The module manifest

The package.json file, also called "module manifest", is where module authors can declare what their module consists of.

It is a standard NPM manifest file, with a few additional properties that DecentCMS understands.

Here is an example of a module manifest, taken from /modules/core/documentation:

{
  "name": "decent-core-documentation",
  "friendlyName": "Core Documentation",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Online documentation for DecentCMS",
  "features": {
    "documentation": {
      "name": "Online documentation",
      "description": "Makes online documentation for all modules available under the /docs path."
    },
    "api-documentation": {
      "name": "Online API documentation",
      "description": "Makes online documentation extracted from JsDoc comments from libraries and services in all modules available under the /apidocs path."
    }
  },
  "main": "./index",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "./test/index"
  },
  "author": "Bertrand Le Roy",
  "license": "MIT",
  "dependencies": {
    "async": "*",
    "jsdoc-to-markdown": "*"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "chai": "*",
    "grunt-mocha-test": "*",
    "mocha": "*",
    "proxyquire": "*"
  }
}

The name property is the technical package name. It is recommended that you use the "decent-" prefix for all DecentCMS modules, followed with the module area name if there is one, and then the name of the module. In the example above, "decent-core-documentation" is the name for the "documentation" DecentCMS module from the "core" area.

The friendlyName property is an addition from DecentCMS that may be used to give the module a more human-readable name than what the name property can give.

The features section describes all the features available in the module. A feature is a group of services that can be enabled and disabled for each site, through the site settings. Each feature has a name and a description. Features can declare their own dependencies, but it is not recommended. Instead, services should require other services, and fail gracefully when the required services can't be found.

The dependencies section is the standard NPM section where dependencies are defined. It should only mention dependencies on Node modules, not dependencies on other DecentCMS modules (see above).

The devDependencies folder is where NPM dependencies that are not required at runtime are declared. For example, libraries used only when testing or grunting the module can be declared here rather than in dependencies.

An optional priority number can be assigned to a module that will determine in what order the services in the module get registered, and the order in which templates will be resolved. The lowest priority value makes the module more important, so a P0 module will have its services and templates resolved before those of a P1 module. Themes have priority -1 by default, so they take precedence over all modules in principle. The default priority number for modules that are not themes is 9999. No matter what the priorities are, services will be resolved in a deterministic order if one of the service has a dependency on another: the service that depends on the other will be selected over the one that is depended upon.