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Create Your First Plugin

Welcome to Allay! Allay provides a powerful plugin system that allows you to write plugins in various languages — Java, Kotlin, Scala and any JVM-based language. In this section, we'll walk you through creating a simple plugin in Java.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following installed:

Project Templates

To quickly get started, you can use one of the available plugin templates:

In this guide, we will use JavaPluginTemplate.

Creating a New Project

  1. Go to the JavaPluginTemplate page.
  2. Click the Use this template button → Create a new repository.
  3. Enter a name and description. We'll use MyPlugin as the name.
  4. Click Create repository.

Once the repository is created, you'll be redirected to its page. Clone the project to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/MyPlugin.git
cd MyPlugin

Initialize the Project

Open the project in IntelliJ IDEA and then open README.md. Follow the instructions in the file to initialize the project. After that, reload the gradle project.

Tip

If you are not using JavaPluginTemplate, you'll need to write the plugin.json file manually:

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{
  "name": "MyPlugin",
  "entrance": "your.group.name.myplugin.MyPlugin",
  "authors": ["yourname"],
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "api_version": ">=0.1.0",
  "description": "The description of your plugin",
  "website": "The website of your plugin",
  "dependencies": [
     {
         "name": "AnotherPlugin1"
     },
     {
         "name": "AnotherPlugin2",
         "version": ">=0.1.0",
         "optional": true
     }
 ]
}

When editing the plugin.json, there are a few things worth noting:

  • Fields api_version, description, website and dependencies can be missing.
  • The version of your plugin must be a valid Semantic Version, otherwise the plugin won't be loaded.
  • The api_version of your plugin and the version of entries in dependencies can be an expression, and here are some examples:
  • Single version - 1.2.3
  • NPM Style - >1.2.2 - 1.1.1 || 1.2.3 - 2.0.0 - 1.1.* - ~1.2.1 - ^1.1.1
  • COCOAPODS Style - > 1.2.2 - ~> 1.2.1 - <= 1.1.1
  • IVY Style - 1.2.+ - (,1.8.9] - [0.2,1.4]

Run the Server with the Plugin

If you are using the AllayGradle plugin (which is already included in JavaPluginTemplate), you can run the server directly from the project:

./gradlew runServer

Build the Plugin

To build the plugin, run:

./gradlew shadowJar

The resulting file will be located at:

build/libs/MyPlugin-1.0.0-shaded.jar

You can then copy it to the plugins directory of your Allay server and use it.

Now you're ready to create your own plugins for Allay! 🎉

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