Plugins

See also

API Reference

More information on the Python API.

Plugins are Python scripts implementing *Command classes from sublime_plugin.

Where to Store Plugins

Sublime Text 2 will look for plugins in these places:

• Package
• Packages/<pkg_name>

Any plugin nested deeper in Packages won’t be loaded.

Conventions for Command Names

Sublime Text 2 command class names are suffixed by convention with Command and written as CamelCasedPhrases.

However, Sublime Text 2 transforms the class name from CamelCasedPhrases to camel_cased_phrases. So ExampleCommand would turn into example and AnotherExampleCommand would turn into another_example.

For class definition names, use CamelCasedPhrasesCommand; to call a command from the API, use the transformed name (camel_cased_phrases).

Types of Commadns

• sublime_plugin.ApplicationCommand
• sublime_plugin.WindowCommand
• sublime_plugin.TextCommand
• sublime_plugin.EventListener

Window command instances have a .window attribute pointing to the window instance that created them. Similarly, view command instances have a .view attribute.

Shared Traits for Commands

All commands must implement a .run() method. All commands can receive and arbitrarily long number of keyword arguments.

How to Call Commands from the API

Use a reference to a View, a Window or sublime depending on the type of command, and call object.run_command('command_name'). In addition, you can pass a dictionary where keys are names of parameters to command_name.

window.run_command("echo", {"Tempus": "Irreparabile", "Fugit": "."})

Text Commands and the edit Object

The two API functions of interest are view.begin_edit(), which takes an optional command name and an optional dictionary of arguments, and view.end_edit(), which finishes the edit.

All actions done within an edit are grouped as a single undo action. Callbacks such as on_modified() and on_selection_modified() are called when the edit is finished.

It’s important to call view.end_edit() after each view.begin_edit(), otherwise the buffer will be in an inconsistent state. An attempt will be made to fix it automatically if the edit object gets collected, but that often doesn’t happen when you expect, and will result in a warning printed to the console. In other words, you should always bracket an edit in a try..finally block.

The command name passed to begin_edit() is used for repeat, macro recording, and for describing the action when undoing/redoing it. If you’re making an edit outside of a TextCommand, you should almost never supply a command name.

If you have created an edit object, and call a function that creates another one, that’s fine: the edit is only considered finished when the outermost call to end_edit() runs.

As well as grouping modifications, you can use edit objects for grouping changes to the selection, so they’re undone in a single step.

Responding to Events

Any subclass of EventListener will be able to respond to events.

A Word of Warning about EventListener

Expensive operations in event listeners can cause Sublime Text 2 to become unresponsive, especially in events triggered frequently, like on_modified and on_selection_modified. Be careful of how much work is done in those and do not implement events you don’t need, even if they just pass.