Plugin hook: actors_from_ids()

[simonw]

In building Datasette Cloud we realized that a bunch of the features we are building need a way of resolving an actor ID to the actual actor, in order to display something more interesting than just an integer ID.

Social plugins in particular need this - comments by X, CSV uploaded by X, that kind of thing.

I think the solution is a new plugin hook: actors_from_ids(datasette, ids) which can return a list of actor dictionaries.

The default implementation can return [{"id": "..."}] for the IDs passed to it.

Pluggy has a firstresult=True option which is relevant here, since this is the first plugin hook we will have implemented where only one plugin should provide an answer.

[simonw]

I think this is both a plugin hook and a await datasette.actors_from_ids(actor_ids) internal API function that calls it.

[simonw]

Documentation preview:

• https://datasette--2181.org.readthedocs.build/en/2181/internals.html#await-actors-from-ids-actor-ids
• https://datasette--2181.org.readthedocs.build/en/2181/plugin_hooks.html#plugin-hook-actors-from-ids

[simonw]

I shipped the first version of

• Initial plugin design datasette/datasette-remote-actors#1

When I land this plugin in a Datasette release I need to update that repo to depend on the new alpha.

[simonw]

I've implemented this hook once now in:

• https://github.com/datasette/datasette-remote-actors

And built and tested a debug tool for it in:

• https://github.com/datasette/datasette-debug-actors-from-ids

I'm now confident in the design of this plugin hook, I'm going to land it.

[simonw]

Landed:

• https://docs.datasette.io/en/latest/plugin_hooks.html#actors-from-ids-datasette-actor-ids
• https://docs.datasette.io/en/latest/internals.html#await-actors-from-ids-actor-ids

[simonw]

Used by datasette-short-links here: https://github.com/datasette/datasette-short-links/blob/468c3e25dbe06a8dcba8edda59bc16a18e126a51/datasette_short_links/__init__.py#L108-L115