Extension context
The activate function's first argument is an ExtensionContext – this context allows you to extend Foxglove for your custom workflows.
export function activate(extensionContext: ExtensionContext) {
// ... call methods on the extensionContext to extend Foxglove
}
registerPanel
registerPanel adds a new panel to the Foxglove panel catalog. To register a panel you provide a name and an initPanel function.
The initPanel function accepts a PanelExtensionContext argument, which contains properties and methods for accessing panel data and rendering UI updates. It also returns an optional cleanup function to run when the extension panelElement unmounts.
See the Creating a custom panel guide for more details.
registerMessageConverter
registerMessageConverter register a function to convert messages from one schema to another.
Message converters allow you to leverage Foxglove's built-in visualization panels by transforming messages to adhere to Foxglove-supported schemas — for example, you can convert your custom GPS messages to foxglove.LocationFix messages for visualization in the Map panel.
Whenever a panel subscribes to a topic with the convertTo option, the converter function runs on the original message and outputs the converted message, which it then provides it to the panel. If the function returns undefined, the output is ignored, and no message is provided to the panel. This is useful if you want to selectively output converted messages depending on the input messages' contents.
See the Creating a message converter guide for more details.
registerTopicAliases
registerTopicAliases registers a function to compute topic aliases. The provided alias function
should accept an argument with two fields – topics with the data source's original topics and
globalVariables with the current layout's variables – and return a list of aliased topics.
Your alias function runs whenever there are changes to the data source topics or variables. Any aliases it returns are added to the data source topics (replacing any previously returned aliases) and available for subscribing or use within message paths as if they were real topics.