issue_comments

There's actually already a way to move regular Datasette --setting options to a settings.json file thanks to configuration directory mode: https://docs.datasette.io/en/stable/settings.html

Maybe extending that mechanism to handle plugins would be a neat path forward here.

The datasette publish --plugin-secret name setting value option already implements something a bit like this. https://docs.datasette.io/en/stable/plugins.html#secret-configuration-values

It's a bit of a messy hack to compensate for metadata being visible. Maybe I could replace that mechanism with the proposed plugin configuration rethink from this issue.

I still like the debug benefits of making plugin settings public - perhaps add a rule that if a plugin setting has a secret: prefix it gets redacted on a new /-/plugin-settings page.

You can already run datasette --help-settings to see detailed help on available settings. Maybe datasette --help-plugin-settings could do the same thing for plugin settings?

Or I could even have available plugin settings show up as a list at the bottom of the datasette --help-settings output - which currently looks like this:

% datasette --help-settings Settings: default_page_size Default page size for the table view (default=100) max_returned_rows Maximum rows that can be returned from a table or custom query (default=1000) num_sql_threads Number of threads in the thread pool for executing SQLite queries (default=3) sql_time_limit_ms Time limit for a SQL query in milliseconds (default=1000) default_facet_size Number of values to return for requested facets (default=30) facet_time_limit_ms Time limit for calculating a requested facet (default=200) facet_suggest_time_limit_ms Time limit for calculating a suggested facet (default=50) hash_urls Include DB file contents hash in URLs, for far- future caching (default=False) allow_facet Allow users to specify columns to facet using ?_facet= parameter (default=True) allow_download Allow users to download the original SQLite database files (default=True) suggest_facets Calculate and display suggested facets (default=True) default_cache_ttl Default HTTP cache TTL (used in Cache-Control: max-age= header) (default=5) default_cache_ttl_hashed Default HTTP cache TTL for hashed URL pages (default=31536000) cache_size_kb SQLite cache size in KB (0 == use SQLite default) (default=0) allow_csv_stream Allow .csv?_stream=1 to download all rows (ignoring max_returned_rows) (default=True) max_csv_mb Maximum size allowed for CSV export in MB - set 0 to disable this limit (default=100) truncate_cells_html Truncate cells longer than this in HTML table view - set 0 to disable (default=2048) force_https_urls Force URLs in API output to always use https:// protocol (default=False) template_debug Allow display of template debug information with ?_context=1 (default=False) trace_debug Allow display of SQL trace debug information with ?_trace=1 (default=False) base_url Datasette URLs should use this base path (default=/)

Another option: if I make plugin settings a higher level concept in Datasette than they are at the moment, I could allow them to be set either using --options OR using the existing metadata.yml/json mechanism. https://docs.datasette.io/en/stable/plugins.html#plugin-configuration

I want to make changes to that anyway, because I'm increasingly uncomfortable with plugin settings ending up in the "metadata" mechanism.

I try to stick pretty closely to what Click supports, and Click likes you to define options explicitly so that it can display them in the output of --help.

But... that makes me think that actually showing these options in --help is likely a better idea. My --plugin-setting concept would have help that looks something like this: % datasette serve --help ... --plugin-setting <TEXT TEXT TEXT>... Setting for a specified plugin. That's not great help!

The alternative would be to allow plugins to register their extra options with the command - which would mean the help output could look like this instead: % datasette serve --help ... --tiddlywiki-db <TEXT> Name of database to use for datasette-tiddlywiki This feels like a good argument to me for plugins to explicitly register their settings. I'm not sure if I should enforce the name-of-plugin- prefix, or if I should allow plugins to define any setting they like. I'm still nervous about plugins over-riding existing or future default options to that command.

The challenge here is avoiding clashes. What if a plugin adds an option that I later want to use for a new Datasette core feature? Or what if two plugins define the same option?

Maybe the solution is to make them use namespaces defined by the plugin name.

How about this:

datasette t.db --plugin-setting datasette-tiddlywiki db t.db

It's a bit verbose having an option that itself then takes THREE strings: plugin name, setting name, setting value - but it would work.