Create a src directory within your plugin directory:

mkdir $HOME/.terminus/plugins/hello-world/src

Download the following file and move it to your plugin's src directory (e.g. $HOME/.terminus/plugins/hello-world/src/HelloCommand.php):

HelloCommand.php
use Pantheon\Terminus\Commands\TerminusCommand;

class HelloCommand extends TerminusCommand
{
    /**
     * Print the classic message to the log.
     *
     * @command hello
     */
    public function sayHello()
    {
        $this->log()->notice("Hello, World!");
    }
}

You can name the command function anything you like, but it must be a public method. The comment above the command is also required. The first line is the help text that will be displayed when you run terminus list. The @command hello line tells Terminus that this function is a command and that its name is hello.

The command should now be recognized and loaded by Terminus:

terminus hello

The provided example command should display the following when run:

[notice] Hello, World!

Debug

Run the command with the verbose option if it does not work as expected:

terminus hello -vvv

If Terminus had trouble loading your plugin then there should be a debug notice logged. You may also be able to get more info by looking in your PHP error logs.

Distribute Plugin

While the plugin you’ve created is good enough for local development, if you create something that you’re proud of, share it with the world! There are a few more things you’ll need to do to make your plugin distributable:

Vendor Name

Add a vendor name to the plugin name within composer.json so that your plugin may be distinguished from other plugins that might share the same name. Most people use their GitHub user or organization name for the vendor. For a plugin distributed by Pantheon (GitHub organization: pantheon-systems) we would change the name field to:

{
  "name": "pantheon-systems\terminus-hello-world"
}

PSR-4 Namespacing

Your plugin command class name may eventually conflict with internal or third-party commands. To avoid this you will need to add a PSR-4 compatible namespace. This should contain your vendor name and the plugin name. Add a namespace declaration to the top of your php file (e.g. \$HOME/.terminus/plugins/hello-world/src/HelloCommand.php):

namespace Pantheon\TerminusHelloWorld\Commands;

The Commands part of the namespace is not strictly necessary but it can help keep things organized if you need to add supporting classes to your plugin.

You will also need to make sure your src directory and composer file reflect the new namespace. Move the HelloCommand.php file from src/ to the src/Commands directory to mirror the last part of the namespace. If you have a lot of commands in your plugin, you can group them into command groups by adding another layer to the namespace and directory structure.

Update the composer.json file with an autoload section to indicate how to load your namespace. Your composer file should now look like:

{
  "name": "my-username/terminus-hello-world",
  "description": "An Hello, World Terminus command",
  "type": "terminus-plugin",
  "autoload": {
    "psr-4": { "Pantheon\\TerminusHello\\": "src" }
  },
  "extra": {
    "terminus": {
      "compatible-version": "^1"
    }
  }
}

Remember to change my-username and Pantheon in the above to your vendor name.

External Dependencies

Starting with Terminus version 1.1.0, it is possible for plugins to depend on external libraries. This is done by adding your plugin requirements to the require section of your composer.json file, as usual. You should also update your plugin's Terminus compatible-version entry to ^1.1, so that older versions of Terminus will not attempt to use it. If your plugin can still function without its external classes, then you may keep the compatible-version at ^1.

Update the composer.json file with a require section that lists all of the external projects you need, along with their version constraints. Your composer file should now look like this:

{
  "name": "my-username/terminus-hello-world",
  "description": "A Hello, World Terminus command",
  "type": "terminus-plugin",
  "autoload": {
    "psr-4": { "Pantheon\\TerminusHello\\": "src" }
  },
  "require": {
    "organization/project-name": "^1"
  },
  "extra": {
    "terminus": {
      "compatible-version": "^1.1"
    }
  }
}

 Note

In order to avoid conflicts between the dependencies of different plugins, Terminus 1 and 2 do not load a plugin's external libraries until immediately before one of its commands is executed. That means that you cannot use any external classes in your plugin's constructor. Terminus 3 does not have this restriction.

Coding Standards

While not strictly necessary, if you plan to distribute your plugin, and especially if you plan to add an open source licence and encourage contributions, it may be a good idea to adopt the Terminus core standards. Some basics to follow are:

More information on Terminus standards can be found at: https://github.com/pantheon-systems/terminus/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Plugin Versioning

We recommend following semantic versioning when versioning your plugins, just as Terminus does.

If your plugin has a minimum required version of Terminus, you can specify that in the compatible-version section of composer.json. You can use the standard composer version constraints syntax. If you do change compatible-version, please make sure that your constraint expression does not accidentally include the next major version of Terminus. In other words, >=1.3 <2.0.0 is fine but >=1.3 is not.

