---
layout: "layouts/DocLayout.astro"
title: Introduction
description: Learn how to develop plugins for Spotube
order: 0
---

Plugins in Spotube are used for fetching metadata (Playlist, Album, Artist, Track Info, Search etc) and scrobbling. It gives developers
access to Spotube's internal APIs to create custom metadata providers and audio [scrobblers][scrobbler_wiki].

Plugins needs to be written in [hetu_script][hetu_script_link], which is a Dart-based scripting language.
You probably never heard of it before.

## Requirements

To develop plugins for Spotube, you need to have the following requirements:

- Basic programming knowledge
- [Dart][dart] and [Flutter][flutter] knowledge
- [Visual Studio Code][vscode] or any other code editor

Spotube uses [hetu_script][hetu_script_link]. It's kind of similar to Typescript.
Learning it shouldn't take much time if you already know Dart or Javascript.

Go to Hetu Script's [official website and documentation][hetu_script_link] to learn more about it.

## Resources

The [`hetu_script`][hetu_script_link] programming/scripting language is relatively new. So there's no ecosystem around it yet.
However, we created some helpful libraries to aid with Spotube plugin development. The [hetu-community][hetu_community] is a
community driven effort to create libraries and tools for Hetu Script. Below are available libraries:

#### Core Libraries

- [**hetu-community/hetu_std**][hetu_std]: A standard library for Hetu Script. Provides basic functionality like Http client, DateTime, Cryptography API,
  encoding/decoding (JSON, Utf8, Base32) etc.
- [**KRTirtho/hetu_spotube_plugin**][hetu_spotube_plugin]: A library for Spotube plugin development. It provides access to Spotube's internal APIs
  (Webview, Forms, LocalStorage etc.) and utilities for fetching metadata and scrobbling.

> You can find more libraries in the [hetu-community GitHub organization][hetu_community].

#### Programming aid

- [Hetu Script Plugin for VSCode][hetu_script_vscode]: A VSCode extension for Hetu Script. It provides basic syntax highlighting
  support. But it doesn't support [LSP (Language Server Protocol)][lsp] yet so no autocompletion or linting is available.
- [hetu_script_dev_tools][hetu_script_dev_tools]: A CLI tool for compiling hetu script files to bytecode or directly running them and a REPL

{/* Link Variables */}
[hetu_script_link]: https://hetu-script.github.io/
[scrobbler_wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrobbling
[dart]: https://dart.dev/
[flutter]: https://flutter.dev/
[vscode]: https://code.visualstudio.com/
[lsp]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol
[hetu_script_vscode]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hetu-script.hetuscript
[hetu_community]: https://github.com/hetu-community
[hetu_std]: https://github.com/hetu-community/hetu_std
[hetu_otp_util]: https://github.com/hetu-community/hetu_otp_util
[hetu_spotube_plugin]: https://github.com/KRTirtho/hetu_spotube_plugin
[hetu_script_dev_tools]: https://pub.dev/packages/hetu_script_dev_tools