🥷🏻 Using Plugins

History

Version	Changes
v4.0.0 (Canary)	Introduce the Plugin System.

1.2Release Candidate

Extend Poku's behavior with plugins — hook into the test lifecycle, customize how test files are spawned, enable inter-process communication, and more.

What Can Plugins Do?

• Run setup logic before the test suite begins.
• Run teardown logic after the test suite completes.
• Modify the command used to spawn each test file process.
• Enable IPC channels between Poku and test processes.
• React to each test process being spawned.
• Customize output with custom reporters.

Quick Start

Add plugins to your Poku configuration file via the plugins option:

// poku.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'poku';
import { myPlugin } from './my-plugin';

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [myPlugin],
});

Plugin Lifecycle

Plugins are executed in the following order:

1. setup() is called for each plugin, sequentially in array order.
2. For each test file:
   • runner() modifies the spawn command (only the first plugin with a runner hook is used).
   • The process is spawned — with an IPC channel if any plugin sets ipc: true.
   • onTestProcess() is called for every plugin that defines it.
3. After all tests complete: teardown() is called for each plugin, sequentially in array order.

Existing Plugins

• @pokujs/shared-resources — Share state, servers, database connections, and more between parallel test files. See the documentation.

tip

Use definePlugin for type safety when creating plugins, and createReporter for custom output formatting.