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PixieBrix Documentation
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Key Concepts

Kinds of Bricks

The PixieBrix ecosystem is based on sharable/combinable components called "bricks". Each brick has a unique identifier and version

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Analogy: bricks are like NPM or PyPi packages, except if each function had its own unique name and it's own version number.

Starter Bricks

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In YAML configuration files, starter bricks are defined with kind: extensionPoint

Starter bricks are re-usable extension points where you can attach functionality (e.g., a click handler or a body renderer)

PixieBrix currently has support for the following foundations:

  • Menu Item: a menu item or a button (kind: menuItem)
  • Context Menu: a menu item available in the context menu when you right-click (kind: contextMenu)
  • Panel: a panel embedded on the page (kind: panel)
  • Sidebar Panel: a panel in the PixieBrix sidebar panel (kind: actionPanel)
  • Trigger: run on an event, e..g, page load, element appearance, click, etc. (kind: trigger)

Blocks

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You can find a listing of brick in Public Marketplace, or on the Reference tab of the Workshop Editor

Blocks are functions that you can wire together and attach to a foundation

  • Readers: read information from a document. Current Support: HTML via JQuery, EmberJS, React, window variables. Each foundation can provide a default reader.
  • Effects: take an input and perform a side effect. Examples: append a row to spreadsheet, send a message to Slack, open a new tab with a Google search.
  • Transforms: take an input and produce an output. Example: call an API, run a jq transform, extract data using a regular expression
  • Renderers: a transform that returns HTML or a ReactJS component, e.g., to render in a sidebar panel. Examples: renderer markdown, a data table

You can also create composite blocks that behave as a single block. In YAML configuration files, these are indicated with kind: component

Integrations

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In YAML configuration files, integrations are defined with with kind: service

Re-usable resources and configuration that can also be used to authenticate requests to APIs. By creating a PixieBrix account, you can share service configurations with your team. Examples: an API credential, a Google Sheet

Mods

Collections of starter bricks + block combinations that a user can install together. Example: a collection of context menu definitions for running searches on different sites

A mod can also be automatically provisioned to a group(s) of users in the Admin Console (see

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Input/Output Schemas

PixieBrix uses JSON Schema for specifying the shapes of inputs and outputs. In addition to serving as documentation, PixieBrix checks inputs to a brick against the schema.

If you're coming from the Javascript world, these are analogous to React's prop-types or schema validators such as Yup. In the REST API world, these are similar to an OpenAPI/Swagger specification

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You can learn more about using JSON Schema with PixieBrix on the
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JSON Schema
 developer documentation page

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