Backend System Naming Patterns

These are the naming patterns to adhere to within the backend system. They help us keep exports consistent across packages and make it easier to understand the usage and intent of exports.

As a rule, all names should be camel case, with the exceptions of plugin and module IDs, which should be kebab case.

Plugins

Description	Pattern	Examples
export	<camelId>Plugin	catalogPlugin, userSettingsPlugin
ID	'<kebab-id>'	'catalog', 'user-settings'

Example:

export const userSettingsPlugin = createBackendPlugin({
  pluginId: 'user-settings',
  ...
})

Modules

Description	Pattern	Examples
export	<pluginId>Module<ModuleId>	catalogModuleGithubEntityProvider
ID	'<module-id>'	'github-entity-provider'

Example:

export const catalogModuleGithubEntityProvider = createBackendModule({
  pluginId: 'catalog',
  moduleId: 'github-entity-provider',
  ...
})

Extensions

Description	Pattern	Examples
Interface	<PluginId><Name>ExtensionPoint	CatalogProcessingExtensionPoint
Reference	<pluginId><Name>ExtensionPoint	catalogProcessingExtensionPoint
ID	'<pluginId>.<name>'	'catalog.processing', 'foo.barBaz'

Example:

export interface CatalogProcessingExtensionPoint {
  ...
}

export const catalogProcessingExtensionPoint = createExtensionPoint<CatalogProcessingExtensionPoint>({
  id: 'catalog.processing',
  ...
})

Services

Description	Pattern	Examples
Interface	<Name>Service	LoggerService, DatabaseService
Reference	<name>ServiceRef	loggerServiceRef, databaseServiceRef
ID	<pluginId>.<name>	'core.rootHttpRouter', 'catalog.catalogClient'
Factory	<name>ServiceFactory	loggerServiceFactory, databaseServiceFactory

Example:

export interface CatalogClientService {
  ...
}

export const catalogClientServiceRef = createServiceRef<CatalogClientService>({
  id: 'catalog.catalogClient',
  ...
})

export const catalogClientServiceFactory = createServiceFactory({
  service: catalogClientServiceRef,
  ...
})

An exception to the above service reference naming pattern has been made for the all of the core services in the core API. The @backstage/backend-plugin-api makes all core service references available via a single coreServices collection. Likewise, the @backstage/backend-test-utils exports all mock service implementations via a single mockServices collection. This means that the table above is slightly misleading, since loggerServiceRef and databaseServiceRef are instead available as coreServices.logger and coreService.database. We recommend that plugins avoid this patterns unless they have a very large number of services that they need to export.

While it is often preferred to prefix root scoped services with Root, it is not required. For example, RootHttpRouterService and RootLifecycleService follow this pattern, but ConfigService doesn't and it is a root scoped service.