Create a Plugin with a Template (Gradle)

Through the previous sections, we have learned the basics of configuring a plugin development project, as well as how to develop and debug plugins. However, so far we have only been working with the sample plugin that ships with the plugin development project — we have not yet created a plugin entirely from scratch.

Create a New Plugin

1. Under the report-starter-latest directory, create a new directory. For this example, we'll call it plugin-hello-world.

2. Copy plugin.xml (which describes the plugin's extension point information), build.gradle (which manages the plugin's JAR dependencies), and encrypt.xml from plugin-function into the plugin-hello-world directory, then make a few modifications to plugin.xml.

   The updated file should look like this:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
   <plugin>
       <id>com.fr.plugin.function.hello.world</id>
       <name><![CDATA[Hello World]]></name>
       <active>yes</active>
       <version>1.0</version>
       <env-version>11.0</env-version>
       <jartime>2025-06-15</jartime>
       <vendor>author</vendor>
       <description><![CDATA[Hello]]></description>
       <change-notes><![CDATA[
         [2019-07-15]initialize the plugin<br/>
       ]]></change-notes>
       <extra-core>
           <FunctionDefineProvider class="com.fr.plugin.HelloWorld" name="hw" description="Hello World。"/>
       </extra-core>
       <function-recorder class="com.fr.plugin.HelloWorld"/>
   </plugin>
   

3. Under plugin-hello-world, create the directories for Java source files and other resource files:

   • src/main/java
   • src/main/resources

Managing Plugin Dependencies

Add the following line to report-starter-latest/settings.gradle:

include(':plugin-hello-world')

Once that's done, open the Gradle panel in the IntelliJ IDEA right sidebar and click Refresh:

After IntelliJ IDEA finishes parsing the Gradle configuration, you should see that the java and resources directories have updated their appearance:

You can now add your plugin implementation class directly under the java directory.

Third-Party Dependencies

During plugin development, you may need to depend on JAR files that are not built into FineReport or FineBI. Simply copy these JARs into the lib directory at the root of your plugin project (create it if it does not exist).

Summary

By using Gradle, we no longer need to manually manage plugin dependencies in IntelliJ IDEA, which simplifies the development workflow.