I have a curiosity question that I cannot find any articles or blogs on. I am curious how some SASS platforms have built the ability for clients to create "plugins" that extend their platforms capability. For instance, like shopify.
If you know of any resources that I can read up on designs and/or system architectures, please comment them below!
Thanks!
Plugins are enabled by mainly two things:
An Interface/API that is designed to communicate with the platform for all pluggable behaviors. Most often done via a scripting language interface, such as Javascript or Python. The API will often allow for calling to manipulate the platform in some ways as well as a form of event registration in order to execute the plugin code on specific platform events, e.g. "customer registered event" or "invoice sent event".
A form of plugin registration and execution. Often via configuration files or conventions, such as plugin folder locations, specific interfaces, upload functionality etc.
Security is always an important topic when designing a plugin interface. Some platforms will define their own domain specific language for plugins that is more restricted than a generic scripting language. Others will only provide a limited set of libraries that can be used.
I also recommend to check this Stackoverflow Question and this openstack article describes the plugin-design-pattern with an example.
