Development Toolkit

The A28 Developer Toolkit provides developers with the tools and documentation necessary to build packages for the Area28 Application and to manage configuration files.

General information

Python version

Area28 follows the VFX Reference Platform which restricts Python to 3.7.x currently.

Installation

The A28 Development Kit is published on PyPI and can be installed from there:

pip install -U a28

We also publish beta releases:

pip install -U --pre a28

If you wish to install A28 for development purposes, refer to the contributors guide.

Documentation

Documentation is available on GitHub.

Get in touch

Report bugs, suggest features or view the source code on GitHub.

Coding structure

Interfaces

• IPlugin
• IApiExtension
• IApplicationExtension
• IChatExtension
• IEventExtension
• IInteractionExtension
• ILoggerExtension
• IMetadataExtension
• IPreferencesExtension
• IRealtimeExtension
• IUiExtension
• IUnitsExtension

Plugins

Plugins are decorators that can be used to manipulate the payload before being processed or before getting returned.

Extensions

Extension are used to add additional functionality to the Area28 application. Extensions are broken up into multiple types, defined within the Interfaces list.

Packaging

Each package has a unique identifier associated with it and is compressed into a .a28 file. Please look at the a28 development kit for details.

Package structure

@{provider}
|-- {package}
    |-- extensions
    |   |-- {extensions[]}.py
    |-- scripts
    |   |-- install.py
    |   |-- postinstall.py
    |   |-- preinstall.py
    |   |-- uninstall.py
    |-- plugin
    |   |-- {application specific plugin}
    |-- plugins
    |   |-- {plugin[]}.py
    |-- bin
    |   |--{executable[]}.py
    |-- package.json

Package.json structure

{
    "name": "@area28/unity-application",
    "version": "0.0.4",
    "description": "Detect is running within Unity3D.",
    "homepage": "https://area28.io",
    "keywords": [
        "area28",
        "chat",
        "lowercase",
        "transform"
    ],
    "repository": {
        "type": "git",
        "url": "git+https://github.com/area28/area28.git",
        "directory": "packages/unity-application"
    },
    "author": "Area28 Technologies",
    "license": "MIT",
    "bugs": {
        "url": "https://github.com/area28/area28/issues"
    },
    "bin": {
        "myapp": "./bin/lowercase.py"
    },
    "os": [
        "darwin",
        "linux"
    ],
    "cpu": [
        "x64",
        "ia32",
        "!mips"
    ],
    "scripts": {
        "preinstall": "scripts/preinstall.py",
        "install": "scripts/install.py",
        "postinstall": "scripts/postinstall.py",
        "uninstall": "scripts/uninstall.py"
    }
}

Performing package actions

Authenticate with A28

• a28 account authenticate -u my.email@example.com

Initialize a new package

• a28 package init --scope my-company --name powerful-plugin --type app my/folder

This will generate a package.json and the folder structure in the given folder ('my/folder')

Building a package

• a28 package build --src @area28/chat-logger --dest dist

This will generate the .a28 package in dist/

Installing a package locally

• a28 package install --pkg dist/00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000-0.0.1.a28

Publish a package

• a28 package publish --pkg dist/00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000-0.0.1.a28