Testing Plugins

Adding automated testing is an important step to take before distributing plugins. Automated tests give prospective new users the assurance that the plugin works, and provides a basis for evaluating changes to the plugin.

The instructions in this section demonstrate how to set up simple functional tests for Terminus plugins using Bats, the Bash Automated Testing System. Bats allows tests to be written with simple Bash statements.

  1. Copy the require-dev and scripts sections from the composer.json file below into the composer.json of your Terminus plugin:

    {
    "name": "my-username/terminus-hello-world",
    "description": "A Hello, World Terminus command",
    "type": "terminus-plugin",
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": { "Pantheon\\TerminusHello\\": "src" }
    },
    "require": {
        "organization/project-name": "^1"
    },
    "extra": {
        "terminus": {
            "compatible-version": "^1.1"
        }
    }
    "require-dev": {
        "squizlabs/php_codesniffer": "^2.7"
    },
    "scripts": {
        "install-bats": "if [ ! -f bin/bats ] ; then git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/bats.git; mkdir -p bin; bats/install.sh .; fi",
        "bats": "TERMINUS_PLUGINS_DIR=.. bin/bats tests",
        "cs": "phpcs --standard=PSR2 -n src",
        "cbf": "phpcbf --standard=PSR2 -n src",
        "test": [
            "@install-bats",
            "@bats",
            "@cs"
        ]
    }
}

  2. Install the PHP Code Sniffer:

    composer install

  3. Check the coding standards of your plugin for PSR-2 compliance:

    composer cs

  4. cbf can fix most PRS-2 compliance errors in your plugin:

    composer cbf

  5. Because of the additional files created by these tests, we strongly recommend adding the following lines to the .gitignorefile:

    vendor
bats
bin
libexec
share

  6. Define some Bats tests to run. Create a folder named tests, and create a file named confirm-install.bats. Put the contents below in your Bats test file:

    #!/usr/bin/env bats

#
# confirm-install.bats
#
# Ensure that Terminus and the Composer plugin have been installed correctly
#

@test "confirm terminus version" {
  terminus --version
}

@test "get help on plugin command" {
  run terminus help MY:PLUGIN-COMMAND
  [[ $output == *"SOME OUTPUT FROM MY PLUGIN HELP"* ]]
  [ "$status" -eq 0 ]
}

    Replace MY:PLUGIN-COMMAND with the name of one of your plugin's commands, and replace SOME OUTPUT FROM MY PLUGIN HELP in the test.

  7. Run your test:

     composer test

To add more tests, create more files with .bats extensions, and populate them with @test blocks as shown above. Tests consist of simple bash expressions; any command that returns a non-zero result code signifies failure. See the documentation on writing BATS tests for more information.

Automating Tests

At this point, it would be a good idea to configure your project tests to run automatically on Circle CI. You'll need to keep a Sandbox site online to run the tests against.

  1. Copy the contents below into a file named circle.yml in your plugin project:

    #
# Test the Terminus Composer Plugin
#
machine:
  timezone:
    America/Chicago
  php:
    version: 7.0.11
  environment:
    PATH: $PATH:~/.composer/vendor/bin:~/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$HOME/bin

dependencies:
  cache_directories:
    - ~/.composer/cache
  override:
    - composer install --prefer-dist -n
    - composer install-bats
    - composer global require -n "consolidation/cgr"
    - cgr "pantheon-systems/terminus:^1.1"
  post:
    - terminus auth:login --machine-token=$TERMINUS_TOKEN
test:
  override:
    - composer test

    Using another testing service can also be done by adapting the contents above; most popular services should be fairly easy to set up.

  2. In the Circle CI settings, set up the following environment variables:

    • TERMINUS_SITE: The name of a Sandbox Pantheon site to run tests against.
    • TERMINUS_TOKEN: A Pantheon machine token that has access to the test site.

  3. Create an ssh key pair, add the public key to your account on Pantheon, and add the private key to Circle CI (leave the "Hostname" field empty).

At this point, your tests should run successfully on Circle CI. Add an embeddable status badge to the top of your plugin's README.md file to show off your passing build status.

More Resources

There is no published Plugin API documentation yet, so the best way to learn how to write commands is to look through the internal commands in the Terminus source code: https://github.com/pantheon-systems/terminus

A slightly more complete version of the plugin created in this guide can be found at: https://github.com/pantheon-systems/terminus-plugin-example