We recommend Forge for building Atlassian cloud apps. Forge lets you host apps on infrastructure that is provisioned, managed, monitored, and scaled automatically by Atlassian.
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:
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.
To complete this tutorial, you need the following:
You need the following things to develop for Jira Cloud:
In this tutorial, the app server will run on your local development machine. A tunnel tunnel is necessary to allow Jira or Confluence Cloud to send requests to the server running on your machine and install the app. ACE creates tunnels using the ngrok Node.js module, which can be used free of charge after creating an ngrok
account. In order to use ngrok in ACE, an auth token is all that's required. Follow this process to obtain one:
The Cloud Developer Bundle provides a free Atlassian cloud development site for building and testing apps. To create your site:
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.
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.
After the page refreshes, you see the Upload app link. This link enables you to install apps during development.
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.
On your command line, run:
1 2npm install -g ngrok
Identify to ngrok using your auth token (from the step "Prepare for tunneling")
1 2ngrok authtoken <token>
Start ngrok by running the following command:
1 2ngrok http 8000
We're assuming that you have a working web application listening on http://localhost:8000. If your app is listening on a different URL, change the above command to match.
You should see something similar to the following console UI in your terminal.
1 2Forwarding https://84c5df439d74.ngrok-free.dev -> http://localhost:8000
Confirm new tunnel
Important: for any recently created ngrok account there will be a warning page displayed that needs to be confirmed once before the tunnel can be used. To do this, look for the message Forwarding https://<some ID>.ngrok-free.app/
and open that URL in your browser. You'll see a page like this:
Confirm by clicking on the button labeled "Visit Site". Your tunnel is now fully operational, but this step needs to be repeated every time a new tunnel is opened.
Making your app available to the internet using ngrok is covered later in this tutorial.
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.
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.
atlassian-connect.json
with this content:1 2{ "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
.
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.
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.
For production environments, we recommend bundling CSS and JS files with your site, rather than relying on a third-party CDN.
In your project directory, create a new file named helloworld.html
with this content:
1 2<!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
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:
helloworld.html
page uses CSS from Atlaskit. Atlaskit is a library
of reusable front-end UI components. This app uses the CSS styling to render the h1
element using the Atlassian font stack.script
tag: This script tag includes the all.js
file, the client library for the Atlassian Connect JavaScript API.
It simplifies client interactions with the Atlassian application, such as making an XMLHttpRequest
.ac-content
class: This class wraps the contents of your app and dynamically resizes the iframe
in Jira. This class keeps your app content visible without scrollbars.Use ngrok to make the local app available to the internet, and then tell your Jira instance how to find the descriptor.
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).
Open your project directory at the command line
Install http-server by running:
1 2npm install http-server -g
Start the server on port 8000
by running:
1 2http-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:
1 2Starting up http-server, serving ./ on: http://0.0.0.0:8000/
Confirm that the files you created in steps 1 and 2 are being served by visiting the following URLs:
The descriptor file can only be fetched from web server ports 80, 443, or 8080.
Now that your app is hosted on a local web server, use ngrok to make it available over the internet.
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.
1 2ngrok 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.
Get the HTTPS URL from the ngrok status page.
Edit the app descriptor file, and set the baseUrl
property to the ngrok HTTPS URL. For example:
1 2"baseUrl": "https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io"
Confirm that the descriptor is available by opening the atlassian-connect.json
file in your browser
at the ngrok HTTPS URL. For example:
1 2https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io/atlassian-connect.json
This is the URL you use in the next section to install 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.
Navigate to Jira in your Atlassian Cloud instance, then choose Jira settings (cog icon) > Apps > Manage apps.
Click Upload app.
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:
1 2https://bb5a163ef415.ngrok.io/atlassian-connect.json
Click Upload. Jira displays the Installed and ready to go message when the installation is complete.
Click Close.
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.
In the top navigation bar, click Apps then Greeting. If Apps isn't visible, click More first.
The Hello World message displays.
You've now set up a development environment and built your first app.
You now know enough to start developing apps with Atlassian Connect. To continue learning about app development for Jira Cloud:
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