• Background
• Lesson Steps
• Building Plugins
• Complete code

Sometimes users need custom functionality that the core serverless framework doesn't do out of the box.

To achieve this, users can extend the base cli functionality by tapping into lifecycle hooks or creating new hooks.

Examples:

• Transpile es6 or typescript code on before:package hook
• Scanning dependancies for security vulnerabilities on before:deploy hook
• Tapping into the after:deploy hook to run additional CI/CD workflows
• Wiring up custom domains on after:deploy hook
• etc

There are a ton of serverless plugins out there.

1. Discovering Plugins

   Via the CLI:

   sls plugin list

   Online:

   Head to the Serverless Plugins repository for a list of available plugins

2. Installing Plugins

   sls plugin install -n serverless-manifest-plugin

   This command will install the plugin into your node_modules folder and save it to the package.json devDependencies.

   The command also automatically added this plugin to the plugins array in serverless.yml

   plugins:
     - serverless-manifest-plugin

3. Configuring Plugins

   Plugins handle a wide variety of use cases and thus have their own configuration requirements. Make sure to read the README.md of the plugin you are using to add any additional configuration it may require.

   Typically plugins will use settings defined in a custom key in serverless.yml

   # example
   custom:
     output:
       file: .serverless/manifest.json

   This will output cloudformation values into a manifest.json file for us for easily plugging into a frontend application

4. Removing Plugins

   sls plugin uninstall -n serverless-manifest-plugin

   Typically this works but some plugins aren't validating inputs. If you run into any errors, manually remove the plugin from the plugins array in the serverless.yml file

Building a plugin is very straight forward. Check out these resources for more information:

• How To Write Your First Plugin For The Serverless Framework - Part 1
• How To Write Your First Plugin For The Serverless Framework - Part 2
• Super Simple Plugin Boilerplate

If you need help or get stuck refer to the completed code of this lesson

View Complete Code