Adobe XD plugin boilerplate

A quick start boilerplate to begin a plugin for Adobe XD CC. It uses webpack for bundling and therefore has support for npm modules (for demonstration purposes, it has the xd-storage-helper preinstalled). It also comes with the typings (https://github.com/AdobeXD/typings) preconfigured for autocompletion so you can jump-start your plugin.

Setup

Once you've cloned the repo, you merely need to run npm install in the root folder of the (cloned) project from your console. After that, you'll need to adjust the manifest.json in the dist folder and after that, you're ready to go.

Usage

The main two folders you'll be working in are the src folder (where all your JavaScript source code gets into) as well as the dist folder, which is where your code gets compiled into and where you'll need to put all the "static" resources (like images, icons etc. – also your manifest.json file is here).

It is the dist folder that gets compiled into your .xdx plugin and what provides your 'valid' plugin code.

Commands

npm run build

This will build (i.e. compile) your plugin and automatically generate a dist.xdx file which can be found in the root folder and is ready to get submitted for review in the Adobe developer console.

npm run compile

Does the exact same thing as npm run build, but does not generate a dist.xdx file (and only compiles your plugin so it "lives" in your dist folder).

npm run debug:install

This will build (or compile) your plugin and install it in the development folder of Adobe XD once. Please note that this uses the development mode when compiling, making mistakes easier to find. This, however, means your plugin won't get minified.

npm run debug:watch or npm start

Does the same as npm run debug:install, but watches the file system for changes and automatically recompiles and reinstalls the plugin when anything's changed (extremely useful during development).

Please note that you'll still need to run the "Reload plugins" command inside Adobe XD after every new install (may that be via debug:install or every time via debug:watch).

npm run lint

Runs the ESLint linter on the src folder to check for style errors in your code.

Setting up different editors and IDEs

Visual Studio Code

The project should work out of the box in Visual Studio Code, no further configuration should be required.

JetBrains WebStorm

1. Activate node autocompletion (Preferences=>Languages & Frameworks=>Node.js and npm=>Enable)

Credits

To add autocompletion, this boilerplate uses the MIT-licensed Typescript definitions that can be found at https://github.com/AdobeXD/typings.