Plugin Configuration

How to configure and customize Plate plugins.

Plate plugins are highly configurable, allowing you to customize their behavior to suit your needs. This guide will walk you through the most common configuration options and how to use them.

Getting Started: Components - Instructions for adding plugins to your editor
PlatePlugin API - The complete API reference for creating plugins

Basic Plugin Configuration

New Plugin

The most basic plugin configuration requires only a key:

const MyPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'minimal',
});

While this plugin doesn't do anything yet, it's a starting point for more complex configurations.

Existing Plugin

The .configure method allows you to configure an existing plugin:

const ConfiguredPlugin = MyPlugin.configure({
  options: {
    myOption: 'new value',
  },
});

Node Plugins

Node plugins are used to define new types of nodes in your editor using the node property. These can be elements (either block or inline) or leaf nodes (for text-level formatting).

Elements

To create a new type of element, use the node.isElement option:

const ParagraphPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'p',
  node: {
    isElement: true,
    type: 'p',
  },
});

You can associate a component with your element. See Plugin Components for more information.

const ParagraphPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'p',
  node: {
    isElement: true,
    type: 'p',
    component: ParagraphElement,
  },
});

Inline, Void, and Leaf Nodes

For inline elements, void elements, or leaf nodes, use the appropriate node options:

const LinkPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'link',
  node: {
    isElement: true,
    isInline: true,
    type: 'a',
  },
});
 
const ImagePlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'image',
  node: {
    isElement: true,
    isVoid: true,
    type: 'img',
  },
});
 
const BoldPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'bold',
  node: {
    isLeaf: true,
  },
});

Behavioral Plugins

Rather than render an element or a mark, you may want to customize the behavior of your editor. Various plugin options are available to modify the behavior of Plate.

Event Handlers

The recommended way to respond to user-generated events from inside a plugin is with the handlers plugin option. A handler should be a function that takes a PlatePluginContext & { event } object.

The onChange handler, which is called when the editor value changes, is an exception to this rule; the context object includes the changed value instead of event.

const ExamplePlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'example',
  handlers: {
    onChange: ({ editor, value })  => {
      console.info(editor, value);
    },
    onKeyDown: ({ editor, event }) => {
      console.info(`You pressed ${event.key}`);
    },
  },
});

Inject Props

You may want to inject a class name or CSS property into any node having a certain property. For example, the following plugin sets the textAlign CSS property on paragraphs with an align property.

const AlignPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'align',
  inject: {
    nodeProps: {
      defaultNodeValue: 'start',
      nodeKey: 'align',
      styleKey: 'textAlign',
      validNodeValues: ['start', 'left', 'center', 'right', 'end', 'justify'],
    },
    targetPlugins: [ParagraphPlugin.key],
    // This is injected into all `targetPlugins`. In this example, ParagraphPlugin will be able to deserialize `textAlign` style.
    targetPluginToInject: ({ editor, plugin }) => ({
      parsers: {
        html: {
          deserializer: {
            parse: ({ element, node }) => {
              if (element.style.textAlign) {
                node[editor.getType(plugin)] = element.style.textAlign;
              }
            },
          },
        },
      },
    }),
  },
});

A paragraph node affected by the above plugin would look like this:

{
  type: 'p',
  align: 'right',
  children: [{ text: 'This paragraph is aligned to the right!' }],
}

Extend Editor (Advanced)

Occasionally, you'll need to override the built-in editor methods provided by Slate to work around bugs or add complex functionality. To do this, you can use the extendEditor plugin option to directly mutate properties of the editor object after its creation.

One common application of this technique is to create custom normalizers.

const CustomNormalizerPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'customNormalizer',
  extendEditor: ({ editor }) => {
    const { normalizeNode } = editor;
 
    editor.normalizeNode = ([node, path]) => {
      // Custom normalization logic here
      // ...
 
