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Configuring Extensions in the App

All extensions in a Backstage app can be configured through static configuration. This configuration is all done under the app.extensions configuration key. For more general information on how to write configuration for Backstage, see the section on writing configuration.

Extension Configuration Schema​

This section focuses on the format of the app.extensions configuration and the various shorthands that are available.

The most complete and verbose format for configuring an individual extensions is as follows:

app:
  extensions:
    - <id>:
        attachTo:
          id: <parent-id>
          input: <input-name>
        disabled: <true/false>
        config: <extension-specific-config->

All of the top-level fields are optional: attachTo, disabled, and config. Every extension implementation must provide defaults for all of these fields that will be used if they are not provided in the configuration.

Note that app.extensions is always an array rather than an object. For example, the following is invalid:

INVALID
app:
  extensions:
    <id>: # Invalid, this should be an array item, `app.extensions` is now an object
      config: ...

In addition to this schema, there are a number of shorthands available:

Rather than a full object, you can specify just the ID of the extension as a string. This is equivalent to setting disabled to false:

app:
  extensions:
    - ‘<id>’

You can enable/disable individual extension by ID, in this case the value is a boolean:

app:
  extensions:
    - <id>: <true/false>