Backpack Addons

A place for the Backpack community to talk about possible Backpack add-ons.

Why?

Starting with Backpack 4.1.x we're trying to move as many non-essential features as possible into Backpack add-ons. And especially new features. Moving features that are NOT used in the 80% use case to add-ons should:

help the Backpack team focus more on maintaining features MOST people are using;
give developers & veterans the opportunity to stand out and be recognised as the author of that feature, and a prominent member inside the Backpack community (by having their package listed on our Addons Page, their name inside the add-on repo, and more); they get eyeballs on themselves, their Github profiles or their businesses;
help Backpack developers (end-users) to have a skinnier installation, if they don't need all the extra features, while still allowing them to use niche/opinionated features like this one whenever they need;

It's recommended that you create a Backpack add-on if:

that feature would work well inside more projects - yours or other people's;
you intend to maintain the add-on in the future (fix possible bugs that your users report, make changes to support new versions of Backpack);

It's recommended that you NOT create a Backpack add-on if:

the feature is very specific to your project;
you do not intend to maintain the add-on in the future (in this case it's better to open an issue to propose the add-on and say you don't have the time to maintain it);

You can create a Backpack add-on even if you've never created an open-source project before. In fact, it's the perfect kind of project to start with, we've written the tutorials with you in mind. So yes, a Backpack add-on would make an excellent first open-source project.

Process

Its goal is to move issues inside the Projects:

from Idea
to Good Idea
to Claimed / WIP
to Done
to In Review
to Finished / Scrapped

When finished, add-ons are to be:

posted on https://backpackforlaravel.com/addons
promoted on our sub-Reddit
promoted on our Gitter Chatroom
promoted inside our next bi-annual newsletter
promoted with a post on our Blog
promoted inside our weekly/monthly newsletter (automatically gets sent if there's a blog post about it)
posted about on Laravel News

In total, the reach is 17.000+ Laravel developers.

Resources

This is where you can learn to create a Backpack add-on:

How to create an add-on for a custom field
How to create an add-on for a custom column - TODO, very similar to Fields above;
How to create an add-on for a custom filter - TODO, very similar to Fields above;
How to create an add-on for a custom button - TODO, very similar to Fields above;
How to create an add-on for an operation
How to create an add-on with one CRUD - TODO (end result would be similar to MenuCRUD);
How to create an add-on with multiple CRUDs - TODO (end result would be similar to NewsCRUD);

We plan to make it easier to create Backpack add-ons, so please give feedback on our process, write articles, submit PRs, anything you can do to help in this regard is very appreciated - it's not easy for us to see the process from an outside perspective.

Naming Conventions

When creating a new backpack add-ons, it's recommended that the name itself is as explicit as possible. A general rule would be to:

include the feature name
include the feature type (field, column, filter, operation, crud, etc)
include the for-backpack suffix in the name, so people find it when looking for backpack;

Good examples:

vendorname/toggle-field-for-backpack
vendorname/revise-operation-for-backpack
vendorname/gutenberg-field-for-backpack
vendorname/invoice-crud-for-backpack

Not-so-good examples:

vendorname/toggle-field - since it doesn't have Backpack in the name less people are going to find it;
vendorname/toggle - does not specify the feature type so it's not obvious what it provides - a field? a column? a filter? what is it?

Feedback

Please open an issue inside this repo if you have thoughts about how we create add-ons. We appreciate it.