Section author: Jonathon Love

developer hub

Welcome to the developer hub for jamovi.

Here you will find resources that cover the development of analyses for jamovi (and R). It’s still a work in progress, and we’ll be adding to it over time, but the current tutorial series has everything you need to get up and running.

There are forums available at forum.jamovi.org, so if you have questions about developing modules for jamovi, or feedback on how we can improve the developer hub, we’re keen to hear from you there.

contact <at> jamovi.org

For those interested in the jamovi platform, it is hosted on GitHub here. Don’t forget to ‘star’ us!

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• Gentle steps into developing a jamovi module…
  • 1. Getting Started
  • 2. Creating a Module
  • 3. Creating an analysis
  • 4. Implementing an analysis
  • 5. Debugging an Analysis
  • 6. Creating Rich Results
  • 7. Adding Plots
  • 8. Distributing Modules
  • 9. Additional Notes
• Advanced topics in jamovi module development
  • 1. Dynamic tables
  • 2. Handling Data
  • 3. State
• jamovi module development: User Interfaces
  • 1. Basic UI Design
  • 2. Advanced UI Design
  • 3. Advanced Customisation
• jamovi module development: API
  • Module Definition (0000.yaml files)
  • Analysis definition (.a.yaml files)
  • Results Definition (.r.yaml files)
  • User-interface definition (.u.yaml files)
    • BaseControl (abstract)
      • ParentControl (abstract)
        • LayoutBox
        • CollapseBox
        • Supplier
        • VariableSupplier
        • TargetLayoutBox
        • Parent Controls
          • CheckBox
          • RadioButton
          • Label
      • OptionControl (abstract)
        • TextBox
        • CheckBox
        • RadioButton
        • ComboBox
        • Label
        • ListBox
        • VariableLabel
        • TermLabel
      • DisplayControl (abstract)
        • Label
  • Elements to assign results to (in R)
  • Assign results to tables (in R)
• Further information
  • Structure of the the jamovi sources
  • jamovi File Format (.omv)
  • Contribute to jamovi as a GSoC project

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News

28-02-2020

Versions 1.2.5 and newer of jamovi on macOS are notarized: This is a requirement Apple have introduced; without notarization, the user is presented with an error message, and encouraged to move jamovi to the bin! Apple are jerks.

Unfortunately, notarized versions of jamovi do not work with jmvtools, and it looks like getting them to work together won’t be possible. For development, use an unsigned version of jamovi available here.

When starting this version on macOS catalina and newer, the first time you try and start it it will present the nasty error. Hit cancel. Then right-click (cmd-click) on jamovi, select ‘Open’ from the menu, and then it will give you the option to run it. Once jamovi has been run once, it will start in the usual way from then on.

Apologies for the inconvenience and that Apple are jerks.

08-07-2019

We’ve refined the advanced UI customization in jamovi 1.0.4 and newer. This is not backwards compatible, so we discourage its use in existing modules for the time being (Until the 1.0.4+ is is in broader use). People developing or releasing modules for the first time are encouraged to make use of it. More info here.

09-06-2017

We’ve added a new document to our tutorial series describing how jamovi analyses can use state. State is used with longer running analyses, and allows the analysis to re-use results that were calculated previously. This can lead to much faster analyses, and a much nicer user experience.

Read more about state here.

20-04-2017: Changes to dev tools for jamovi 0.7.3

We’ve just released a beta of jamovi 0.7.3 (available from here), which brings some significant improvements, and minor changes to developing jamovi modules.

Changes to dependency resolution

In the past, we’re had a number of difficulties with dependency resolution for jamovi modules. Sometimes jmvtools would install more dependencies than were necessary, and other times not enough. This stemmed from contamination of the R library path, from R packages installed on the system. In this release we’ve successfully isolated the system libraries from the jmvtools, and only the required dependencies will now be installed.

Improvements to .u.yaml files

Previously, .u.yaml files (the UI definition) were automatically generated from .a.yaml files (the analysis definition). This was sometimes problematic when additional changes were made to the .a.yaml files. It wasn’t always clear which changes should be propagated to the .u.yaml files, and which should not.

In the 0.7.3, the .a.yaml and .u.yaml files work together. The .u.yaml file, by default, contains minimal information (mostly just describing the layout), and the property values, for example labels, are taken directly from the .a.yaml file. For many people, they will only need to edit the .a.yaml file, and jmvtools can take care of the .u.yaml file itself. More documentation for UI Design will be coming soon.

.u.yaml files using this new scheme will have the jus, near the top of the file, specified as 2.0. .u.yaml files using the older jus of 1.0 will be automatically upgraded. Upgraded files will be placed in tame compilerMode (explained next), you may want to change it to aggressive.

compilerMode: aggressive vs tame

jmvtools also introduces a new option in .u.yaml files: compilerMode. By default, .u.yaml files are created in aggressive mode. This means that jmvtools will take a heavy handed approach when updating the .u.yaml files. If new options are added to the .a.yaml file, it will aggressively add them into the .u.yaml file, overwriting any manual changes.

In contrast, the compilerMode of tame does not overwrite manual changes in the u.yaml. The trade off is that it often can’t position UI elements as optimally.

We recommend beginning with your .u.yaml files in aggressive compilerMode, and when you begin to refine your UI by adding custom changes to your .u.yaml files swap over to tame compilerMode so that your changes are preserved. Again, for a lot of people, aggressive mode will be all that they will ever need.

Outstanding issues

For the time being, changes to the .a.yaml and/or the .u.yaml files, will still require you to shut jamovi down and restart it before you’ll see the changes to the UI. We hope to fix this issue in the next few weeks.

On windows, jmvtools is still not able to find the jamovi installation by default. You will still need to pass the home option, or set the jamovi_home option.

02-04-2017: Added dev mode to jamovi 0.7.2.7

jamovi 0.7.2.7 Adds dev mode, providing a stack trace when an analysis errors for whatever reason. The tutorial has been updated to describe this: Debugging an Analysis