Making a Review Board Extension¶

Development Environment¶

Writing Review Board extensions requires having a Review Board development environment (not a regular production installation). For instructions on how to set this up, see the getting started guide.

After following that guide, you should have a Python Virtual Environment which contains all the Review Board packages, and you should be able to run the Django development server:

$ ./contrib/internal/devserver.py

This will run a local instance of Review Board on http://localhost:8080/

Creating an Extension Package¶

Review Board extensions are distributed as Python packages.

The rbext create command is the quickest way to create the boilerplate package setup for your new extension.

$ rbext create \
    --name "Sample Review Board Extension" \
    --package-name sample-extension \
    --class-name SampleExtension

This will create a new directory named sample-extension that contains the basic framework for your new extension. Inside that directory are several files, but the two most important are:

pyproject.toml:

The python package info. This defines your Python package, its metadata, and the Entry Point, which allows Review Board to discover your extension.

• sample-extension/extension.py:

  The main module containing your extension, where the bulk of your work will go (at least initially).

See Extension Files and Package Layout for more details on these.

Installing for Development¶

When developing your extension, it’s most convenient to install the package into your Python Virtual Environment in “editable” mode. This allows you to iterate on your package without needing to rebuild and install wheel packages each time.

To do this, inside the sample-extension directory, run:

$ pip3 install -e .

Activating the Extension¶

After installing the extension in development mode, you should be able to open up the admin site in your devserver, select Extensions, and see your new extension in the list. If there are failures, you may see an error message in this list, and any exception backtraces will be visible in the console that you’re running the devserver in.

Click Enable to enable your new extension.

The Review Board devserver will watch your source files as you make changes to your extension, so you can usually just reload pages in the browser without needing to restart the devserver.

Implementing Your Extension¶

At this point, you should have a working development environment and extension package, but it doesn’t actually do anything.

from django.urls import include, path
from reviewboard.extensions.base import Extension
from reviewboard.extensions.hooks import URLHook


class SampleExtension(Extension):
    def initialize(self) -> None:
        urlpatterns = [
            path('sample_extension/', include('sample_extension.urls')),
        ]

        URLHook(self, urlpatterns)