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This tutorial will walk you through creating a sample Forge app for Confluence. There are three parts to the tutorial:
This page: describes creating, changing, and installing a simple hello world app. The focus is on learning the CLI commands needed to work with apps.
Call a Confluence API: describes how to make API calls to the Confluence REST API.
Change the frontend with the UI kit: describes how to use UI kit components.
We recommend you work through all three parts to get a good understanding of how to develop apps with Forge.
Complete Getting started before working through this page.
Forge apps can't be viewed by anonymous users. When testing a Forge app, you should be logged in to your Atlassian cloud developer site.
Create an app based on the Confluence macro template.
When you create a new app, Forge will prompt you to set a default environment. In this
tutorial we use the development
environment as our default.
Learn more about staging and production environments.
Navigate to the directory where you want to create the app. A new subdirectory with the app’s name will be created there.
Create your app by running:
1 2forge create
Enter a name for your app (up to 50 characters). For example, hello-world-app.
Select the UI kit category.
Select the confluence-macro template.
Change to the app subdirectory to see the app files:
1 2cd hello-world-app
The app we'll create will display a macro on a Confluence page, with a function that provides the contents of the macro.
The confluence-macro
template uses Node.js and has the following structure:
1 2hello-world-app |-- src | `-- index.jsx |-- manifest.yml |-- package.json |-- package-lock.json `-- README.md
Let’s have a look at what these files are:
index.jsx
: Where you write the behavior of the app.manifest.yml
: Describes your app. This file contains the name and ID of the app,
the app permissions, and the modules the app uses.package.json
: The app’s Node.js metadata. See the
Node documentationfor more information.package-lock.json
: Records the version of the app’s dependencies.README.md
: Information about the app. We recommend updating this as you change
the behavior of the app.You can manage, distribute, and monitor your apps in the developer console.
This app displays content within a Confluence page using a macro
. Confluence shows the title of the
macro in the quick insert menu when you add the app to a page. Let's change the title to include your name.
manifest.yml
file.title
entry under the macro
module.title
to Forge app for <your name>
. For example, Forge app for Mia.Your manifest.yml
file should look like the following, with your values for the title and app ID:
1 2modules: macro: - key: hello-world-app-hello-world function: main title: Forge app for Mia description: Inserts hello world! function: - key: main handler: index.run app: id: '<your app id>'
To use your app, it must be installed onto an Atlassian site. The
forge deploy
command builds, compiles, and deploys your code; it'll also report any compilation errors.
The forge install
command then installs the deployed app onto an Atlassian site with the
required API access.
You must run the forge deploy
command before forge install
because an installation
links your deployed app to an Atlassian site.
Navigate to the app's top-level directory and deploy your app by running:
1 2forge deploy
Install your app by running:
1 2forge install
Select your Atlassian product using the arrow keys and press the enter key.
Enter the URL for your development site. For example, example.atlassian.net. View a list of your active sites at Atlassian administration.
Once the successful installation message appears, your app is installed and ready
to use on the specified site.
You can always delete your app from the site by running the forge uninstall
command.
Running the forge install
command only installs your app onto the selected product.
To install onto multiple products, repeat these steps again, selecting another product each time.
Note that the Atlassian Marketplace
does not support cross-product apps yet.
You must run forge deploy
before running forge install
in any of the Forge environments.
With your app installed, it’s time to see the app on a page.
Your hello world app is now installed into your development site. The app should display on the page like the image below.
While your app is deployed to either a development or staging environment, (development)
or
(staging)
will appear in your app title. This suffix is removed once you've
deployed your app to production.
Once your app is installed, it will automatically pick up all minor app deployments
so you don't need to run the forge install
command again. Minor deployments are changes
that don't modify app permissions in the manifest.yml
file. You can deploy the changes onto your
developer site or Bitbucket workspace by using one of two methods:
forge deploy
command.forge tunnel
command.Once your app is installed, changes in the manifest are picked up automatically after running forge deploy
.
However, due to the eventually-consistent nature of our system, you may need to wait up to 5 minutes
for changes in the manifest to be reflected in the product.
Tunneling allows you to speed up development by avoiding the need to redeploy each code change, and by seeing each invocation as it executes. The Forge tunnel works similarly to hot reloading, so any changes you make to your app code can be viewed on your Atlassian site or Bitbucket workspace without losing the current app state. You don’t need to run any other commands; you only need to refresh the page.
To use the forge tunnel
command, Docker must be set up and running. To learn about Docker,
visit the Docker getting started guides. If you don't want
to run Docker,
you can redeploy your app after each code change with the forge deploy
command.
Once Docker is set up, you can start tunneling by running:
1 2forge tunnel
You should see output similar to:
1 2Running your app locally with Docker. The tunnel displays your usage from everywhere the app in the development environment is installed. Press Ctrl+C to cancel. Checking Docker image... 100% Your Docker image is up to date. Listening for requests on local port 37363... Reloading code... App code reloaded.
You can now automatically deploy changes to your codebase and install packages, while tunneling. These changes appear on the Atlassian site or Bitbucket workspace where your app is installed.
When you are ready to close the tunnel, press Control + C.
The forge tunnel
command only forwards traffic when the user (in Jira, Confluence, Jira
Service Management or Bitbucket) matches the Forge CLI user. For security reasons, you can’t see the traffic
of other users.
For important caveats on how forge tunnel
works, see
Tunneling.
In the next tutorial, you'll learn how to make API calls to Confluence using Forge. This tutorial uses the forge tunnel
, so make sure you are familiar with using this command.
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