filament-plugin-development

Building & publishing Filament plugins (v4 / v5)

A Filament "plugin" is just a Composer package that extends a Filament app. Verified against filamentphp.com/docs/4.x. v5 shares the same plugin API.

Two tiers - pick the smaller one

A. Plain package (components only). Ships resources/pages/widgets/fields/actions and does not implement any contract. The installing app wires them in manually (->resources([...]), ->widgets([...])). If your package is one widget or one field, do this - you do not need the Plugin contract.

B. Panel Plugin. A class implementing Filament\Contracts\Plugin, registered with ->plugin(YourPlugin::make()). Reach for this only when you bundle multiple things behind one registration, need per-panel configuration, or need boot-time logic. Rule of thumb: more than one moving part, or configurable -> Plugin contract; otherwise ship it plain.

The Plugin contract

Three methods:

Method	Runs	Purpose
getId(): string	-	Globally-unique, stable singleton key (e.g. 'blog' - not 'settings', which clashes)
register(Panel $panel): void	while the panel is configured	register resources/pages/widgets/render hooks/assets on the panel
boot(Panel $panel): void	only for the active panel (via middleware)	runtime side effects

namespace Vendor\FilamentBlog;

use Filament\Contracts\Plugin;
use Filament\Panel;

class BlogPlugin implements Plugin
{
    public function getId(): string { return 'blog'; }

    public function register(Panel $panel): void
    {
        $panel->resources([PostResource::class])
              ->pages([Settings::class])
              ->widgets([BlogOverviewWidget::class]);
    }

    public function boot(Panel $panel): void { /* runtime side effects here */ }

    public static function make(): static { return app(static::class); }         // install-side: ->plugin(BlogPlugin::make())
    public static function get(): static { return filament(app(static::class)->getId()); } // read configured instance anywhere
}