# How to manage plugins > See also: [Plugin](https://documentation.ubuntu.com/juju/2.9/reference/plugin.md#plugin) Juju can be easily extended by using plugins. There are many third-party plugins available to simplify certain tasks. However, you can easily create your own custom plugins for your specific needs. This tutorial will show you how to do this. #### IMPORTANT Another way to integrate Juju into your own tooling is to use the [Python](https://github.com/juju/python-libjuju) and [JavaScript](https://github.com/juju/js-libjuju) client libraries. ## Create a plugin Let’s say we want to get the IP address for a machine. To do this, we can run `juju status`, look at the table of units, find the row for the desired machine and read off the IP address. However: - we cannot easily do this inside a Bash script - this might get tedious if we have to do it repeatedly. To solve this, we can write a plugin that, given the ID for a machine, will return the IP address. We want to be able to run it like this: ```console $ juju ip 0 10.50.10.50 ``` Let’s get started. Create a file called `juju-ip` with the following contents: ```bash #!/bin/bash # First arg is machine ID MACHINE=$1 # The jq query we will use to find the IP address QUERY=$(printf '.machines."%d"."dns-name"' "$MACHINE") # Call juju status, use jq to filter output juju status --format=json | jq -r "$QUERY" ``` This is a simple Bash script that calls `juju status` using JSON output, so that we can use `jq` to filter the output and get the IP address. (You’ll need to install [`jq`](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) for this to work.) #### IMPORTANT We’ve used Bash for this plugin, but you can use any language which allows command-line execution. Feel free to use Python, JS, Go, etc - whatever you are most familiar with. ## Install and run a plugin To run this plugin, we just need to ensure that the `juju-ip` file is placed somewhere on our `$PATH`. In a terminal, run ```default echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' ``` This will output all the directories on your `$PATH`. Put the `juju-ip` file in any one of these directories. We also need to ensure our plugin is an executable file. In your terminal, run ```default sudo chmod +x [path/to/juju-ip] ``` replacing `[path/to/juju-ip]` with the new location of the `juju-ip` file. Now, we are ready to run the plugin! Switch to a model with some machines deployed, and run ```default juju ip 0 ``` > When you run > ```default > juju [command] [args] > ``` > and `[command]` is **not** a built-in Juju command, Juju will automatically search your `$PATH` for a file named `juju-[command]`, and attempt to execute it with the given `[args]`. This mechanism is what makes plugins possible. ## Distribute a plugin If you’ve written something that you think other Juju users might find useful, feel free to distribute it. We suggest: - creating a GitHub repo to host your plugin - making a post about on the [Juju Discourse](https://discourse.charmhub.io/) forum - adding your plugin to our [list](https://documentation.ubuntu.com/juju/2.9/reference/plugin/list-of-known-juju-plugins.md#list-of-known-juju-plugins) of third-party Juju plugins.