Plugster Documentation

Welcome to the Plugster documentation. Plugster is a small jQuery-based JavaScript micro-framework for building client-side widgets — what we call Plugsters — out of a thin wrapper around jQuery, with event-based communication between independent UI components as a first-class concern.

These pages assume you already know your way around HTML and JavaScript. The goal is not to be exhaustive but to be precise: every page covers one slice of the framework, in the order you typically need it.

What to read #

  • Getting Started — the minimum jsDelivr install and a working "hello, Plugster" example. Start here if you have never used the framework.
  • Core concepts — views, outlets, controllers, and the this._.<outletName> accessor pattern. The mental model.
  • Lifecycle — what happens between new, init(), Plugster.plug(), Plugster.unplug() and an optional destroy(). The "always wire inside afterInit()" rule.
  • HTML hooks — reference for every data-* attribute the framework reads: data-controller-name, data-outlet-id, data-child-templates, data-on-*, data-lang.
  • Events — registerEventSignature and dispatchEvent, HTML-declared subscriptions (the default), and the explicit listenTo mode for Plugsters created at runtime.
  • List outlets — child templates, buildListItem, item ordering, and the read APIs (getItems vs getItemsAsArray).
  • Localization — setLocales, translateTo, and how the framework picks up the active language from data-lang.
  • Anti-patterns — a curated list of mistakes that look reasonable but cause subtle bugs. Read this before shipping a real Plugster.

How Plugster is distributed #

Plugster is published exclusively as a tagged release on GitHub and served by jsDelivr. There is no npm package. The tag is the release — pin a specific tag and you pin a specific build: 

        
            https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/paranoid-software/plugster@<tag>/dist/plugster.min.js

See Getting Started for the recommended install and the current pinned version.

Resources #

Content