Converted to a tracking + discussion issue for custom components.

Context

to follow

Parts

• FE support for arbitrary components being loaded + mounted

  • A way to register components of any description internally (no user impact)
  • A consistent (versioned) interface for components + access to app level metadata (minor)

• BE support for custom components

  • A way to generate a component for use in gradio (minor)
  • A consistent interface for all components (args, classes to extend, methods that must be present, urils etc that can be used by authors (di or import))

• A way to share custom components

  • See theme sharing proposal
  • More complex than themes as the JS etc cannot be generated by the BE and passed to the frontend
  • Svelte or any? Build process? action/ build server?

• A way to consume custom components

  • APIs
  • CDN or self host?

• DX

  • how will a user develop and test their custom component?
  • How will a user use theme values such that their custom component will automatically be themed when a user passes in a new theme?
  • Can be make utils/ components/ whatever available to users as building blocks for their components?
  • How do we document all of this stuff?

I envisage many kinds of custom components:

• fully custom with a new python + html/js/css
  • either extending from existing gradio components or fully custom implementations
• pure frontend components that use some gradio python class. Basically a new frontend for existing components
• Pure python components.
  • Something like the above, composition for components with a new interface
  • or new python implementation for an existing component that will use an existing frontend. (Maybe is changes stuff like preprocessing or w/e)

These are the core usecases I think we need to cover.

More detail to follow

Original

We've heard requests from many different places (Discord, #1410) on folks who want to create plugins / custom components in Gradio. We should think about how we want to support this (do we want plugins that are not part of the main library?) and write up a Guide showing how to contribute these kinds of pulgins / components.

cc @pngwn