This is a small request to the developers of plugins and the admins of the marketplace: Could you please mention your author and plugin name somewhere? You may mention it on your marketplace's page or on GitHub or wherever, but guessing it is not my forte (and probably not that of many other user).

Why do that? Some users would like to install with

php artisan plugin:install authorName.pluginName

and that is just no fun, if one has to guess.

Tip: The URL of marketplace pages seems to reveal the author and plugin name, just separated by a dash '-' and not by a dot '.', but that is not really a problem. Though I can not guarantee that this is true for all plugins and certainly not for those that are not in the marketplace.

Last updated 8 years ago

I agree it would be useful to show the Author.Plugin string for free plugins, though it wouldn't be as helpful for paid plugins.

Rather than have each author publish their plugin codes in different places, it'd probably be better if it was added to the site itself. Kind of how repository URLs for cloning are shown on Github/Bitbucket, in a read-only text box or something..

You're right about the URL being a clue. To get the plugin code, take the slug from the plugin URL and replace the dash with a dot as you mentioned. After that, uppercase the first letter of the author and plugin names and you should be good to go.

There are exceptions, though. As an example, the code for the Octoshop demo theme would be Feegleweb.octoshop_demo. If a theme is on Github, check the theme.yaml and you'll find the code to use. You can also start typing the author or plugin/theme name in the backend's plugin installer. If there's a match, it'll autocomplete the code in the search box which you can then copy/paste to terminal.

Last updated 8 years ago

I have just wrote today everything in lowercase letters for a plugin. The console recognised it properly :) This rule does not seem to be strict.

But to check the yaml file is a good idea. Thanks for that. I had something similar in mind, but as a beginner I do not always remember, where the proper author and plugin name, respectively, could be found. I will remember that for the future. Still, this is a) not so user-friendly b) I am not sure that all plugins are available on GitHub and c) to mention the author and plugin name was meant as a general "good practice", because one might - as you also correctly stated - have bought a paid plugin and still would like to install it via console...

Last updated 8 years ago

I'm not sure what checks it does in the console commands, but the marketplace is definitely more strict for authors publishing plugins. If I recall correctly, the Author.Plugin code is checked against the plugin's namespace and/or the pluginDetails method in Plugin.php.

If it fails the check (e.g. your author name is Bob but you try to publish Jill\TodoList) then you'll have to fix the problem before you can submit your plugin.

Those checks go some way to making sure you can figure out the code correctly. Users are still left guessing though in some cases which, as you say, isn't necessarily great for usability. It can also create more work for plugin authors in terms of support: If someone tries to convert "feegleweb-octoshop-demo" to "Feegleweb.Octoshop.Demo", it obviously won't work. Instead, they think it's broken. That also gives users a bad impression if they have the problem for a lot of plugins... I can't think of a single reason against including the code to be honest.

Last updated 8 years ago

The obvious place for this would seem to be near the top of a plugin Documentation tab. I will add it to my free plugins soon.

Thanks for the idea.