Part 3: Change the front end with UI Kit

This section describes how to use tools in UI Kit, including UI Kit components. You'll use these components to build dynamic and interactive interfaces for your app's front end. When your app is complete, you'll learn how to continue monitoring the Forge environment using the forge logs command.

Modify the user interface

The hello world app contains two Text components that display 'Hello world!' on a Confluence page. In the UI Kit, this is represented by <Text>Hello world!</Text>.

When using multiple UI Kit components, you must wrap them in a fragment (<>) block because a function can only return one top-level component. In the example below <> acts as a wrapper for the other UI Kit components.

You’ll update one of these components to display the number of comments on a page.

1. Start the tunnel by running:

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   forge tunnel
   

2. Navigate to the frontend directory and open the index.jsx file.

3. Inside the <> tag, add the following before the first Text component:

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   <Text>
     Number of comments on this page: {comments?.length}
   </Text>
   

4. Refresh the Confluence page that contains your app.

Your index.jsx file should look like the following:

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import React from 'react';
import ForgeReconciler, { Text, useProductContext } from '@forge/react';
import { requestConfluence } from '@forge/bridge';

const fetchCommentsForPage = async (pageId) => {
  const res = await requestConfluence(`/wiki/api/v2/pages/${pageId}/footer-comments`);
  const data = await res.json();
  return data.results;
};

const App = () => {
  const context = useProductContext();

  // add these code to keep track of comments
  const [comments, setComments] = React.useState();
  console.log(`Number of comments on this page: ${comments?.length}`);

  React.useEffect(() => {
    if (context) {
      // extract page ID from the context
      const pageId = context.extension.content.id;

      fetchCommentsForPage(pageId).then(setComments);
    }
  }, [context]);

  return (
    <>
      <Text>
        Number of comments on this page: {comments?.length}
      </Text>
      <Text>Hello world!</Text>
    </>
  );
};

ForgeReconciler.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <App />
  </React.StrictMode>
);

Your app should display the number of comments on the page. You can add more top-level comments to the page and refresh the page to see your app update. Your page should look like the following:

Close the tunnel and deploy the app

After confirming the app works locally, deploy the app so that it continues to work when you close the tunnel.

1. Close your tunnel by pressing Ctrl+C.

2. Deploy your app by running:

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   forge deploy
   

3. Refresh the page where your app is installed.

View your app in the developer console

Once your app is deployed, it will appear in the developer console. From the console, you can manage and distribute your apps. You can also see how your app is performing, view your app logs and installations, and manage app alerts.

Next steps

You now know enough to develop your own Forge apps. Learn more from our tutorials, guides, example apps or reference pages.

• Promote an app to staging or production makes your app ready for your users.
• Learn how to build a custom UI app in Confluence.
• See the reference pages to learn what else you can do with what you’ve learned.