Last updated Aug 8, 2022

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Getting started with Connect

Connect is a development framework for extending Atlassian cloud products. Connect gives you control over the tech stack, infrastructure, and integration with Atlassian Cloud products. You determine your security implementation and authentication with external cloud providers, such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Heroku. It handles discovery, installation, authentication, and seamless integration into the user interface.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use Connect to develop apps for Jira Cloud products, including Jira Work Management, Jira Software, and Jira Service Management. This includes getting an Atlassian cloud development instance, setting up your local development environment, and validating your setup by building and deploying a Hello World app.

Forge is our recommended platform for building Atlassian cloud apps. See the cloud development platform overview for a comparison between Forge and Connect.

Before you begin

To complete this tutorial, you need the following:

Set up your development environment

You need the following things to develop for Jira Cloud:

  • A developer instance of Atlassian Cloud for testing and validating apps
  • A local development environment for creating apps

Step 1. Get a cloud development site

The Cloud Developer Bundle provides a free Atlassian cloud development site for building and testing apps. To create your site:

  1. Go to go.atlassian.com/cloud-dev and sign up. It may take several minutes to provision your site.
  2. Once your site is ready, sign in, and complete the setup wizard.

Your cloud development site has Confluence and all the Jira products installed. Note that Atlassian cloud development sites have limits on the number of users.

If necessary, use the app switcher to navigate to Jira. Select the app switcher icon, and then choose Jira.

Switching to Jira

Step 2. Enable development mode in your site

With development mode you can install app descriptors in your development site from any public URL. This means you don't need to list an app in the Atlassian Marketplace before installing it.

  1. In the top navigation bar, click Apps then Manage your apps. If Apps isn't visible, click More first. Selecting Manage your apps from the Apps menu
  2. Under User-installed apps, click Settings. Opening the manage apps settings
  3. Select Enable development mode, and then click Apply. Enabling development mode in settings

After the page refreshes, you see the Upload app link. This link enables you to install apps during development.

Step 3. Set up your local development environment

If you install an Atlassian Connect app in an Atlassian cloud instance, it's usually hosted elsewhere (for example, a cloud platform service like Heroku). However, it's easiest to develop an app on your local machine and make it available over the internet by tunneling (using HTTPS). This enables you to work locally and test against your Atlassian cloud instance.

  1. On your command line, run:

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    npm install -g ngrok

  2. Sign up for an ngrok account and register the authtoken shown on your dashboard (if you skip this step, your app's iframes will not display)

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    ngrok authtoken <token>

Making your app available to the internet using ngrok is covered later in this tutorial.

Build a basic app

This part of the tutorial gives you a hands-on introduction to Atlassian Connect by building a simple Atlassian Connect app. It also validates that your development environment is set up correctly. The app uses a generalPages module and adds a link titled Greeting to the Jira sidebar.

Step 1. Define the app descriptor

The fundamental building block of an app is the app descriptor file, usually named atlassian-connect.json. The descriptor file describes your app to the Atlassian application (in this case, Jira Cloud), including the key, name, permissions needed to operate, and modules it uses for integration.

First, create a project directory and define your app descriptor.

  1. Create a project directory for your app's source files.
  2. In the project directory, create a new file named atlassian-connect.json with this content:
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  {
     "name": "Hello World",
     "description": "Atlassian Connect app",
     "key": "com.example.myapp",
     "baseUrl": "https://<placeholder-url>",
     "vendor": {
         "name": "Example, Inc.",
         "url": "http://example.com"
     },
     "authentication": {
         "type": "none"
     },
     "apiVersion": 1,
     "modules": {
         "generalPages": [
             {
                 "url": "/helloworld.html",
                 "key": "hello-world",
                 "location": "system.top.navigation.bar",
                 "name": {
                     "value": "Greeting"
                 }
             }
         ]
     }
}

Note, you must specify the correct baseUrl value instead of placeholder-url.

