Need help with my first extension.

MikeLundahl

Hi,

I'm trying to start the development of my first extension, but I'm having difficulties following the guide in the documentation.

https://docs.flarum.org/extend/start

I'm at the final step, to install my extension. This is the error message I'm getting:

Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages.

  Problem 1
    - Root composer.json requires mbl/flarum-hello-world, it could not be found in any version, there may be a typo in the package name.

Potential causes:
 - A typo in the package name
 - The package is not available in a stable-enough version according to your minimum-stability setting
   see <https://getcomposer.org/doc/04-schema.md#minimum-stability> for more details.
 - It's a private package and you forgot to add a custom repository to find it

Read <https://getcomposer.org/doc/articles/troubleshooting.md> for further common problems.

Installation failed, reverting ./composer.json and ./composer.lock to their original content.

I've also added:

    "minimum-stability": "dev",
    "repositories": [{
            "type": "path",
            "url": "packages/*"
        }]

to the composer file. (I've also tried the full path "C:/path/to/packages/*")

I'm using XAMPP on my local Windows machine, and I routed my DocRoot folder to a custom one and Flarum seems to be generally running fine. And I can install external extensions with no issues.

Has anyone experienced the same thing?

Thanks!

SychO

it's not finding your package, so you must confirm that mbl/flarum-hello-world is indeed the name of your package (check your package's composer.json) and confirm that the packages path is indeed in the same directory as your Flarum instance's composer.json (since you specified the relative path packages/*

MikeLundahl

SychO Thanks for replying!
Yes, that's what I suspected.

The path to the extension is the following:
packages\mbl\flarum-hello-world

Here's the composer file generated by the flarum-cli init command (which is located in the extension folder mentioned above):

{
    "name": "mbl/flarum-hello-world",
    "description": "Testing first extension",
    "keywords": [
        "flarum"
    ],
    "type": "flarum-extension",
    "license": "CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0",
    "require": {
        "flarum/core": "^1.2.0"
    },
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Mike Lundahl",
            "email": "mike@madebylundahl.com",
            "role": "Developer"
        }
    ],
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Mbl\\FlarumHelloWorld\\": "src/"
        }
    },
    "extra": {
        "flarum-extension": {
            "title": "Flarum-hello-world",
            "category": "",
            "icon": {
                "name": "",
                "color": "",
                "backgroundColor": ""
            }
        },
        "flarum-cli": {
            "modules": {
                "admin": true,
                "forum": true,
                "js": true,
                "jsCommon": true,
                "css": true,
                "locale": true,
                "gitConf": true,
                "githubActions": true,
                "prettier": true,
                "typescript": true,
                "bundlewatch": false,
                "backendTesting": true,
                "editorConfig": true,
                "styleci": true
            }
        }
    },
    "minimum-stability": "dev",
    "prefer-stable": true,
    "autoload-dev": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Mbl\\FlarumHelloWorld\\Tests\\": "tests/"
        }
    },
    "scripts": {
        "test": [
            "@test:unit",
            "@test:integration"
        ],
        "test:unit": "phpunit -c tests/phpunit.unit.xml",
        "test:integration": "phpunit -c tests/phpunit.integration.xml",
        "test:setup": "@php tests/integration/setup.php"
    },
    "scripts-descriptions": {
        "test": "Runs all tests.",
        "test:unit": "Runs all unit tests.",
        "test:integration": "Runs all integration tests.",
        "test:setup": "Sets up a database for use with integration tests. Execute this only once."
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "flarum/testing": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

SychO

MikeLundahl then you should specify the path packages/**/* or explicitly packages/mbl/*

MikeLundahl

SychO Ah yes! Silly me! That worked, thanks!

I can see the extension in the admin panels now listed as well.

When activating the extension, it crashes the forum, and I have to remove the extension for it to work again. I'm getting the following error in the logs
flarum.ERROR: ParseError: syntax error, unexpected token "\", expecting "{" in C:\path\to\forum\packages\mbl\flarum-hello-world\extend.php:12

clarkwinkelmann

MikeLundahl you have a PHP syntax error in your extension code. If you are using a PHP IDE to edit your file the problem is likely highlighted right in the editor. Otherwise look for the part of your file described by the error message or share the complete content of your extension extend.php with us.

MikeLundahl

clarkwinkelmann

I haven't touched any code so far myself. This is generated from the Flarum-CLI. Here's what the extend.php from the extension looks like (I removed the commented code to make it shorter).

<?php

namespace Mbl\\FlarumHelloWorld;

use Flarum\Extend;

return [
    (new Extend\Frontend('forum'))
        ->js(__DIR__.'/js/dist/forum.js')
        ->css(__DIR__.'/less/forum.less'),
    (new Extend\Frontend('admin'))
        ->js(__DIR__.'/js/dist/admin.js')
        ->css(__DIR__.'/less/admin.less'),
    new Extend\Locales(__DIR__.'/locale'),
];

Line 12 according to the log would be:
namespace Mbl\\FlarumHelloWorld;

Edit: I'm also using NPM (not Yarn), as that's what I'm most familiar with. Not sure if that makes a difference?

luceos

MikeLundahl namespace Mbl\\FlarumHelloWorld;

it needs to be a \ not double.

MikeLundahl

luceos Ok, thanks!

So I made it a single \

Now, when I activate the extension, I get the following message on the site instead:
An error occurred while trying to load this page.

And in the admin panel opening up the console is says:
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error) http://localhost/admin#/extension/mbl-hello-world

And the logs say:
flarum.ERROR: InvalidArgumentException: File not found at path: C:\path\to\forum\packages\mbl\flarum-hello-world/js/dist/admin.js in C:\path\to\forum\vendor\flarum\core\src\Frontend\Compiler\Source\FileSource.php:35

Checking for the admin.js file the error is pointing to, the dist folder does not exist.

luceos

MikeLundahl remove the js/css calls where the files do not exist yet. They are created in case you do have files to load. You probably haven't started yet:


<?php

namespace Mbl\FlarumHelloWorld;

use Flarum\Extend;

return [
    (new Extend\Frontend('forum'))
//        ->js(__DIR__.'/js/dist/forum.js')
//        ->css(__DIR__.'/less/forum.less')
    ,
    (new Extend\Frontend('admin'))
//        ->js(__DIR__.'/js/dist/admin.js')
//        ->css(__DIR__.'/less/admin.less')
    ,
    new Extend\Locales(__DIR__.'/locale'),
];

MikeLundahl

luceos Fantastic! That worked! Thanks!

Adding of the double quotes. Is that a bug in Flarum-CLI?
And the commenting out of the JS and CSS as a starting point would be great.

Probably a non-issue for people familiar with it, but for someone like me just starting out and following the documentation it can get a bit confusing.

Anyway, I'm excited to start developing some extensions. 🙂 Thanks again! Much appreciated!

luceos

MikeLundahl Adding of the double quotes. Is that a bug in Flarum-CLI?

Very likely 😉

MikeLundahl And the commenting out of the JS and CSS as a starting point would be great.

True, yet I think it acts as inspiration.