Our aim is to proceed to enhance our platform functionalities, and discover new methods to empower Looker builders to construct information experiences a lot sooner and at a decrease upfront price.
We’ve heard the developer neighborhood suggestions and we’re excited to have introduced the final availability of the Looker Extension Framework.
The Extension Framework is a totally hosted growth platform that permits builders to construct any data-powered software, workflow or device proper in Looker. By eliminating the necessity to spin up and host infrastructure, the Extension Framework lets builders deal with constructing nice experiences for his or her customers. Historically, clients and companions who construct customized purposes with Looker, should assemble a complete growth infrastructure earlier than they will proceed with implementation. As an illustration, they could want to face up each a again finish and entrance finish after which implement providers for internet hosting and authorization. This results in further time and price spent.
The Extension Framework eliminates all growth inefficiency and helps considerably cut back friction within the setup and growth course of, so builders can deal with beginning growth immediately. Looker builders would now not want DevOps or infrastructure to host their information purposes and these purposes (when constructed on the Extension Framework), can take full benefit of the facility of Looker. To allow these efficiencies, the Looker Extension Framework features a streamlined approach to leverage the Looker APIs and SDKs, UI elements for constructing the visible expertise, in addition to authentication, permission administration and software entry management.
Content material created through the Extension Framework may be constructed as a full-screen expertise or embedded into an exterior web site or software. We’ll quickly be including performance to permit for the embedding of extensions inside Looker (as a customized tile you plug into your dashboard, for instance). By means of our Public Preview interval we now have already seen over 150+ extensions deployed to manufacturing customers, with an extra 200+ extensions at present in growth. These extensions embrace options like: enhanced navigation instruments, custom-made navigation and modified reporting purposes, to call just a few.
Extension Framework Characteristic Breakdown
The Looker Extension Framework contains the next options:
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The Looker Extension SDK, which supplies features for Looker public API entry and for interacting throughout the Looker surroundings.
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Looker elements, a library of pre-built React UI elements you need to use in your extensions.
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The Embed SDK, a library you need to use to embed dashboards, Seems to be, and Explores in your extension.
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The create-looker-extension utility, an extension starter equipment that features all the required extension information and dependencies.
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Our Looker extension framework examples repo, with templates and pattern extensions to help you in getting began shortly.
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The flexibility to entry third-party API endpoints and add third-party information to your extension in constructing enhanced information experiences (e.g. Google Maps API).
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The flexibility to create full-screen extensions inside Looker. Full-screen extensions can be utilized for inner or exterior platform purposes.
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The flexibility to configure an entry key in your extension in order that customers should enter a key to run the extension.
Subsequent Steps
Should you haven’t but tried the Looker Extension Framework, we predict you’ll discover it to be a serious improve to your information app growth expertise. Over the following few months, we are going to proceed to make enhancements to the Extension Framework with the aim of considerably lowering the quantity of code required, and ultimately empowering our builders with a low-code, no-code framework.
Complete particulars and examples that allow you to get began in creating with the Extension Framework are actually obtainable right here. We hope that these new capabilities encourage your creativity and we’re tremendous excited to see what you construct with the Extension Framework!