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Atlassian Authentication Provider

The Backstage core-plugin-api package comes with an Atlassian authentication provider that can authenticate users using Atlassian products. This auth only provides scopes for the following APIs:

  • Confluence API
  • User REST API
  • Jira platform REST API
  • Jira Service Desk API
  • Personal data reporting API
  • User identity API

Create an OAuth 2.0 (3LO) app in the Atlassian developer console​

To add Atlassian authentication, you must create an OAuth 2.0 (3LO) app.

Go to https://developer.atlassian.com/console/myapps/.

Click on the drop down Create, and choose OAuth 2.0 integration.

Name your integration and click on the Create button.

Settings for local development:

  • Callback URL: http://localhost:7007/api/auth/atlassian
  • Use rotating refresh tokens
  • For permissions, you must enable View user profile for the currently logged-in user, under User identity API

Configuration​

The provider configuration can then be added to your app-config.yaml under the root auth configuration:

auth:
  environment: development
  providers:
    atlassian:
      development:
        clientId: ${AUTH_ATLASSIAN_CLIENT_ID}
        clientSecret: ${AUTH_ATLASSIAN_CLIENT_SECRET}
        scope: ${AUTH_ATLASSIAN_SCOPES}
        signIn:
          resolvers:
            # See https://backstage.io/docs/auth/atlassian/provider#resolvers for more resolvers
            - resolver: usernameMatchingUserEntityName

The Atlassian provider is a structure with three configuration keys:

  • clientId: The Key you generated in the developer console.
  • clientSecret: The Secret tied to the generated Key.
  • scope: List of scopes the app has permissions for, separated by spaces.

NOTE: the scopes offline_access, read:jira-work, and read:jira-user are provided by default.

Resolvers​

This provider includes several resolvers out of the box that you can use:

  • emailMatchingUserEntityProfileEmail: Matches the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching spec.profile.email. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • emailLocalPartMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the local part of the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • usernameMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the username from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
Note

The resolvers will be tried in order, but will only be skipped if they throw a NotFoundError.

If these resolvers do not fit your needs you can build a custom resolver, this is covered in the Building Custom Resolvers section of the Sign-in Identities and Resolvers documentation.

Backend Installation​

To add the provider to the backend we will first need to install the package by running this command:

from your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-atlassian-provider

Then we will need to this line:

in packages/backend/src/index.ts
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend'));
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-atlassian-provider'));

Adding the provider to the Backstage frontend​

To add the provider to the frontend, add the atlassianAuthApi reference and SignInPage component as shown in Adding the provider to the sign-in page.