      // Call other normalizers
      normalizeNode([node, path]);
    };
 
    return editor;
  },
});

Advanced Plugin Configuration

Plugin Store

Each plugin has its own store, which can be used to manage plugin-specific state.

const MyPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'myPlugin',
  options: {
    count: 0,
  },
}).extend(({ editor, plugin, setOption }) => ({
  handlers: {
    onClick: () => {
      setOption('count', 1);
    },
  },
}));

You can access and update the store using the following methods:

// Get the current value
const count = editor.getOption(MyPlugin, 'count');
 
// Set a new value
editor.setOption(MyPlugin, 'count', 5);
 
// Update the value based on the previous state
editor.setOption(MyPlugin, 'count', (prev) => prev + 1);

In React components, you can use the useOption hook to subscribe to store changes:

const MyComponent = () => {
  const count = editor.useOption(MyPlugin, 'count');
  return <div>Count: {count}</div>;
};

See more in Plugin Context and Editor Methods guides.

Dependencies

You can specify plugin dependencies using the dependencies property. This ensures that the required plugins are loaded before the current plugin.

const MyPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'myPlugin',
  dependencies: ['paragraphPlugin', 'listPlugin'],
});

Enabled Flag

The enabled property allows you to conditionally enable or disable a plugin:

const MyPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'myPlugin',
  enabled: true, // or false to disable
});

Nested Plugins

Plate supports nested plugins, allowing you to create plugin hierarchies. Use the plugins property to define child plugins:

const ParentPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'parent',
  plugins: [
    createPlatePlugin({ key: 'child1' }),
    createPlatePlugin({ key: 'child2' }),
  ],
});

Plugin Priority

The priority property determines the order in which plugins are registered and executed. Plugins with higher priority values are processed first:

const HighPriorityPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'highPriority',
  priority: 100,
});
 
const LowPriorityPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'lowPriority',
  priority: 50,
});

This is particularly useful when you need to ensure certain plugins are initialized or run before others.

Custom Parsers

The parsers property accepts string keys to build your own parsers:

const MyPlugin = createPlatePlugin({
  key: 'myPlugin',
  parsers: {
    myCustomParser: {
      deserializer: {
        parse: // ...
      },
      serializer: {
        parse: // ...
      }
    },
  },
});

Core plugins includes html and htmlReact parsers.

Typed Plugins

Using above methods, plugin types are automatically inferred from the given configuration.

If you need to pass an explicit type as generic, you can use createTPlatePlugin.

Using createTPlatePlugin

The createTPlatePlugin function allows you to create a typed plugin:

type CodeBlockConfig = PluginConfig<
  // key
  'code_block',
  // options
  { syntax: boolean; syntaxPopularFirst: boolean },
  // api
  {
    plugin: {
      getSyntaxState: () => boolean;
    };
    toggleSyntax: () => void;
  },
  // transforms
  {
    insert: {
      codeBlock: (options: { language: string }) => void;
    }
  }
>;
 
const CodeBlockPlugin = createTPlatePlugin<CodeBlockConfig>({
  key: 'code_block',
  options: { syntax: true, syntaxPopularFirst: false },
}).extendEditorApi<CodeBlockConfig['api']>(() => ({
  plugin: {
    getSyntaxState: () => true,
  },
  toggleSyntax: () => {},
})).extendEditorTransforms<CodeBlockConfig['transforms']>(() => ({
  insert: {
    codeBlock: ({ editor, getOptions }) => {
      editor.insertBlock({ type: 'code_block', language: getOptions().language });
    },
  },
}));

Using Typed Plugins

When using typed plugins, you get full type checking and autocompletion ✨

const editor = createPlateEditor({
  plugins: [ExtendedCodeBlockPlugin],
});
 
// Type-safe access to options
const options = editor.getOptions(ExtendedCodeBlockPlugin);
options.syntax;
options.syntaxPopularFirst;
options.hotkey;
 
// Type-safe API
editor.api.toggleSyntax();
editor.api.plugin.getSyntaxState();
editor.api.plugin2.setLanguage('python');
editor.api.plugin.getLanguage();
 
// Type-safe Transforms
editor.tf.insert.codeBlock({ language: 'typescript' });