Plugin vs Script

Plugins allow you to more easily manage creating complex behaviors, where scripts are for short one-shot actions.

What is a plugin?

A plugin is a class that implements the interface software.coley.recaf.plugin.Plugin. When Recaf launches it looks in the plugins directory for JAR files that contain these plugin classes. It will then attempt to load and initialize them. Because a plugin is distributed as a JAR file a plugin developer can create complex logic and organize it easily across multiple classes in the JAR.

What is a script?

A script is a single Java source file that is executed by users whenever they choose. They can be written as a full class to support similar capabilities to plugins such as service injection, or in a short-hand that offers automatic imports of most common utility classes, but no access to services.

Full class script

A full class script is just a regular class that defines a non-static void run(). The run() method is called whenever the user executes the script.

// ==Metadata==
// @name Hello world
// @description Prints hello world
// @version 1.0.0
// @author Author
// ==/Metadata==

class MyScript {
    // must define 'void run()'
    void run() {
        System.out.println("hello");
    }
}

You can access any of Recaf's services by declaring a constructor annotated with @Inject. For more information and examples see the article on using services in plugins and scripts.

Shorthand script

A shorthand script lets you write your logic without needing to declare a class and run() method. These shorthand scripts are given a variable reference to the current workspace, and a SLF4J logger. You can access the current workspace as workspace and the logger as log.

// ==Metadata== 
// @name What is open?
// @description Prints what kinda workspace is open
// @version 1.0.0
// @author Author
// ==/Metadata==

String name = "(empty)";
if (workspace != null)
    name = workspace.getClass().getSimpleName();
log.info("Workspace = {}", name);

Another example working with the provided workspace:

// Print out all enum names in the current workspace, if one is open.
if (workspace == null) return;
workspace.findClasses(Accessed::hasEnumModifier).stream()
    .map(c -> c.getValue().getName())
    .forEach(name -> log.info("Enum: {}", name));