# Dependencies

LuaLink provides a way to access and use plugins' APIs in your scripts. This feature is very powerful and makes it easy to integrate scripts with other plugins. It must be noted this has not been thoroughly tested yet and some issues may arise. Please be cautious when using this feature.

Before we can start using any external API, we must declare a dependency. This ensures that script will not be loaded if dependency plugin is missing. To declare dependencies, you must create init.lua file in your script's folder.

return {
    dependencies = {
        "PlaceholderAPI"
    }
}

In this example we will use PlaceholderAPI - a plugin you should already be familiar with.

Next, assuming the plugin is installed and enabled on the server, any import and call to its API should work as expected.

local PlaceholderAPI = import("me.clip.placeholderapi.PlaceholderAPI")

-- NOTE: Placeholders in this example come from the Server expansion which is not installed by default.
script.logger:info(PlaceholderAPI:setPlaceholders(nil, "Server is running %server_variant% %server_version_full%"))

[00:00:00 INFO]: [LuaLink/example_script] Server is running Paper 1.21.4-224