Error when trying to extend ODKSheetsPlugin

[pritamps]

I am trying to build a HTML to PDF transformer for UCI. I have set up a new plugin

class HTMLPlugin(ODKSheetsPlugin):

def fetch_data(self, req_data=""):
      # copied from ODKPlugin

I have created a new server for this plugin, and the server starts successfully. However, when I make a request, I get the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/pritamps/samagra/PDF-Package/src/plugin/html_plugin/external.py", line 183, in fetch_data
    req_data = json.loads(json.dumps(request.json))
NameError: name 'request' is not defined

If I create the req_data variable and pass it in, it works, but this would break the inheritance, so I would rather not do that.

What could the issue be? The same request works if I start theODKPlugin server, so there the request object is available to the class instance.