

Second, Kotlin, which can be also used for writing plugins, is syntactically similar to TypeScript. First, you can build some plugins without writing any code, and we’ll see how in a moment.

There’s some good news for those who don’t know Java. If not, then you can try building a plugin. It may be available out of the box or as a plugin in our marketplace. So, where do you start if you’re interested in building a plugin? First of all, double-check whether the functionality you’re looking for already exists. For example, the Import Cost plugin runs the import-cost npm package under the hood. You can use JavaScript-based integrations in plugins, though. Because of this, you can’t build plugins for them using JavaScript or TypeScript. Both the IntelliJ Platform and WebStorm are JVM applications, written mostly in Java and Kotlin. Like all other JetBrains IDEs, WebStorm is built on top of the open source IntelliJ Platform. In part 2 and part 3 of this series, we’ll build more complex things.

In this part, we’ll cover some basic concepts for developing plugins for WebStorm and show you how to build a simple plugin without writing any code. Where do you start? How to work through if you don’t know any Java? We’ll try to answer these questions by walking you through the process of building three plugins for WebStorm.
