@baris Just found the root cause of the weird behaviour!

Turns out that there is a bug in my NodeBB dev startup scripts. One of the steps involves automatically symlink plugin packages for a more seamless plugin development.

• The issue happens when the yarn link only happens after NodeBB build but before NodeBB start
• Thus there is this weird behaviour of the plugin is loaded but its public assets are not built 🫠

Thank you for your pointers and help

@wizseek Maybe I should add that my goal for now is to override the behaviour of search.showAndFocusInput() to visit /search directly + remove the behaviour of hiding the button and display the search field when button is clicked.

I think I should be able archive one of the goals by using jquery to get the UI element of search/button component and change it's onclick to ajaxify.go('/search').

Can't think of how to override the showing and hiding behaviour of search components but I think if all else fail I will just override the whole search module as what you suggested. That is after I am able to have nodebb build the modules first

Thanks @baris for your quick response!

I just tried adding modules but I am puzzled when I found my module is not in build/public/src/modules/.
I didn't see any relevant error message when my plugin builds, it says there is 1 AMD style module + the plugin is loaded.

The server side of the plugin looks to be working as my breakpoint hits the init() function of plugin's main JS file.

I used a different module name on purpose to check if it is built but the result is the same.
Wondering do I need to put the scripts and modules JS file inside a directory defined in staticDirs for the browser to have access?
Think that is not the case but I am not sure how to continue debug this.

I have included some of my code snippet below:

• package.json

...
"main": "src/index.js",
...

• plugin.json

...
"scripts": [
    "src/public/main.js"
],
"modules": {
    "searchv2.js": "src/public/modules/searchv2.js"
}
...

• src/public/main.js

$(document).ready(() => {
  function setupSearchModule() {
    require(['searchv2'], (search) => {
      search.init();
    });
  }

  setupSearchModule();
});

• src/public/modules/searchv2.js

define('searchv2', ['search'], (search) => {
  const Searchv2 = {};

  Searchv2.init = function () {
    if (!config.searchEnabled) {
      return;
    }

    search.showAndFocusInput();
  };

  return Searchv2;
});

• src/index.js

...
const search = module.exports;

search.init = async function (params) {
  const { router } = params;
  const routeHelpers = require.main.require('./src/routes/helpers');
  ...
};
...

Dear NodeBB Community and team,

Like the configurability of NodeBB so far - server & client side hooks, helpers to setup page routes, override template, etc.

As the topic title suggested I am currently trying to override or extend the functionality of the core client Search module.

Different from the normal module that starts with forum/ these core modules are not initialized as part of action:ajaxify.end which means I am not able to use the method mentioned in this forum post.

Are there any other ways to override part or the whole core search module?