Plugin tooling [plugin-tooling]

Automatic plugin generator [automatic-plugin-generator]

We recommend that you kick-start your plugin by generating it with the {{kib}} Plugin Generator. Run the following in the {{kib}} repo, and you will be asked a couple of questions, see some progress bars, and have a freshly generated plugin ready for you to play with in {{kib}}'s plugins folder.

node scripts/generate_plugin

Plugin location [_plugin_location]

The {{kib}} directory must be named kibana, and your plugin directory should be located in the root of kibana in a plugins directory, for example:

.
└── kibana
    └── plugins
        ├── foo-plugin
        └── bar-plugin

Build plugin distributable [_build_plugin_distributable]

::::{warning} {{kib}} distributable is not shipped with @kbn/optimizer anymore. You need to pre-build your plugin for use in production. ::::

You can leverage @kbn/plugin-helpers to build a distributable archive for your plugin. The package transpiles the plugin code, adds polyfills, and links necessary js modules in the runtime. You don’t need to install the plugin-helpers dependency. If you created the plugin using node scripts/generate_plugin script, package.json is already pre-configured. To build your plugin run within your plugin folder:

yarn build

It will output azip archive in kibana/plugins/my_plugin_name/build/ folder.

Install a plugin from archive [_install_a_plugin_from_archive]

See How to install a plugin.

Run {{kib}} with your plugin in dev mode [_run_kib_with_your_plugin_in_dev_mode]

If your plugin isn’t server only and contains ui in order for Kibana to pick the browser bundles you need to run yarn dev --watch in the plugin root folder at a dedicated terminal.

Then, in a second terminal, run yarn start at the {{kib}} root folder. Make sure {{kib}} found and bootstrapped your plugin by:

[INFO ][plugins-system.standard] Setting up […] plugins: […, myPluginName, …]