Problem

Plugins and nodes are tightly coupled and it makes it harder to extend default nodes and maintaining existing plugins functionality.

Example

Let's take markdown plugin (copy/paste logic is also a good example), it exports bunch of node creation helpers ($createHeadingNode, $createCodeBlockNode, $createListNode, etc).

Then if I want to extend HeadingNode behaviour, for example to add id attribute to each heading so it can be used as an anchor (smth like <h1 id="getting-started-with-react">Getting started with React</h1>, see our README doing it). To do so I'd extend default node and add new behaviour on top:

class AnchorHeadingNode extends HeadingNode {
  static getType() {
    return 'heading';
  }

  createDOM<EditorContext>(config: EditorConfig<EditorContext>): HTMLElement {
    const element = super.createDOM(config);
    element.setAttribute('id', getAnchorID(this));
    return element;
  }

  updateDOM(prevNode: HeadingNode, dom: HTMLElement): boolean {
    dom.setAttribute('id', getAnchorID(this));
    return false;
  }
}

But now the problem is that all plugins that might insert HeadingNode (markdown, toolbar, copy/paste), they all keep using default HeadingNode, because they all use $createHeadingNode imported from default heading node file.

Potential solution:

Replace $createHeadingNode() implementation from

function $createHeadingNode(tag): HeadingNode {
  return new HeadingNode(tag);
}

to

function $createHeadingNode(tag): HeadingNode {
  const NodeConstructor = $getNodeFromRegistry(HeadingNode);
  return new NodeConstructor(tag);
}

...
// and smth like:
function $getNodeFromRegistry<T>(nodeKlass: T): T {
  return $getActiveEditor()._registeredNodes.get(nodeKlass.getType());
}

This will allow passing AnchorHeadingNode into LexicalComposer, and since it has the same type ('heading'), it'll be used whenever $createHeadingNode is used, so all callsites that create heading will use our extended heading node.