URL Readers

Plugins will require communication with certain integrations that users have configured. Popular integrations are things like Version Control Systems (VSC), such as GitHub, BitBucket GitLab etc. These integrations are configured in the integrations section of the app-config.yaml file.

These URL readers are basically wrappers with authentication for files and folders that could be stored in these VCS repositories.

Using the service

The following example shows how to get the URL Reader service in your example backend plugin to read a file and a directory from a GitHub repository.

import {
  coreServices,
  createBackendPlugin,
} from '@backstage/backend-plugin-api';
import os from 'os';

createBackendPlugin({
  pluginId: 'example',
  register(env) {
    env.registerInit({
      deps: {
        urlReader: coreServices.urlReader,
      },
      async init({ urlReader }) {
        const buffer = await urlReader
          .read('https://github.com/backstage/backstage/blob/master/README.md')
          .then(r => r.buffer());

        const tmpDir = os.tmpdir();
        const directory = await urlReader
          .readTree(
            'https://github.com/backstage/backstage/tree/master/packages/backend',
          )
          .then(tree => tree.dir({ targetDir: tmpDir }));
      },
    });
  },
});