VisiData Automatic Plugin Import

README.md

VisiData Plugin Discovery / Automatic Import

This is an experimental Python snippet that can be used (such as from .visidatarc) to discover VisiData plugins based on entry points. The approach is inspired by the Pluggy framework, and specifically the entry point group naming that flake8 uses for plugin registration.

This means that you could pip-install a plugin package and VisiData would find and import it at startup. I've tested this by packaging up vds3 with poetry and using an entry point to map the plugin name to an importable module name.

autoimport_plugins.py

from importlib import import_module
from visidata import vd

try:
    from importlib import metadata

    plugins = metadata.entry_points().select(group="visidata.plugin")
except (AttributeError, ImportError):
    try:
        # Required for selectable entry points prior to Python 3.10
        # https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.metadata.html#entry-points
        import importlib_metadata

        plugins = importlib_metadata.entry_points().select(group="visidata.plugin")
    except (ImportError, FileNotFoundError):
        plugins = ()

for plugin in plugins:
    vd.status(f"importing module {plugin.value} for plugin: {plugin.name}")
    import_module(plugin.value)