About Confluence Cloud

Welcome to the Confluence Cloud developer documentation! Confluence is a knowledge sharing tool that helps teams create and share content.

Developers can customize, extend, and integrate with Confluence by creating apps. Apps can integrate Confluence with an existing service, add new features to Confluence, create and manage content, or create new workflows and collaboration tools for Confluence users.

This page covers the basics of developing for Confluence Cloud:

• Creating Confluence apps and customizations with either Forge or Connect.
• Using the Confluence APIs in apps, scripts, or one-off calls.
• Following Atlassian’s development standards for security, design, and the Atlassian Marketplace.

We recommend using Forge or Connect to build apps. You can also integrate with Confluence Cloud by building OAuth 2.0 (3LO) apps or calling the REST APIs via scripts or other API clients.

Forge apps

Forge is Atlassian's new development platform for building Jira and Confluence Cloud apps. We recommend Forge if you plan on building apps for use within your organization. Forge is also recommended for developers building their first Atlassian cloud app, or any developers who want less infrastructure and hosting overhead.

To start building a Forge app, see Getting started with Forge. If you'd prefer to learn more about Forge first, see About Forge in the Forge documentation.

Connect apps

Atlassian Connect is a framework for building apps for Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket Cloud. We recommend Connect for developers who need to sell their cloud app or integration in the Atlassian Marketplace now or in the near future. Connect is also a good option for developers who want complete control over the tech stack and infrastructure, for example, projects that require more control over storage or compute hosting.

To start building a Connect app, see Getting started with Connect.

Note that there are a number of frameworks for Connect that make it easier to create apps. See Frameworks and tools for details.

Building apps outside of Connect

Apps built without Forge or Connect can still access data and create content through the Jira APIs. These apps can use OAuth 2.0 (3LO) or OAuth 1.0 (basic auth) to pass information between your app and Confluence, depending on your security needs. See the Security section below for more details.

Note that Forge and Connect are required to implement certain functionality in apps. For example, only Forge and Connect apps can extend the user interface of products.

Using the APIs

You can use the Confluence APIs in apps you develop for Confluence, as well as in scripts, API clients, or other methods of making calls.

• The REST API allows you to access and update Confluence entities, such as pages, blog posts, spaces, users, and groups.
• The Forge JavaScript API (Forge documentation) provides additional functionality to the Forge platform so that you can interact with REST endpoints and to store data.
• The Connect JavaScript API lets you use iframes with your Connect app, so that your iframe can call APIs, store cookies, access user info, and more.

Atlassian development guidelines

Follow our design guidelines to make your app consistent with Atlassian's products. We also have resources to help keep your Confluence app secure and add it to the Atlassian Marketplace.

Atlassian Design guidelines

Since Forge and Connect apps can insert content directly into Confluence Cloud, it's important that apps are visually compatible with Atlassian design. We have resources to help you design your app:

• Atlassian Design Guidelines — Our design guidelines define core interactions with the Atlassian applications.
• Atlaskit — Atlaskit is a library of reusable front-end UI components.

Security

There are three basic options for security, depending on what sort of app you are trying to make:

• Forge apps use OAuth 2.0 when authenticating with Confluence. Scopes are an OAuth 2.0 mechanism that limits an app's access to a user's account. The Forge platform also provides managed APIs to make requests on behalf of the user, meaning that third-party code is never trusted with user credentials.
• Connect apps have HTTPS and JWT authentication built in to secure communication between your app, Confluence Cloud, and the user. Our Connect toolkits, Atlassian Connect Express (ACE) and Atlassian Connect for Spring Boot, handle most of the security setup for new apps. Note that OAuth 2.0 (3LO) isn't supported for Connect apps.
• OAuth 2.0 (3LO) apps use OAuth 2.0 (3LO) to pass permissions and data from Confluence.
• Basic auth (Oauth 1.0) is supported for making API calls, but is not recommended unless you have other security measures in place.

Read the Security overview for more details.

Atlassian Marketplace

You can sell your app on the Atlassian Marketplace so other cloud users can install it, or list it privately if you don't intend to sell or distribute your code. Private listings use secret tokens that you can generate yourself.

If you are interested in selling you app on the Atlassian Marketplace, read our licensing guide and selling on Marketplace for more information.

Examples and resources

Check out our example apps and patterns for app ideas and strategies, or see some tutorials on more advanced topics, like using webhooks or macros to integrate your service into Confluence.

• Dive in with the Forge getting started tutorial or Connect getting started tutorial.
• See Forge tutorials and example apps.
• See Confluence Connect patterns and examples and Connect tutorials.