Creating a plugin

What is an OpenSesame plugin?

Plugins are extra items that appear in the OpenSesame item toolbar. Plugins add functionality that you can use in experiments. To add functionality to the OpenSesame user interface, you need an extension:

• https://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.2/dev/extension

Relevant files

Let's assume that your plugin is called my_plugin. In that case, your plugin corresponds to a folder called my_plugin, containing at least the following 3 files:

my_plugin/
    info.yaml
    my_plugin.md
    my_plugin.py

Icons

Each plug-in needs an icon, which you can specify in one of two ways:

• Include two icon files in the plugin folder:
  • A 16x16 px png file called my_plugin.png; and
  • A 32x32 px png file called my_plugin_large.png.
• Or specify an icon key in info.yaml. If you do this, the plugin icon will be taken from the icon theme.

Help file

You can provide a help file in Markdown or HTML format. To add a Markdown help file, simply create a file called my_plugin.md in the plugin folder. For an HTML help file, create a file called my_plugin.html. Markdown format is preferred, because it is easier to read. Strictly speaking, the help file is optional, and your plugin will work without it. However, an informative help file is an essential part of a good plugin.

Defining the GUI

The GUI is defined in a file called info.yaml¹. YAML provides a straight-forward way to define your plugin controls, and specify other kinds of information. Make sure that your file is syntactically valid YAML, for example using a validator such as yamllint.com.

The following top-level fields are used to show plugin information by the plugin and extension manager: author, url, version. and description. Another important field is category, which specifies in which group the plugin should appear in the item toolbar (e.g. 'Visual stimuli', etc.). The icon field specifies an icon name (as explained above). Finally, the priority field determines the order in which plugins are loaded, where high priority values are loaded last.

The control field contains a list of controls. Each control is itself an object that has various fields. The most important fields are:

• type specifies the type of the control. Possible values:
  • checkbox is a checkable box (QtGui.QCheckBox)
  • color_edit is a color-select widget (libqtopensesame.widgets.color_edit)
  • combobox is a drop-down box with multiple options (QtGui.QComboBox)
  • editor is a multiline text editor (QProgEdit.QTabManager)
  • filepool is a file-select widget (QtGui.QLineEdit)
  • line_edit is a single-line text input (QtGui.QLineEdit)
  • spinbox is a text-based numeric-value selector (QtGui.QSpinBox)
  • slider is a sliding numeric-value selector (QtGui.QSlider)
  • text is a non-interactive text string (QtGui.QLabel)
• var specifies the name of the variable that should be set using the control (not applicable if type is text).
• label specifies the text label for the control.
• name (optional) specifies under which name the widget should be added to the plugin object, so that it can be referred to as self.[name].
• tooltip (optional) an informative tooltip.

author: Your name
category: Some category
description: This is my plugin
icon: text-x-generic
url: http://your.website
controls:
-
    label: My line edit control
    name: line_edit_widget
    tooltip: You can type something here
    type: line_edit
    var: my_line_edit_var
-
    label: My line checkbox control
    name: checkbox_widget
    tooltip: You can type something here
    type: checkbox
    var: my_checkbox_var

See the example plugin for a list of all controls and options.

Writing the main plugin code

The main plugin code is placed in my_plugin.py. This file has two classes:

• my_plugin, which contains the runtime part of the plugin.
• qtmy_plugin, which controls the GUI. This class is almost empty in most cases, because the controls are defined in info.yaml.

In many cases, you will only be concerned with three methods:

• my_plugin.reset() is where you specify default values for the plugin variables.
• my_plugin.prepare() is where you implement the prepare phase of your plugin. It is good practice to move as much functionality as possible into prepare(), so that the time-critical run phase goes as smooth as possible.
• my_plugin.run() is where you implement the run phase of your plugin.

A very simple example looks like this (see the examples for more realistic examples):

# Import Python 3 compatibility functions
from libopensesame.py3compat import *
# Import the required modules.
from libopensesame import debug
from libopensesame.item import item
from libqtopensesame.items.qtautoplugin import qtautoplugin

class my_plugin(item):

    description = u'plugin description'

    def reset(self):

        # Set default experimental variables and values
        self.var.my_line_edit_var = u'some default'
        self.var.my_checkbox_var = u'some default'
        # Debugging output is only visible when OpenSesame is started with the
        # --debug argument.
        debug.msg(u'My plugin has been initialized!')

    def prepare(self):

        # Call parent functions.
        item.prepare(self)
        # Prepare your plugin here.

    def run(self):

        # Record the timestamp of the plugin execution.
        self.set_item_onset()
        # Run your plugin here.

class qtmy_plugin(my_plugin, qtautoplugin):

    def __init__(self, name, experiment, script=None):

        # Call parent constructors.
        my_plugin.__init__(self, name, experiment, script)
        qtautoplugin.__init__(self, __file__)

Experimental variables

Experimental variables are properties of the var object. An example is self.var.my_line_edit_var from the example above. These variables that define the plugin, and are parsed to and from the OpenSesame script. See also:

• https://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.2/manual/variables

Writing a setup.py and uploading to PyPi

You can use a setup.py file to automatically install a plugin, or to upload it to PyPi (so that it can be installed through pip install). To see how this is done, see the setup script included with the example plugin.

To upload a package to PyPi, you need to create a PyPi account, and then register and upload your package. This is a fairly simple process, and is described on the PyPi website.

Examples

For a working example, see:

• https://github.com/smathot/opensesame-plugin-example

Other examples can be found in the opensesame_plugins folder inlud