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Making a reporter

note

Anything that only works unsandboxed will be noted, but regardless, we will assume you are creating an unsandboxed extension during this tutorial.

Make a new block

Add a new object to the blocks array. This time, the blockType should be Scratch.BlockType.REPORTER.

Let's say this block will just use a simple testReporter() function:

[
{
opcode: 'logToConsole',
text: 'log to console',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.COMMAND
},
{
opcode: 'testReporter',
text: 'testing!',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.REPORTER
}
]

And let's just make the function return a basic string:

class Extension {
// getInfo...

logToConsole() {
console.log('Hello world!');
}

testReporter() {
return "Hello world!";
}
}

Loading this into Snail IDE, you should see the following:

Reporter in the toolbox

This works! But why is there a checkbox?

Reporter-specific parameters

disableMonitor

We can add the disableMonitor property to our block to remove the variable monitor option in the category.

Our reporter has a monitor
{
opcode: 'testReporter',
text: 'testing!',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.REPORTER,
disableMonitor: true
}
Reporter in the toolbox again

This isn't the only specific parameter we can add here:

allowDropAnywhere

This is used a lot less, but we can use this parameter to place the block into "unexpected areas":

{
opcode: 'testReporter',
text: 'testing!',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.REPORTER,
allowDropAnywhere: true
}
Reporter inside a boolean hole

Final code

first-reporter.js - View source

(function(Scratch) {
'use strict';
class Extension {
getInfo() {
return {
id: "johnMyExtension",
name: "My Extension",
blocks: [
{
opcode: 'logToConsole',
text: 'log to console',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.COMMAND
},
{
opcode: 'testReporter',
text: 'testing!',
blockType: Scratch.BlockType.REPORTER,
disableMonitor: true,
allowDropAnywhere: true
}
]
};
}

logToConsole() {
console.log('Hello world!');
}
testReporter() {
return "Hello world!";
}
}

Scratch.extensions.register(new Extension());
})(Scratch);

Next steps

Why don't we create a real boolean next?