For an introduction to Seneca data entities, please read the senecajs.org tutorial.

Notes:

The code in simple.js shows you how to create a simple plugin. Plugins are just a way to organise your action patterns into groups so that you have a "unit" for development and deployment. Assign individual plugins to individual developers on your team. Deploy individual plugins as individual micro-services.

The sample code follows the standard formula for a Node.js module. Assign to module.exports a single function. The function name becomes the name of the module. In this case, simple.

This context object, this, of the function, is a Seneca object that you use to define patterns. In the example code, the pattern role:simple,cmd:foo is defined. It's good practice list all your patterns at the top of the plugin source code so that others can quickly review the interface the plugin defines.

If your plugin needs to do some initialization work, such as connecting to a database, or reading files, or talking to the network, you should place this work inside a special action pattern called init:. In this case: init:simple. The init patterns are called sequentially by Seneca, and must all succeed.

Note that there is no callback from the function that defines the plugin. All asynchronous initialization work should happen inside the init action.

The plugin code also shows you how to use the built-in Seneca logging interface. The seneca.log function has shotcuts for each logging level. These lof entries will be annotated with the name of the plugin and the id of the current action, so match them up against other actions.

Setup: $ npm install

Run with: $ node main.js

This shows a very common use case for loading and running Seneca plugins.

For detailed logging, try: $ node main.js --seneca.log.all

To run as a micro-service, see micro-service.js