  1. Save the descriptor file.
  2. (optional) Validate your descriptor using the Atlassian Connect validator. This handy tool shows you any errors in your app descriptor, such as missing properties or syntax errors.

You don't need to change the placeholder used for baseUrl now. You update it later in this tutorial, when you deploy your app.

Step 2. Create the user interface

Now, create the user interface using a simple static HTML page. An app consisting of an app descriptor and an HTML page is the most basic Atlassian Connect app. Such apps are not typical. However, when you understand how the example works, it only takes a few more steps to turn it into a fully-functional app.

  1. In your project directory, create a new file named helloworld.html with this content:

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    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/@atlaskit/css-reset@2.0.0/dist/bundle.css" media="all">
        <script src="https://connect-cdn.atl-paas.net/all.js" async></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <section id="content" class="ac-content">
            <h1>Hello World</h1>
        </section>
    </body>
</html>

    Note that the app descriptor file, atlassian-connect.json, references this file in the generalPages element: url: /helloworld.html

  2. Save the file.

That's all the coding you need to do. Now take a closer look at the contents of the helloworld.html file:

Deploy and install your app

Use ngrok to make the local app available to the internet, and then tell your Jira instance how to find the descriptor.

Step 1: Host the app on a local web server

You need a simple web server to serve the directory containing your atlassian-connect.json and helloworld.html files. There are several tools you can use to do this, this tutorial uses http-server (available via npm).

  1. Open your project directory at the command line

  2. Install http-server by running:

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    npm install http-server -g

  3. Start the server on port 8000 by running:

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    http-server -p 8000

    A message on your command line indicates that the server is serving HTTP at an address and port. It will look something like this:

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    Starting up http-server, serving ./ on: http://0.0.0.0:8000/

  4. Confirm that the files you created in steps 1 and 2 are being served by visiting the following URLs:

The public hosting of files for download is not enough. The files must be hosted by a web server.

Step 2: Make the app files available to the internet

Now that your app is hosted on a local web server, use ngrok to make it available over the internet.

  1. In a new command line window, run this command to expose your web server to the internet. If your app is not running on port 8000, change the command to use your app's port number.

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    ngrok http 8000

    You see a status page on the command line that shows the tunnel's public URL and other information about connections made over the tunnel. If your app is not running when you try to start ngrok, you see a "Failed to complete tunnel connection" message.

  2. Get the HTTPS URL from the ngrok status page.

    Ngrok example with HTTPS

  3. Edit the app descriptor file, and set the baseUrl property to the ngrok HTTPS URL. For example:

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    "baseUrl": "https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io"

  4. Confirm that the descriptor is available by opening the atlassian-connect.json file in your browser at the ngrok HTTPS URL. For example:

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     https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io/atlassian-connect.json

    This is the URL you use in the next section to install your app.

Step 3: Install and test your app

The final step in deploying your app is to install it in your Atlassian cloud instance. You do this by adding a link to your app's descriptor file in your Atlassian cloud instance. This enables Jira to install your app.

  1. Navigate to Jira in your Atlassian Cloud instance, then choose Jira settings (cog icon) > Apps > Manage apps.

  2. Click Upload app.

  3. In the From this URL field, provide a link to your app descriptor. This URL is the same as the hosted location of your atlassian-connect.json descriptor file. The example uses the following URL:

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    https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io/atlassian-connect.json

  4. Click Upload. Jira displays the Installed and ready to go message when the installation is complete.

  5. Click Close.

  6. Verify that your app appears in the User installed apps list. For example, if you used Hello World for your app name, then Hello World appears in the list.

  7. In the top navigation bar, click Apps then Greeting. If Apps isn't visible, click More first.

    Opening the Hello World app from the Apps menu Greeting item

  8. The Hello World message displays.

    The Jira Hello World app

You've now set up a development environment and built your first app.

Next steps

You now know enough to start developing apps with Atlassian Connect. To continue learning about app development for Jira Cloud:

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