Starter Kit for building CEP extensions

This is a "starter kit" for developing CEP panels. It relies on cep-bundler to do the heavy lifting.

The cep-bundler does a bunch of things to make your life easier:

• Compile your TypeScript code into a single .js file
• Create the necessary xml files (CSXS/manifest.xml) and .debug) based on your cep-config.js
• Create a symlink into the extensions folder so you can test out the extension quickly
• "Live Reloads" the code whenever you save a file for instant updates while developing
• Syncs your node_modules (not the devDependencies) into the bundle
• Syncs "public" files (images, svg's, templates, effects, whatever you like) into the bundle

For a more detailed explaination, see under the hood

Topics

• Requirements
• Installing
• Developing
• Building and Packaging
• How to
  • Use a node module
  • Add a stylesheet
  • Change the html template
• Under the hood
• Credits

Requirements

For developing:

• node.js

For creating installers:

• brew
• makensis

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew install makensis

Installing

git clone git@github.com:adobe-extension-tools/cep-starter.git
cd cep-starter
npm install

Developing

npm start

Wait for the packager to have started, then open the program you are targetting. You can find the extension under Window -> Extensions -> CEP Starter. Once opened, look for the debug port (or set it yourself) in the cep-config.js and visit http://localhost:DEBUG_PORT_HERE in a Chrome browser (it doesn't work in Firefox). Now click on the blue link and you will be taken to the debugger. If you are using version CC2017 or older, go to the settings page (little cog icon on the top right) and disable JavaScript sourcemaps, if you don't do this the debugger will crash, this is not necessary for CC2018.

Happy coding!

Building and Packaging

npm run package

How To

This tool makes a lot of things easier, but some things are a bit strange.
The strange things are explained below, hopefully it makes sense.

Use a node module

// todo: write why we have to require node modules in this strange way

import { nodeRequire } from './utils'

const rimraf = nodeRequire('rimraf')

Add a stylesheet

You can put any kind of file in the assets folder and it will be put into the build folder. This way, when browserify is putting your bundle together, you have access to the files in there. Don't use the import ... from ... syntax, TypeScript will trip over this (only supports loading .ts or .js files) However, you can still use the require syntax, as shown below. Just make sure you have a browserify transform configured that transform (in this example) the .scss into a css string.

const style = require('./assets/style/style.scss')
loadStyle(style)

function loadStyle(style: string) {
  let styleEl = document.getElementById('style')
  if (!styleEl) {
    const newStyle: HTMLStyleElement = document.createElement('style')
    newStyle.id = 'style'
    newStyle.type = 'text/css'
    newStyle.innerHTML = style
    document.body.appendChild(newStyle)
    styleEl = newStyle
  }
}

To add a transform to browserify, add the following section to your cep-config.js

module.exports = {
  bundler: {
    // ...cut...
    browserify: {
      js: {
        transform: [
          require('sassify')
        ]
      }
    }
    // ...cut...
  }
}

And make sure to install the sassify transform

npm install --save-dev sassify

Change the html template

You can add a htmlTemplate key to you cep-config.js that should have a Function as it's value. You can use the "core" html template as an example which can be found here

Make sure to leave the <script> tags in there!

Under the hood

When you run npm run build the following things happen:

When you run npm start the following things happen:

Credits

I have made these tools while working on extensions for MtMograph. If you like it, please consider buying one of our extensions for After Effects!